Jillian Chantal

This weekend, the writers at Secret/Sweet Cravings Publishing are having a blog hope full of sweetness. We’re sharing recipes and other goodies. We’re also doing some super giveaways. I’m giving a free ecopy of one of my back list stories to one winner and I’m also giving away a cute ceramic dish inspired by Italy. I have a release coming soon from Sweet Cravings Publishing that’s called Venetian Masks. It should be out sometime in early April. I’m including a little taste of it here as well as a recipe for cannoli. Click here or the photo graphic to see the blog posts of other participants.

RECIPE:

The easiest way to make them is to buy the shells premade. I don’t get ambitious there.

Basic filling ingredients: 3/4 cup ricotta cheese (get the whole milk kind), 3/4 cup marscapone cheese, 1/2 cup powdered sugar, 1/2 tsp vanilla, 1/2 tsp cinnamon (optional), pinch of salt. Mix them together and refrigerate for a few hours (I sometimes add chocolate chips).

Once the filling is cool and you’re close to ready to serve them, put some filling in a zip lock back and snip a corner to use to pipe the filling into the shells. sprinkle on top with more powdered sugar before serving. Enjoy!

EXCERPT:
The next morning after having slept as if she were in a coma, Charlotte got up later than she’d planned. The jet lag had caught up to her and she overslept. She’d wanted to walk the city before dawn and get a feel for the morning light. She liked to observe and sketch for several days the areas she planned to capture on canvas. It helped to know when and where the sun rose and for Venice specifically, she wanted to know about what time the glints of morning sunlight would shimmer across the Grand Canal. That was the first thing she wanted to paint and she wanted to capture the exact right moment of sunrise.
She could hardly contain the excitement rising in her chest as she dressed for the day.
She tossed on a pair of khaki shorts and a blue shirt. She pulled her hair up in a knot and secured it with a large metal clip. She shoved some Euros and her room key in her pocket and slid on her shoes. Grabbing her sketchpad and a pack of charcoal pencils, she left her room and clattered down the stairs.
Once in the street, she turned left toward the coffee shop she’d seen on her trek across the city the day before with Guilia. She ordered a large black coffee to go along with a sugary cannoli. Breakfast had always been a grab it as you go affair for her even when she was a teen. She could count on less than one hand how many times she’d actually had a full sit-down morning meal in her life.
She took her little feast and went down to the harbor. She found a seat on the seawall and decided almost immediately that she needed to invest in one of the little stools that she’d seen other artists sitting on as they worked. She set her coffee down beside her on the concrete and studied the grouping of gondolas in front of her as she ate her cannoli.
When she swallowed the last bite, she sipped her coffee, then flipped open the sketchbook. Using the side of one of the pencils, she shaded an area that would become a few of the gondolas.

TO ENTER MY CONTESTS: leave a comment about what part of Italy you’d like to visit and why.