No cannoli for you! (Or me.)

Last night I dreamed that I served chocolate cannoli at my launch/signing on Saturday for A Crafty Killing.  (Barnes & Noble, Greece Ridge Center, Saturday, Feb 5th 2-4 p.m.  I've got goodie bags for the first 25 people.)

This is unusual for two reasons.

First:  The bookstore doesn't like people to bring in food.  It interferes with sales in the Starbucks that's also inside the store, and they have a very nice glass case that's filled with incredibly fattening (and incidentally delicious) decadent desserts.

Second:  I don't like cannoli--chocolate or otherwise.  (I know, weird isn't it?)

For my very first signing, I baked about eight dozen toll house chocolate chip cookies.  It was held in a small indie bookstore in the boondocks and about a dozen of my loyal co-workers and friends showed up.  (And we forgot to bring our cameras.)  They ate less than a dozen cookies.  I had a second signing set up two weeks later, so the cookies went into the freezer and emerged on the morning of the second signing.  The co-workers who hadn't made it to the first signing came to that one . . . and ate less than a dozen cookies.

Oh dear.  Mr. L and I were FORCED (at knife point) to eat all the rest of those cookies.  (Well, I may have eaten more than my fair share . . . frozen.  With a cup of tea, they were just fine.)

So, five years later I don't bake for signings any more.  (Just as well, I don't need to eat dozens of damn fine cookies at a pop.)  That's why I switched to bringing goodie bags filled with non-fattening bookmarks and postcards.

Still, if you're in the mood to make the same cookies I used to bring to signings, I put the recipe up on my web site.  You see, now my heroine Katie makes the cookies and I get to live vicariously through your love of baking (and eating).  It's not as much fun for the taste buds, but it's better on the waistline.

You can find the recipe here.

Katie likes to bake.  Is there anything you'd like to see her bake in a future book?