Guest Post: Anna Garner

Last month (last year!) I reviewed the adorably awesome Sugar Spun Sister by Anna Garner (review is here), the first in her new Sweet Dreams series. I really liked it and while I was reading it I wondered how she came up with the ice cream shop idea. Happily, Anna offered up this great guest post that explains why she chose ice cream as her heroine's food of choice (and try not to be shocked like I was when you read her confession!). I hope you enjoy this post and buy a copy of this sweet novel for yourself!

I SCREAM, YOU SCREAM

My latest novel, Sugar Spun Sister, is about a girl with ice cream dreams. To clarify: my protagonist, Cricket, hopes to one day have her own ice cream shop, and in this story, she starts working towards her goal. Now, this may come as a shocker, but I have a confession to make: I’m really not a fan of ice cream.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t dislike ice cream. (Unless it’s coffee-flavored. Ick.) I find it to be a pleasant enough treat, but if I’m going to consume those kinds of calories, I’d rather have a cupcake or two. You might wonder then, why did I write a book that centers around ice cream? Well, it’s because I knew I wanted to write about a woman who opens her own food business. I did consider having Cricket want to open up a cupcake shop, but there have been so many chick lit books that involve cupcake shops/cupcake designers/cupcake connoisseurs that I wanted to do something different. Ice cream seemed like the logical choice.

All eighteen chapters of the book open with the name of an ice cream flavor that somehow relates to the action within the chapter, along with a brief note and a recipe. Here’s the first one, for example:

Chapter 1. Anaphylactic Surprise

(A.K.A. the ice cream that would kill my boss)

Ingredients: chopped strawberries, huckleberries, pecans, sugar, soymilk creamer, fresh ginger root (minced & cooked), soy yogurt, honey and carob bean gum powder

All of the recipes in the book are pretty much original. I spent many, many hours googling ice cream recipes, and some of these are similar to ones that are up there on the net, but I think I changed at least one or two things in each recipe to make it my own. Or Cricket’s own, rather. Some of them are completely original, like this first one here. I just wanted to include as many ingredients as possible that people are commonly allergic to, and still have it sound tasty.

It would be interesting to test all my recipes out, and I hope to do so one day. Talk about a fun idea for a book publicity event! Even though, as I said, I’m not that big on ice cream, I really would like to have a taste of “What a Girl Wants” (Cricket’s version of mint chocolate chip, made with Girl Scout cookies) and also “Delectable Dragons” (the sorbet made with exotic dragon fruit) and even “Love, Sweet Love” (the zingy strawberry and pink champagne flavor). Okay, perhaps I’m more into ice cream than I thought…