by Anna Meriano
Transfer cookies to the prepared cookie sheets and space them out. Gently brush the cookies with egg to glaze. Bake in batches for 7–9 minutes. Remove from oven and transfer to rack. Sift powdered sugar on top of the cooled cookies.
PAN DE MUERTO MENSAJERO
Makes two loaves. One bite will connect you with those who have passed on.
INGREDIENTS
FOR DOUGH
½ cup butter, plus a little extra for greasing the bowl
½ cup whole milk
½ cup water
5 cups flour, plus a little extra for dusting
2 packets of active dry yeast
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon of whole anise seed
½ cup sugar
4 eggs
FOR TOPPING
½ cup sugar
¼ cup unsalted butter
2 tablespoons of grated orange zest
1/3 cup freshly squeezed orange juice
DIRECTIONS FOR DOUGH
In a saucepan over medium heat, place butter, milk, and water and heat until it’s warm throughout (about 105 degrees F), but not boiling.
In a large mixing bowl, combine ½ cup flour, yeast, salt, anise seed, and sugar. Slowly beat the warm milk mixture into it until it is well incorporated. Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing throughout.
Slowly add in another 1 cup of the flour. Continue adding the additional remaining cups of flour slowly until the dough is soft but not sticky.
Put the dough onto a lightly floured board and knead for at least 10 minutes or until smooth and elastic. Form the dough into a large ball. Lightly grease a bowl with butter and put the dough inside it. Flip the dough around inside the bowl so that the grease coats it.
Cover the dough loosely with plastic or a cloth, and then let it sit and rise until it’s doubled in size. It will take approximately 1 to 1½ hours.
After the dough has risen, punch it down, then shape it into two loaves, first pinching off four smaller pieces of the dough, two from each loaf; roll them out into cylinders. These are for your bones!
Lay your bones on top of the loaves in a crisscross, one crisscross for each loaf. Set the loaves on an ungreased baking sheet and let them rise in a warm place until they double in size again. It will take another hour.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Bake the bread for 40 minutes.
DIRECTIONS FOR TOPPING
In a saucepan over medium heat, combine ¼ cup sugar, butter, orange zest, and orange juice; bring just to a boil so the sugar is completely dissolved. Remove from heat. When loaves are baked, brush the glaze over them and sprinkle evenly with remaining half of sugar all over the top.
ABUELITA’S ALEGRÍAS (AMARANTH BARS)
Makes about two dozen. Gluten free, and guaranteed to get rid of unhappiness.
No oven.
INGREDIENTS
½ cup toasted peanuts
½ cup toasted pecans
½ cup raisins
½ cup toasted pumpkin seeds (optional)
8 ounces chopped-up piloncillo (panela)*
½ cup honey
½ teaspoon freshly squeezed lime or lemon juice
4 ounces puffed amaranth seeds
* piloncillo or panela is unrefined pure cane sugar
DIRECTIONS
Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Mix together the peanuts, pecans, raisins, and pumpkin seeds. Spread the mixture onto the prepared baking sheet. Combine the piloncillo, honey, and lemon juice in a medium-sized pot over medium heat. Cook until the piloncillo has melted and the mixture has thickened, about 5 to 10 minutes. Stir a little to help the piloncillo melt. Turn off the heat and add the amaranth seeds. Stir the seeds quickly into the mixture, and be sure to mix well.
Pour this liquid onto the pan with the seeds and nuts. Wet your hands and press down on the mixture. Be careful not to burn your hands! Allow the sheet to cool completely for about 45 to 50 minutes. Transfer the mixture to a cutting board and cut it into bars or squares. If the mixture sticks to your knife, try dusting it with a little flour, or dipping it into hot water, drying it, and then continuing to cut.
Store the bars in a sealed container.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book would not exist without the love, sweat, and absolute magic of so many people.
Dhonielle Clayton and Sona Charaipotra at CAKE Literary, who trusted me with Leo before she was a person. Y’all have supported me through every step of this process and beyond, and I am so lucky to be part of the CAKE family. Can you believe the Logroños are here?
My agent, Victoria Marini: thank you so much for all the good advice, for great first-chapter saves, and for believing in me past this book.
My editor, Jordan Brown: thank you for loving what this was and shaping what it became.
Everyone who helped get Leo out of my head and into the real physical world, especially Debbie Kovacs and the team at Walden Pond Press: thank you for working so hard to make everything look like it’s falling into place magically. I’m also grateful to Mirelle Ortega, who made the gorgeous cover and interior illustrations.
The YA lit community as a whole is so supportive and amazing, and I especially want to thank my New School professors Caron Levis, David Levithan, and Sarah Weeks, along with my Writing for Children cohort. Thanks also to Zoraida Córdova for being the cool older writer cousin I want to impress and emulate. I was extremely lucky to have Tehlor Kay Mejia, bruja extraordinaire and all around writing genius, as my sensitivity reader—thanks for all the work you do. And to all the 2017 debut authors and Electric Eighteens, thanks for the support, solidarity, and hysterical laughter.
I might never have met Dhonielle and Sona without the intervention of Kiki Chatzopoulou and Amanda Saulsberry. I never would have finished without their encouragement, or the help of my motivational-chart partner, Laura Silverman, and the world’s fastest beta reader, Meghan Drummond. Y’all make me a better writer and person. Insert cheesy line from Wicked here.
My friends in Houston and New York, thank you for being so awesome whenever I needed to talk through drafting and editing. Claire, Devon, and Mary, I could never send an email or write a best-friend relationship without you. Andrea, thank you for answering a million middle-of-the-night Spanish questions. Ariel, thanking you for the translations, the research tours, the beta reads, and the pep talks still doesn’t come close to covering it.
To my parents, Frank and Rita; my brothers, Michael and Gabriel; all the Meriano and Lynch aunts, uncles, and cousins, and Grandma and Grandpa, you all made it easy to write a family story. Everything I do is possible because of you. Love y’all.
And to my students and readers, thanks for listening. I really hope we’re able to figure some stuff out together.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo by Rita Meriano
ANNA MERIANO grew up in Houston, Texas, with an older brother and a younger brother but (tragically) no sisters. She graduated from Rice University with a degree in English and earned her MFA in creative writing with an emphasis on writing for children from the New School in New York. She has taught creative writing and high school English and works as a writing tutor. Anna likes reading, knitting, playing full-contact quidditch, and singing along to songs in English, Spanish, and ASL. Anna still lives in Houston, with her dog, Cisco. Her favorite baked goods are the kind that don’t fly away before you eat them.
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CREDITS
COVER ART BY MIRELLE ORTEGA
LOGO DESIGN BY JESSIE GANG
COVER DESIGN BY SARAH NICHOLE KAUFMAN
COPYRIGHT
When cooking, it is important to keep safety in mind. Children should always ask permission from an adult before cooking and should be supervised by an adult in the kitchen at all times. The publisher and author disclaim any liability from any injury that might result from the use, proper or improper, of the recipes contained in this book.
Walden Po
nd Press is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
Walden Pond Press and the skipping stone logo are trademarks and registered trademarks of Walden Media, LLC.
LOVE SUGAR MAGIC: A DASH OF TROUBLE. Text copyright © 2018 by Cake Literary LLC. Illustrations copyright © 2018 by Mirelle Ortega. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
www.harpercollinschildrens.com
ISBN 978-0-06-249846-5
EPub Edition © January 2018 ISBN 9780062498502
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FIRST EDITION
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