Erin Clarke Cookbook Author @wellplated

Dishing with Stephanie's Dish

We had a lovely chat with Erin Clarke, from @Wellplated on Instagram and author of “Well Plated” and her new book, “Well Plated Every Day.” Scroll down for Erin’s pumpkin gingerbread squares with spiced cream cheese frosting recipe.

Cookbook Signing Event Details

Join Erin at ModernWell in Minneapolis on 10/30, 7:00pm-8:30pm, for her book signing event! The Well Plated Cookbook, Erin Clarke, and Lee Funke of Fit Foodie Finds!

Erin discusses her journey, from the influential blog Well Plated by Erin, to the creation of her popular cookbooks. You will sample one of Erin’s delicious recipes – and leave with a signed copy of Well Plated Everyday (Books provided by Valley Bookseller)

Thanks for reading Stephanie’s Dish Newsletter! This post is public so feel free to share it

Erin shared her Pumpkin gingerbread squares recipe from her new book, “Well Plated Everyday,” to give you a taste of the deliciousness in its pages.

Pumpkin gingerbread squares with spiced cream cheese frosting

Ingredients for the Cake

1/2 cup packed dark brown sugar

2 large eggs, at room temperature

3/4 cup pure pumpkin puree (not pumpkin pie filling)

1/2 cup canola oil, or melted and cooled coconut oil

1/4 cup unsulfured molasses (not blackstrap)

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

11/4 teaspoons ground ginger

1/2 teaspoon unsweetened cocoa powder

1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt 1 small orange

1 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 cup white whole wheat flour or regular whole wheat flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

Instructions For the Cake

Place a rack in the center of your oven and preheat to 350°F. Coat an 8 by 8-inch baking pan with nonstick spray. Line the pan with parchment paper so that two strips overhang opposite sides like handles.

In a large bowl, whisk together the brown sugar and eggs until pale and foamy, about 1 minute. Add the pumpkin puree, oil, molasses, cinnamon, ginger, cocoa powder, nutmeg, cloves, and salt. Zest half of the orange directly into the bowl (about 1 teaspoon). Reserve the remaining orange to zest for the frosting. Whisk until smoothly combined.

Sprinkle the all-purpose flour, white whole wheat flour, baking powder, and baking soda over the top. Whisk until combined and smooth, stirring only as long as needed to incorporate all the ingredients.

Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and smooth the top. Gently tap the pan on the counter to remove any air bubbles. Bake the cake for 20 to 24 minutes, until it is puffed, the edges are starting to pull away from the pan, and a tester inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Use the parchment overhang to lift the cake onto a wire rack and let it cool completely.

While the cake cools, make the frosting: In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted recipe and ingredients continue

Ingredients For the Spiced Cream Cheese Frosting

6 ounces reduced-fat cream cheese, or Neufchâtel cheese, at room temperature

2 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature

1 1/2 cups powdered sugar plus a few additional tablespoons as needed

1/2 teaspoon orange zest (use the same orange from the cake)

1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon or pumpkin pie

Instructions for the frosting

With the paddle attachment or in a large mixing bowl with a hand mixer, beat together the cream cheese and butter at medium speed for 2 minutes or until very smooth and well combined. Add the powdered sugar, orange zest (zest from the reserved orange directly into the bowl), vanilla, cinnamon, and salt. Beat on low speed for 30 seconds, until the powdered sugar is pretty incorporated. Increase the speed to high and pro tips beat until smooth, creamy, and fluffy, 1 to 2 minutes more. If you’d like a stiffer, sweeter frosting, add two tablespoons of powdered sugar until your desired consistency is reached. Spread the frosting on the cooled cake. For easier cutting, transfer to the refrigerator for 20 minutes to allow the frosting to set up (or go for it). Slice into squares of desired size and enjoy.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Stephanie [00:00:16]:

Welcome to Dishing with Stephanie's dish, the podcast where we talk to cookbook authors and people obsessed with food generally. I am here today with Erin Clark. Erin is well plated on Instagram. She's also a best selling author of the well plated cookbook and the soon to be well plated everyday cookbook. You are gonna be having an event in the Twin Cities in Stillwater. I'm so excited for you.

Erin Clarke [00:00:42]:

I am thrilled as well. Can't wait. I worked to live, Yeah. Yes. So I lived in the Twin Cities at the very beginning of my career. I worked for Target, their corporate headquarters, so I just have a really big soft spot for the area, and I'm really looking forward to being back there again.

Stephanie [00:01:00]:

And do you live in Milwaukee now?

Erin Clarke [00:01:02]:

I live in Milwaukee now. Yes.

Stephanie [00:01:04]:

Okay. Because my family is all from Milwaukee, and I was looking on your Instagram. You make Milwaukee look more fun than I recall because we've been all over, like, the third ward, and you found some hidden gems that I was like, oh, she knows her way around here.

Erin Clarke [00:01:20]:

Yeah. I moved there about 10 years ago kicking and screaming because I married a Wisconsin boy and he's from Milwaukee, so we ended up back there. And I, like, I loved the city so much. I was like, I don't understand why I'm moving to still be cold and still be in the Midwest to this, like, random city. Minneapolis is great. And then I just fell in love with it. Like, it just has there it there's so much to do. The city has grown so much even just since I have been there.

Erin Clarke [00:01:46]:

We've got a great food scene. People are friendly. You're right on, like, Michigan. Like, it really has a lot going for it.

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Stephanie [00:01:52]:

Yeah. I really my family is in Delafield, but we go into Milwaukee and spend a couple days during the holidays and during the summer. I really like it. So, okay. Well, you're on the verge. Is has your new cookbook come out yet? I imagine it's already out.

Erin Clarke [00:02:08]:

No. It is t minus 11 days. Not that I'm counting. I am absolutely counting every single day. Okay. I just cannot I'm just so giddy. I, like, cannot wait for people to have it in their hands. You are gonna have a 100 recipes in the book, but will you,

Stephanie [00:02:20]:

like, get people that maybe aren't familiar with your profile kinda what your point of view is?

Erin Clarke [00:02:29]:

Absolutely. So I grew up cooking and baking with my grandmothers in Kansas, like pure Midwest comfort food. And then after I graduated college and started living on my own, I realized that I wasn't going to be able to live on grandma's cinnamon rolls and cakes that she taught me to make. So I needed to learn how to cook, and that was where I really started going to farmers markets, like, really just kinda discovering the beauty of eating seasonally, which I feel like we talk about very, you know, it's just so, like, a part of the conversation now. But for me back then, it really wasn't. Like, in my family, like, corn and potatoes are the primary vegetables. So, you know, so I was trying to explore markets, learn how to cook, but I found myself to do this, like, really missing my grandmother's cooking. So I would call my grammy and be like, hey.

Erin Clarke [00:03:18]:

Like, can you tell me about, like, your recipe for enchiladas? And she would, like, in detail, tell me on the phone while I was taking notes. And then I started to think like, okay. Well, you know, I'm learning to cook. I'm trying to feed myself well. Maybe I can make grammy's enchiladas, but let's just do a couple of little swaps, like, that could make it healthier. Let's try it with Greek yogurt instead of sour cream. Let's try a whole wheat tortilla. And then around that time, a friend had encouraged me to start a food blog, and I was like, what is a food blog? Like, I this is very, like, OG days, and I ended up posting the recipe, and I had a few friends from high school make it and love it.

Erin Clarke [00:03:57]:

And they're like, hey. Do you have any other recipes? And I was like, yeah. Like, I do. And so that it that just, you know, kinda sharing the lightened up versions of my grandmother's dishes just sort of started me off, and I still, like, very much keep the midwestern sensibility and unfussiness with my recipes. So if I could describe them briefly, it would be their easy, healthy with, heavy emphasis on lightened up everyday comfort food.

Stephanie [00:04:27]:

Which is perfect. I mean, honestly, that's what I love. I'm kinda more on the comfort food side, but I feel equally as comfortable cooking with kale, you know, as I would, I don't know, corn and potatoes. Right? And just

Erin Clarke [00:04:42]:

Yeah. And I think it's wonderful that people have gotten you know, those ingredients have gotten more main stream. And I really like the idea of finding ways to make healthy eating more accessible. So for example, in my cookbook, on my blog, I will not put an ingredient in there if it's gonna require you to go to a food store. I try to keep the spices, like, very streamlined. I get it. Like, we're all busy and sometimes you're not in the mood to cook. So how can we get to a result that's good for you faster, but it's still delicious? Because life is also just way too short for boring chicken breasts and rice, like, every single night of our lives.

Erin Clarke [00:05:23]:

So how can we have a little fun with it without, you know, making it a ton of work for ourselves either?

Stephanie [00:05:30]:

So how long have you had your blog then?

Erin Clarke [00:05:34]:

Going on 13 years.

Stephanie [00:05:35]:

I was gonna say it has to be about we've had a radio show about food for 15 years, and we kinda started right at the very beginning of, you know, food culture. And that was one of the lot of the bloggers were getting started. And do you still blog a lot, or are you kinda to the stage where you're repurposing recipes and relooking at some of your old content?

Erin Clarke [00:05:57]:

We are doing both. So I still publish about 3 new recipes a week to my blog, and then we're constantly going back especially to some of those older recipes and seeing, you know, if there are tweaks that we can do to make them better. At the beginning, I was the photographer with my, like, flip phone under the our, you know, awful, like, orange light in our kitchen. So some of those recipes, it's been fun to go back and spruce them up. And then as, you know, video has taken over social media and with me being the face of the brand, a lot of the we've been shooting videos with me in them, and that has actually been a ton of fun in the sense of just, like, rediscovering, you know, favorite recipes that I haven't made in years.

Stephanie [00:06:37]:

Yeah. And looking back on, what would you say are, like are there some that are you're known for or that are, like, your specialties?

Erin Clarke [00:06:47]:

I would say I definitely am known overall for 1 pot meals. Like, if I can one pot or one pan something, I will absolutely do it. Recent one that we did, and this is just top of mind because we did the video a couple of weeks ago, is a homemade version of Hamburger Helper. So I grew up, like, Hamburger Helper House all the way, and there's still something, like, very nostalgic and comforting about it. Except, I mean, this will sound hysterical to describe it this way, but it is a gourmet Hamburger Helper. There's just I always like to find, like, just a couple of little things that you can tweak. You know, first of all, it's from scratch. It's easy.

Erin Clarke [00:07:24]:

You don't need the box. And I add a little bit of hot sauce and a little bit of Dijon mustard. You cook everything together in the same pot so that as the pasta cooking liquid reduces and the pasta releases those starches, it makes this really, like, luscious silky sauce without the need for any cream, and everyone loves this recipe. My husband loves it. My nieces love it from Yeah. My nieces that are the age from, like, 4 to 6. They all love this hamburger helper. Like, it's something that the whole family can really sit down and enjoy.

Stephanie [00:07:55]:

I love it. And you really do have a very distinct point of view in how you're thinking about your individual recipes. So I'm guessing you don't have za'atar in any of your ingredients.

Erin Clarke [00:08:07]:

I don't. Even though I personally love za'atar I do too. You know, I love it. I cook with it at home, but I recognize that, like, every single person doesn't have the spice cabinet that I have. So while I'll do, you know, Middle Eastern inspired dishes, and I love to travel so a lot of my dishes are inspired by my travels, I try to do it in a way that brings it home to the Midwest and makes it just as attainable for people as possible.

Stephanie [00:08:34]:

Right. Where is the last place that you traveled to, just out of curiosity?

Erin Clarke [00:08:39]:

We spent a month in France this spring, which was just wonderful. I never I speak pretty good French, and I you know, you just have to go back to practice. Yeah. Really purely academic.

Stephanie [00:08:53]:

Where did you go? What region?

Erin Clarke [00:08:55]:

So each time we go, we try to visit a different region. This time we did Alsace, which is right on the German border, and it is just right out of a fairy tale. It's the some of the little villages around there are what inspired Walt Disney to design Belle's hometown in Beauty and the Beast. And it really was it was like stepping into a storybook. It was just so charming.

Stephanie [00:09:19]:

Are you able to as a content creator, are you able to take, like, a month off and fully unplug, or are you just working remotely? How does that work for you? Because I imagine you've got a team at this point.

Erin Clarke [00:09:32]:

I do. I have a wonderful team. They're just fantastic. Like, well plated would not be able to offer the content that we do without them. And I think that they would probably be more okay with me unplugging than I am okay with myself being totally off. You know, and this is just the reality of being a small business owner. Like, for us, even getting a full day off on the weekend is really, really challenging. And you kind of it kind of bites you the next day, you know, or Monday wouldn't get back.

Erin Clarke [00:10:02]:

I'm trying to be a little better about finding at least one day where we don't do any work. So even when we travel, we are always checking in. We put in a few hours here and there. We're often creating content while we're out there. But I also just view it as, like, wow. How cool is it that I get to yes. You could view it as, like, I'm in France and I'm working.

Stephanie [00:10:22]:

Yeah.

Erin Clarke [00:10:22]:

I view it as, like, how cool I can go to France while I work.

Stephanie [00:10:26]:

Yeah. And it is really like a change in lifestyle. Like, the creative culture has created so much flexibility for so many people. Do you get caught up and worried about, like, the algorithms and when things change and traffic goes down, and are you always kinda chasing that?

Erin Clarke [00:10:43]:

I mean, we are chasing it in the sense that, you know, it is our livelihood. Like, my site depends on traffic, and that traffic primarily for us comes from Google search. So I'm constantly, like, reading articles, trying to stay up to date. At the same time, ranking a friend of mine described it as, like, checking your rankings is, like, standing on the scale every single day. Don't do it. Just overall, you know, we're always looking for healthy growth, and the truth is, like, you are constantly you win some, you lose some. This is a particularly challenging time for online content creators just with AI. You know, no one is really certain of what what that's gonna lead to.

Erin Clarke [00:11:29]:

You're seeing AI appear in search results where independent content creators like myself and my peers used to have our recipes appear. Now it's AI. And just over really, especially the last 5 years, I feel like it's gotten supersaturated. And so Google is sorting through what's quality content and what's not. And so there's less there's just overall there's just less space to go around, and there's less content than ever. Or excuse me, less space to go around and more content than ever.

Stephanie [00:12:01]:

And this idea of low quality is sort of a you know, to get to these advertising tiers, people need to have high quality content. Google's just like, oh, we spotted some low quality content. And you're just like, what? Like, help me figure this out. I so many people have been caught in that kind of trap of trying to grow and not really getting direction very much from Google. And it is just changing the game, I think. And then I wonder, like, okay. As creatives, we're gonna find the next thing. Right? So is it like, I'm seeing a lot of people you mentioned video.

Stephanie [00:12:39]:

I'm seeing a lot of people on YouTube creating their own TV shows. I'm seeing substacks. Is that something that you're exploring? Any of those other alternative avenues?

Erin Clarke [00:12:50]:

It's one of those things where, like, if I could clone myself, I would try to do them all. Substack, I think, is really fun and intriguing to me because it gives people a way to directly support at a very affordable rate their favorite authors, creators. For us, I've but I feel like a key to making that work is to offer content that you can't get anywhere else without paying. Currently, Well Plated is free for readers to access, and we don't really have the capacity to create additional free content on top of that. So kind of the way that we have structured our strategy is to give away as much as possible. Not only are the recipes free, we do free meal plans. And my hope is that we'll make Well Plate as a resource for you and make it the place that you wanna go. And then, you know, for now, if by cultivating that loyal reader base, that can kind of be a foundation of our business that's not subject to algorithms.

Stephanie [00:13:51]:

Yeah. Like maybe creating modules or workbooks or, PDF content that can be about, you know, the top 30 things you need to have in your pantry and blah blah blah.

Erin Clarke [00:14:03]:

Mhmm. Yeah. We're always looking to offer resources right now. We're working on putting together updated super comprehensive Thanksgiving guide that gives you the realistic week of Thanksgiving prep list, not the like I mean, yes. It would be great. I know I can pre freeze pie crust 3 months in advance. I am not freezing my Thanksgiving pie crust 3 months in advance. I'm just not that person.

Erin Clarke [00:14:26]:

I admire that person. I'm not that person. So what say we start on Sunday. Like, how can we really get this done? Yeah. How are we gonna streamline our shopping list? Like, I'm always looking for ways to provide value. So we're really excited about that PDF that'll be coming out here at the end of the month.

Stephanie [00:14:41]:

How many people do you cook for at Thanksgiving?

Erin Clarke [00:14:45]:

I'm very spoiled on Thanksgiving day, and then I get to go to my mom's house. And she and my stepdad are fabulous cooks and take off, like, 2 days of work. And the turkey is like a masterpiece. But for about the last now going on almost oh my gosh. How many years has it been? Now going on almost 15 years, I've been hosting Friendsgiving. Oh, yeah. At its smallest, it was probably about 7 people. At 1 year, we got up to 35 people.

Erin Clarke [00:15:12]:

Now we're kind of somewhere in the sweet spot with around 20. So that every year is just really just it's like chaos, but in the most fun way. Now that, you know, when it started out, it was all adults. We set nice tables. Now my friends have families, so you have kids, like, running around all over the place.

Stephanie [00:15:29]:

Right. Do you do it at a certain time a year, or do you do it in the month of November? Some people I know do, like, it in February and call it febsgiving.

Erin Clarke [00:15:38]:

That's well, with how crazy busy holidays are, I completely understand. And, like, let's be honest, there's not that much to look forward to for most of February March holiday wise. We do we do November. So I guess I'm just lucky because I get I love Thanksgiving food. I'm like, this is great that I get to eat this more than once. I'm gonna eat it for Thanksgiving, and then I'm gonna go home and I'm gonna eat it on the actual holiday.

Stephanie [00:16:01]:

Yes. Super delicious. Okay. So let's talk a little bit more about your book. Like, do you have it organized in any certain way?

Erin Clarke [00:16:09]:

Yes. So I like to and I know cookbooks all take different approaches, and it's kind of fun to see how different cookbook authors differentiate things. For me, I think it's just like, I'm a very traditional cookbook girl in the sense of the organization. So, you know, we start out with breakfast, have appetizers and drinks, salads, and then the main dishes are really the meat and potatoes of the book, pun intended. Just because that is where I know that people need the most help. Like, everyone has to cook dinner. So having a robust assortment of recipes and then organizing those well is really important to me. So we actually ended up breaking the main dishes down into 3 different categories.

Erin Clarke [00:16:55]:

So there's an entire chapter that's just pure one pot meals. One pot, one pan. Boom. We have a chapter, that's mostly focused on lightened up comfort food. And then we have this 3rd chapter that I did not intentionally set out to make it a vegetarian chapter just because I never want vegetarian food to feel lesser than or like it needs to get singled out. But we just ended up with this really wonderful collection of vegetarian dishes. They're also pretty heavily globally inspired that ended up being their own chapter as well. So we call those the veggie mains with all the flavor.

Erin Clarke [00:17:31]:

And then you've got your, you know, your soups, your sides, and, of course, your sweets.

Stephanie [00:17:36]:

How do you find, like so you have a team of people. How do you find them? Do you just advertise for them and interview just like a normal company would?

Erin Clarke [00:17:46]:

It's really hard. It's really hard to find good people. Like, I feel incredibly lucky. I've worked with most of my team for 5 years or longer. Some of it has been word-of-mouth. You know, like, other bloggers will work with someone and say, hey. You know, my social media person you know, I might reach out to a friend and say, hey. I'm really looking for someone to help me with my Facebook.

Erin Clarke [00:18:08]:

And, you know, friends will generously say, like, hey. My social media manager is great. Why don't you reach out to her? You know, some of it has been we went through our when we hired our first full time employee, we did the whole post on Indeed, like, a really rigorous application interview process. And I actually ended up finding Brenna, our first employee, because I posted on my Instagram. And so she reached out, applied through Indeed, you know, and we'd really went through that formal process. But it is truly time consuming and exhausting. Yeah. It's hard.

Erin Clarke [00:18:38]:

And I think every business I don't exhausting. Yeah. It's hard. And I think every business, I don't find myself unique in that way. And I think the first hire or the first couple are also really

Stephanie [00:18:46]:

hard because you're probably getting to the point where you can monetize some things, but it, like, takes money to make money, and it takes more hands to make money. So

Erin Clarke [00:19:01]:

Mhmm.

Stephanie [00:19:02]:

How did you feel like you knew when that time was right?

Erin Clarke [00:19:07]:

When I just could not it just got to a point where I either had to be we either needed to hire someone or we needed to be okay with doing a lot less.

Stephanie [00:19:18]:

Yeah.

Erin Clarke [00:19:18]:

And I just could not you know, at that point, I had managed to outsource, you know, the recipe photography, the social media, But I really was so burned out, and I was like, I can't you know, I love what I do, but I can't do it at the right capacity. And I'm not enjoying my life. So how do I find someone that I really want to invest in? And invest is the word to use because as you said, it is not cheap to hire someone. Not only to pay, you know, if you wanna hire someone good, they deserve a great wage.

Stephanie [00:19:51]:

Yep.

Erin Clarke [00:19:51]:

And then also even expenses like setting up a 401 k, kind of thinking through some of those pieces. Like, that is administratively very time consuming, and it is costly. But it's worth it. Like, I that was, you know, one of the best decisions I've ever made for my business.

Stephanie [00:20:08]:

And things like health care. I mean, if you are employing people full time, they want benefits.

Erin Clarke [00:20:14]:

Yeah. Exactly. And you can choose not to offer benefits, but then you're not gonna get the quality of candidates that you're looking for. And also just personally, for me, like, building a company where I can provide benefits for people, like, that's something that I'm proud of and that we wanna be able to offer.

Stephanie [00:20:31]:

Yeah. It's funny that you mentioned that because I had a business before getting I'm mostly a broadcaster who happens to write some cookbooks that are regionally based. But before being a broadcaster, I did have a small business, and I was really proud of the fact that we always offered health care. Like, it just felt like, businesses. I didn't it's not the business's job, but it is the way our society is set up. So if that's the way it's gonna be, then let's participate. Let's do it. Let's take care of our employees.

Stephanie [00:21:00]:

At some point, I wish that everyone could have a single payer health care system and just pay into it, but that's my utopian fantasy as a freelancer out here still, you know, paying for health care on the open market. It's not cheap.

Erin Clarke [00:21:13]:

No. It's not. It's really challenging.

Stephanie [00:21:15]:

I know. And that someday we're all gonna get together. Like, there's a 150,000 creatives just in the state of Minnesota all buying independent health care. It'd be cool if we could find some way to all band together and bring everyone else's cost down too. Right?

Erin Clarke [00:21:29]:

Yeah. I love it. Yeah.

Stephanie [00:21:32]:

Can you tell me some of your favorite cookbooks? Like, do you, like, even look at cookbooks anymore, or are you just so focused on your own?

Erin Clarke [00:21:41]:

No. I just love cookbooks. I read cookbooks like people read novels, which is why, you know, if you read my first cookbook and my second one when it comes out, like, the writing is incredibly personal to me. I pour, like, so much of myself into that because food you know, the recipes need to work. They need to be rock solid. That's the number one thing with a cookbook. And we work incredibly, incredibly diligently on that. My whole team does.

Erin Clarke [00:22:06]:

But from there, like, I just want a cookbook with some personality.

Stephanie [00:22:10]:

Yeah.

Erin Clarke [00:22:10]:

And so, like, I just find it so inspiring to hear both the food, hear the stories. And then I can say, like, anyone can post a recipe online, and I absolutely stand behind the quality of the well plated recipes that we do online. But there is something special and a higher standard about a cookbook that, there it's just, like, sacred to me. Like, I feel like you're, like, getting a a piece of someone. And I have a lot a lot of cookbooks. I joke, but it's not it's actually quite true that Ina Garten taught me how to cook when I started. When I started my blog, my husband was in law school. We were on a budget.

Erin Clarke [00:22:49]:

Like, we were not going out to eat, And he had a voracious appetite. So I was like, okay. I gotta figure out how to cook food that tastes good because we enjoy you know, that we'll enjoy eating that, you know, makes a decent enough quantity to feed him, like, start hosting friends. And so I just checked out Ina's cookbooks from the library and would read them and, you know, work my way through them. So from there so the foundation of my grandmother's and then, like, moving on to Ina Garten.

Stephanie [00:23:19]:

Yeah.

Erin Clarke [00:23:19]:

Some of the and then I also, you know, now that I am a professional recipe developer, I also have taken lessons from the way that some of the best of the best write their recipes. So one person that always comes in mind to me is Dori Greenspan. I just think she has this beautiful way of writing recipes, and she's kind of who I learned. Like, don't you can't just don't just tell me the time on the stove. I need you to tell me what it smells like. I need you to tell me, you know, if the color's golden. Like, how do we appeal to all of these different senses to make people feel really confident? And that confidence aspect is really important to me too. So I want you to feel good the entire time you're making my recipe, not just be, like, pleased at the end that it turned out.

Erin Clarke [00:24:04]:

So, you know, if you're making a cake batter and it looks curdled, I'm gonna tell you it will it looks curdled. It'll be fine. And I feel like I picked some of that up from Dory Greenspan as well.

Stephanie [00:24:17]:

Oh, wow. Those are some of my heroes too. So it's fun to hear you say that. Have you I just started reading the Ina Garten memoir.

Erin Clarke [00:24:24]:

Oh, I'm listening to it. I'm about a third of the way through. It's just delightful.

Stephanie [00:24:28]:

I know. She's so great. I does she read it? I probably should have listened because I just find her so she's so funny.

Erin Clarke [00:24:36]:

She really is. Yeah. She it's just it's delightful.

Stephanie [00:24:39]:

Yeah. Okay. So people can come to your you can do a reading. You're gonna be at Valley Booksellers in Stillwater on October 13th.

Erin Clarke [00:24:48]:

We are doing the event at Modern Well. So it's in partnership with Valley. So it's in Minneapolis, and I will have a partner in conversation, Leigh Funke, from Fit Foodie Finds, who is a friend and just, like, a rock star food blogger who is also based in the Twin Cities. So she graciously agreed to do a q and a with me. We'll be having some snacks passed out from the book. It's just gonna be a really funny thing of conversation. Of course, everyone will leave with a signed copy of the book, and I'm just so looking forward to having that in person connection.

Stephanie [00:25:23]:

Yes. I'll go ahead and put a link for tickets in the show notes. I'm gonna bump up when I, release this podcast so that people have time to get tickets. It was super nice to talk with you and to meet you. I'm excited about your book. I have followed you on Instagram, so it's fun to get a chance to talk with you. And I loved hearing how thoughtful you are about your point of view on the recipes. It really shows in the work that you do.

Stephanie [00:25:49]:

You're doing a really good

Erin Clarke [00:25:51]:

job. Thank you so so much. That really just means a lot. I can't overstate how much that means because sometimes you just feel I mean it's hard.

Stephanie [00:25:59]:

You're in the void.

Erin Clarke [00:25:59]:

It's hard. It's a lot of work. Yeah. Mhmm.

Stephanie [00:26:01]:

Absolutely. Alright, Erin. It's great. Good luck with the book and I maybe we'll see you at Modern Well. Who knows?

Erin Clarke [00:26:08]:

Yeah. I hope so. It was great meeting you.

Stephanie [00:26:10]:

Okay. Thanks, Sarah.

Erin Clarke [00:26:11]:

Thanks again.

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