Bookish Baking, November Cakes from The Scorpio Races

Ok, remember that time I read The Scorpio Races and fell in love with Maggie Stiefvaters writing?  Well the hubby is a thoughtful SOB and bought me her Shiver series for Christmas (yes, I gushed and gushed and gushed over all three of them), and then he bought me part one of her homicidal faerie series for Valentines (That's right.  I bought him book two of the Dexter series. Great minds and all of that.  There was also requisite sugar.)

The best part of Valentines though?  He started The Scorpio Races.

I thought I should celebrate by baking Maggie's November Cakes,  a recipe she concocted for the story.  I had been eyeing up other bloggers attempts and wanting to make them for awhile, but yesterday, as the hubby hit the last 100 page run I thought it was time to make them.

Juanita, courtesy of The Bloggess

Now listen, I took oodles of lovely photos during the 2 hour foray, only to have them eaten by my computer after I deleted them from my memory card.  So you'll have to use your imagination a little, at least until the end.

I started with Maggie's recipe.  Now just recently, Raych (of books i done read notoriety) made them as well, and posted a couple of notes on the process.  I thought I would take her orange extract tidbit to heart and used orange rind for my November Cakes.  I used the rind of one full orange and it was very perfect, still subtle but definitely orange flavoured.  Also very pretty in the picture I took of it all rolled out with the butter/orange mixture painted on, so imagine it as very pretty.

See, totally prettier. Right?

Got it?  Ok, moving on.

As far as the pretty/Carmel sauce retaining factor goes, I would further recommend taking a couple of extra minutes to roll these babies separately instead of in a big log that you cut.  Why you ask? Because my ends were the best cakes, due to the irregularity.  So next time I think I'll roll the dough into the 12 X 20 ish square, butter it, and then cut it into 12 strips and roll individually.  Otherwise the rolls became more bun like and didn't hold the carmel sauce as well, or look as pretty.  Hell, after the time you've put into all the rising etc., what's another 5 minutes right?

They had cooled to the perfect temperature at 6:30pm, just as the hubby got to the actual race.  So we used our adult prerogative and spoiled our dinner (of which I had not planned since I was too wrapped up in making November Cakes, so win, win!).  They were divine.
Gooey, light and with just the right kick of orange.  We had them again with coffee this morning for Breakfast. Yum!

I declare these an excellent Bookish Baking foray, so if you haven't read The Scorpio Races yet (Dear God! Do it!) then make sure to make these delicious treats to get you through the suspense.

Thanks as always to Beth at Beth Fish Reads, for her Weekend Cooking posts to inspire me to share!