A Cookbook Update (November 2024)

An Update on my Cookbook Project - Extra Food Chat with Kath

Welcome to another edition of Extra Food Chat with Kath!

It’s been a few months since my last cookbook update, so I thought it was time to recap on the progress I’m making.

Using the word ‘progress’ may be overstating how much has been achieved but I have been working on the recipes for my second cookbook (which has only been hindered a little by my continuing inability to taste and smell).

For anyone new to this newsletter, I started working on my second cookbook earlier this year, and have been keeping my paid newsletter subscribers up to date with how it’s all going every few months. Here are the links to the previous updates:

If you aren’t already a paid newsletter subscriber, you can take up the below discount for the next week (until November 30 2024), and support my work plus get all these editions of Extra Food Chat with Kath in full each time. There will also be paid subscriber bonuses and offers once the cookbook is released (release date is still unknown however!).

Since this new cookbook will be mostly featuring cakes, cakes where what I have spent much time on since my last update. Notably making sure I took advantage of any fruits that were in season that I wouldn’t have access too for another year.

I spent a bit of time waiting to test any more recipes, hoping my sense of taste and smell would return fully, however that has yet to eventuate so I had to press on with recipes I’ve made before and am familiar with the flavours. For these cakes the repeat testing was more to test different elements, like a different tin size, or to get new images of the cakes.

I have also been playing around with ideas for the title of the book, which I am yet to settle on completely. Every time I come up with something I like, I find a flaw with it or some reason why it doesn’t totally match the kinds of recipes I am hoping to include. ‘A Year of Cake’ has been my favourite so far, however I’m not sure if the idea of ‘a year’ when I’m not planning on sectioning the book out into seasonal or month based chapters will make enough sense in the end.

It’s more about the kinds of cakes and bakes that fill my year - sometimes based on the seasons and time of year, but often because they are what will bring me joy in that moment, are what I can reasonably achieve based on energy levels and will bring some level of comfort. My idea of it is, it’s more about how I live and eat in a year, rather than how the year shapes that. Does that make any sense?!

BTS of a shoot for the cookbook

For a while I have been toying with the idea of approaching publishers to see if my second cookbook could be published that way. I self published my first book Everyday Bakes (ebook versions are still available here), but I know the vision I have for this new book will probably come together better if I can work with experts in the field, especially when it comes to designing and printing the book.

Last month I attended the book launch for Nadine Ingram’s latest cookbook Love Crumbs, and I was able to speak to fellow authors about their experience, and the advice made me feel a lot better about writing a cookbook proposal. I had seen much online (most US based) around writing cookbook proposals, and how lengthy and time consuming they had been for the authors (some talked about how many years their proposal took them!).

I wasn’t sure I wanted to spend that much time talking about my book, when I could just be working on the book itself (then possibly just for it to get rejected anyway). However, I have been assured that cookbook proposals don’t necessarily have to be major projects in themselves, and maybe the advice I’d seen online doesn’t 100% relate to the Australian publishing market.

Feeling a little more hopeful, I am going to try spend some time on a proposal later in December and into January, when I am *hoping* my schedule will be less busy and it will be too hot to bake too much anyway.

Kitchen bench line up after a double cookbook shoot

Baking Beyond the Paywall: A detailed look at the recipes I am working on for my cookbook is below for paid subscribers.

Paid subscribers to Extra Food Chat with Kath can also comment on this post, ask me questions about my cookbook (or anything else really!). The entire paid newsletter archive is also available to paid subscribers - check out what’s been shared with paid subscribers so far here and sign up/upgrade below.