Magiford: Baking Disasters

Back when the Magic on Main Street trilogy was released I release this separate blog post to talk about the inspiration behind Jade's many baking mishaps. (Sometimes that "favorite" family recipe is just written down wrong.)

At that same time I asked the Champions on my Facebook Page and Instagram to share their own baking mishap stories and the comments were absolutely hilarious! Since today is April Fools' Day and there is a new Magiford book coming out at the end of the month it felt like a perfect time to re-share these! Enjoy and happy laughing! (I'm only listing their first name since we didn't ask each person for permission to share these.)

... I was trying to make vegan caramel sauce... and if I remember this whole baking day was a comedy of errors 🙃 it may or may not have taken a few weeks to get all that burned "sauce" off the stove🤣🤣 I'm not normally this bad🤗 -Amanda

I love cornbread stuffing for Thanksgiving but I never use the same recipe twice because I usually lose it by the time Thanksgiving rolls around again. One year I decided to wing it. One minute it was solid, the next minute it was soup. I just about cried. I LOVE stuffing! -Jenifer

I forgot to add blueberries to blueberry muffins. Another time, I totally forgot about the timer, hearing it beep, and by the time I remembered it again, it was charcoal. 🤣 I've also set off the smoke detector by boiling water... I call those epic fail days 🤣 -Leanne

I once made cookies without ….flour ???? Thank goodness there was some oatmeal in them. They were VERY flat, VERY hard, but also very edible! (Sugar, my dears, and butter😋) -Patti

I once made a Dutch baby (we called it Pannekoken growing up but I’ve since learned it’s considered a Dutch baby) it is basically an oven pancake with apples on top. I scoured the house for flour and finally found some, unlabeled, on a top shelf. When it came out of the oven looking grayish and tasting like it was made with dirt, I discovered I had actually used a human safe de-wormer called diatomaceous earth… I was around 11 or 12 at the time but I did force my brothers to eat it since it was the food we had to eat. 😂🫣 -Bethany

My kids and I tried to make molasses candy once. It... did not go well. I'm a good cook and baker, but this? Disaster. Huge, sticky mess everywhere, and the hot molasses goo splattered on my arms. And then, it didn't even taste or smell good! That recipe is forever blacklisted from our kitchen. Not worth it. -Sara

I had pretzel jello salad in a glass pan and set it on the stove. The stove was on. The glass pan exploded. Pretzel jello salad, and glass went everywhere. the stuff that remained on the stove caught fire. It was an excellent chance to show my niece how you should use baking soda when putting out fires in the kitchen. (No one was harmed in the making of the salad) -Rachel

I decided to start cooking more last month (something I’m historically bad at). I only attempted six meals but I managed to melt/catch on fire four different things…. 1. Spilled egg in the oven that went up in flames and smoke 2. Plastic tongs I didn’t realize would turn to liquid the instant they touched something hot 3. A plate of food caught on fire in the microwave and I had to run it out of my house and throw it into a puddle where it sizzled into a sad pile of mush 4. I didn’t realize a paper towel was on my burner and it also went up into flames…. I have gone back to eating cereal for most of my meals… 😂 I don’t know if I’ve ever related to a character so much 😂 -Paige

I made a pumpkin pie once for Thanksgiving. I forgot to put sugar in it. In my defense though, I had just gotten home from a long day at work. I was so proud of myself for actually getting the pie made after working all day. And then I messed it up. Lol -Brieah

I once made meringues that just oozed down and made a flat sheet. I didn’t beat the eggs near enough. -Erin

My worst mishap was when I was just learning to bake. I couldn't find the baking soda and it was only 1/4 teaspoon needed so I figured it couldn't hurt to leave it out of the cake. I ended up with a 9x13 brick that was 1/2 inch thick. - Jera

I once forgot flour in my brownies and another time accidentally put garlic powder instead of cinnamon on top of some pumpkin bars (similar containers 😅) - Kyra

Just today I asked for a muffin recipe from a friend and received a snapshot of an old 3x5 recipe card. Needless to say, there were some important details left out!😅 (cold milk does not mix with creamed butter and brown sugar…) I salvaged it and saved most of the batter for later.

My husband thought it was the pancake batter and added a bunch of water before making some very sugary pancakes 😂 -Elizabeth

I haven't, but my brother, when he was a teen, wanted to try his hand at making a pineapple upside down cake. He misread the measurement for the amount of salt and added ½ cup instead of ½ teaspoon. 🤣 No one even taste tested that attempt. -Jean

My first attempt at sourdough was raw in the middle. Not not-quite-done but still spongy. Legit still raw dough. -Laura

I used curry instead of cinnamon in a dessert recipe. I threw it out before cooked. 😂 -Lacey

My friend and I once added half a cup of baking soda to a brownie recipe (the half cup was for the baking cocoa)... We had a volcano in the oven and had to run the pan out to the snow because the whole thing was bubbling over haha. -Starla

I forget to add the flour (it was not flour-free) 😅 -The Reading Moon

Worst experience was when a former family member put a cup of salt in a cake instead of sugar. 🤢 -Dawn

I misread teaspoon as tablespoon when measuring spices. I washed the spices off after cooking (and realizing my mistake), and they were still almost too hot to eat! -Dawn

The soup I was making called for 1/4 tsp and I put in 4 tsp instead! 😂 -Mama Ink Drinker

My son made carrot cake without sugar. Realized it when the cake had been in the oven for about 5 minutes. We pulled it out, stirred in the sugar and put it back in. It looked AWFUL. It had already risen, so it was this flat lumpy thing. But it tasted fine, so..... 😂 -Nordick

One time I decided to use olive oil to replace vegetable oil in a brownie recipe... needless to say they were nasty. The taste of olive oil does not cook out of baked goods. My poor husband still tried eating them anyway to try to make me feel better. -Amethyst

I used baking soda instead of baking powder for cornbread once…. Yea. It was awful. 😂 -Chelsc

Magiford Midwest Worldbuilding

With a new book based in the Magiford world coming soon I figured it was a great time to share some basic worldbuilding info. (If you are from the USA Midwest you probably know all this already.)

My fictional city of Magiford is located in the South Eastern part of the state of Wisconsin - see the pink star in the map below. This is where the majority of the Magiford books take place.

The fictional city of Timber Ridge is located in Northern Wisconsin, and although I haven't picked an exact spot for it I would say it is probably located somewhere near the word "Wisconsin" in the map below.

The new book, Managing the Vampire's Mansion, will be based in a REAL LIFE town called Algoma. This town is located along the shore of Lake Michigan (East of the "N" in Wisconsin in the map below).

Wisconsin is one of the States that gets very distinctive weather changes for each season. Lots of pretty flowering trees and plants in the spring, warm (and potentially very hot) & humid summers, and fantastically beautiful falls with lots of leaf color variations.

And then there is winter...

Yes, Wisconsin has some pretty intense winters. But we actually have more extreme cold than extreme snow. As you can see from the snowfall map below the North Eastern part of the USA gets way more snow then most of Wisconsin.

Versus when you look at this average temperature map (for winter) you can see that even Southern Wisconsin is much colder then most of the North East.

Wisconsin Accents

Another map I want to share shows off how the accents differ throughout Wisconsin:

Most of the people of Wisconsin lives in the Southern part of the State because that is where the most populated cities are located. This means that most of the population have a Inland North accent which has strong nasal tones with rounded out consonants and dragged out vowels.

However, as you can see in the accent map above, the accent changes as you move into Northern Wisconsin. Wisconsin "famous" sayings like “Dat”, “Ope”, “Yous guys”, “Yah der hey” are all North-Central accent characteristics. (Although admittedly their use has leaked over into the Southern part of the state, especially since it's not uncommon for people who were born and raised in the Northern part of the state to move South for work.)

The North Central accent gets more exaggerated as you move farther North and the part of Wisconsin near Minnesota typically speaks with the Minnesota variation of the accent.

I specifically wanted to mention this because Kira Fixx, the female narrator for the Pack of Dawn and Destiny series correctly captured this change. She uses a neutral accent for the majority of the series but for voicing Alpha Dale and Alpha Tom in the third book she pulled out REALLY heavy North-Central Wisconsin versus Minnesota accents for the two of them. I burst out laughing the first time I heard it because it was so perfect!

Magiford Maps?

I don't have an official map of Magiford and I don't have any plans to make one. But when I described the downtown Magiford area as squeezed between two lakes I was picturing the real life Wisconsin cities of Lake Geneva and Madison. I recommend using Google maps to look at both of those places if you would like a general idea of what downtown Magiford might be like.

Lake Michigan

One final thing I want to bring up is Lake Michigan, especially because the new book takes places in a town along Lake Michigan!

Lake Michigan is the giant freshwater lake that is all along the East side of Wisconsin. It is impossible for me to adequately explain just how big this lake is, and if you haven't visited a water body of this size it is probably impossible for you to comprehend. I'll share some general info below but you should really lookup photos of it if you are trying to get a reference for the scenes described in the new book.

• Lake Michigan is the second largest lake in the Great Lakes (after Lake Superior).

• The main part of the lake is anywhere from 90 to 118 miles wide so NO you can't see across it.

• Fishing and boating on Lake Michigan is very popular but the waves can get wild!

• The lake is big enough to impact the weather! It keeps the shore of Wisconsin warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer compared to the rest of the state.

• It also creates "lake effect snow" where it juices up existing snow storms because the storms pick up water vapor from the lake. This can impact Wisconsin cities but most of this snow gets dumped on the Western part of Michigan. And if you scroll up and look at the snow map again you will see that the Western part of Michigan gets more snow than the places around it.

If you enjoyed this real life worldbuilding explanation you should also read my blog post about the most famous gas station franchise in Wisconsin: Kwik Trip.

Mega Fun Urban Fantasy Book Sale!

I am very excited to soon be able to share my next Magiford story with you! (Pre-order link is here.) But I want to make sure you have plenty of books to read in the meanwhile so today I have a fantastic gift for you!

I teamed up with 30+ other Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance authors to bring you some great stories for the low, low price of FREE!

That's right! Now through March 8th you can get all these books for free on Amazon!

Click here for the full list of books!

IMPORTANT:

I would consider these books "low spice" rather then "clean" because some of them are fade to black/closed door and some of them have innuendo jokes and/or swearing.

We did not include any authors who write explicit spicey scenes but if spice level, innuendo, or swearing is a concern for you please check the download page for each book for a disclaimer and also check reviews on Amazon or Goodreads before reading the books.

You will notice that this list includes well established authors along with newer authors. My team worked really hard to track down this list of amazing writers because we love introducing you to new reads! We hope you find some books you will absolutely love!