publication day! after years spent infected with the idea, to the point where all that i saw, and heard, and felt, and touched, took on its shade, Bittersweet is now out in the world.
thank you to the team at @harvestbooks for your ceaseless commitment to bringing the vision to life, my editor Sarah for guiding the manuscript with such gentle strength and foresight, and my agent Roseanne, for pushing the original dark seed into the light.
and wherein usually at this moment for an author it feels like closure, catharsis—the end—the real work of release only begins.
i can’t wait to see all that’s created from these pages.
x
WE HAVE FIVE TASTES—AND A SIXTH SENSE • introducing my upcoming release, BITTERSWEET, a transformational tale of dark to light as told through the spectrum of dessert.
in this visceral collection of recipes, sweetness, is pushed to its limit, into the beyond. those five, infamous, universal tastes—BITTER, SWEET, SOUR, SALT & UMAMI—are explicated, traversed, indulged. within each mouthful, infinite possibilities await, and the most beautiful part of it all is the process of creation.
through deeply personal reflections, gripping prose, and lingering photographs, an innate sense which also has the power to transform is snared—the sixth—which extends past the palate, altering the course of our final bite, or resting place.
to be released FEB 2026, with pre-orders open now (link in bio for a list of international retailers—more to come).
X
my endless love for quince continues.
books mentioned—
🖤 The Violet Bakery Cookbook by @violetcakeslondon
🖤 Chez Panisse Fruit by @alicelouisewaters
🖤 Ripe by @nigelslater
🖤 Gather, Time & Root, Stem, Leaf, Flower by @gill.meller
and Wild Sweetness + Bittersweet, of course.
the hazelnuts fell to the ground, so there was a rendition of halva cake from Wild Sweetness—with the nuts toasted then worked into the textural crumb and ground into the batter, with some beurre noisette in there too. heavily bolstered from the original, no two seasons are the same.
i’m giving an academic talk! this Thursday night, or Friday morning if you’re in Australia like me, i’ll be in conversation with the Library Speakers Consortium, talking about my new book, Bittersweet, and the creative process of bringing it not just to life, but to the table—the writing, photography, recipes, styling, directorial vision, all of it.
it’ll be hosted online, so you can all easily attend, and generously broadcast across participating libraries in the US, Canada, and NZ.
link for registration, plus more details are in my bio, and a special thank you to @lsc_author_talks for organising.
X
never forget your first @nytimes • five year anniversary for my first book, and an editorial and recipe from Bittersweet out today in @pastryartsmag • uniting the light and dark aspects of both works. veiled wild sweetness photo taken by @shalxvx
🤍🖤
roasted wattleseed crackled cookies (the only shot i managed to take before these were devoured). based on an old recipe from the blog, but there’s an even darker, and more intense rendition in the first chapter of Bittersweet x
