Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Catherynne M. Valente

Quote by Catherynne M. Valente

Work

The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There

This novel is a blend of fantasy and whimsy, chronicling the journey of a young protagonist who discovers a hidden world beneath the earth. After falling into this fantastical realm, she embarks on a quest to understand and influence its customs and traditions, leading to a series of revels and challenges that test her resolve and courage. more

Author

Catherynne M. Valente
Catherynne M. Valente

Catherynne M. Valente is an American novelist known for her works in fantasy and science fiction. Born on May 5, 1979, she has made a name for herself with her imaginative storytelling and poetic prose. Valente's writing frequently delves into themes of love, loss, and the human experience within fantastical settings. more

You May Also Like

“When Molly O'Toole was looking at the colored pictures in Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle's big dictionary and just happened to be eating a candy cane at the same time and drooled candy cane juice on the colored pictures of gems and then forgot and shut the book so the pages all stuck together, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle didn't say, "Such a careless little girl can never ever look at the colored pictures in my dictionary again." Nor did she say, "You must never look at books when you are eating." She said, "Let's see, I think we can steam those pages apart, and then we can wipe the stickiness off with a little soap and water, like this-now see, it's just as good as new. There's nothing as cozy as a piece of candy and a book.”

ChildrenBooksCandy
Book:Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle's Magic
Create image

“There will be a cauldron of spiced hot cider, and pumpkin shortbread fingers with caramel and fudge dipping sauces as our freebies, and I've done plenty of special spooky treats. Ladies' fingers, butter cookies the shape of gnarled fingers with almond fingernails and red food coloring on the stump end. I've got meringue ghosts and cups of "graveyard pudding," a dark chocolate pudding layered with dark Oreo cookie crumbs, strewn with gummy worms, and topped with a cookie tombstone. There are chocolate tarantulas, with mini cupcake bodies and legs made out of licorice whips, sitting on spun cotton candy nests. The Pop-Tart flavors of the day are chocolate peanut butter, and pumpkin spice. The chocolate ones are in the shape of bats, and the pumpkin ones in the shape of giant candy corn with orange, yellow, and white icing. And yesterday, after finding a stash of tiny walnut-sized lady apples at the market, I made a huge batch of mini caramel apples.”

HalloweenCandyPumpkinSweets
Book:Wedding Girl
Create image

“Whoooa! Red! Green! Yellow! Brown! Purple! Even black! Look at all those bowls full of brilliantly colored batter!" She used strawberries, blueberries, matcha powder, cocoa powder, black sesame and other natural ingredients to dye those batters. They look like a glittering array of paints on an artist's palette! "Now that all my yummy edible paints are ready... ...it's picture-drawing time!" "She twisted a sheet of parchment paper into a piping bag and is using it to draw all kinds of cute pictures!" "You're kidding me! Look at them all! How did she get that fast?!" Not only that, most chefs do rough sketches first, but she's doing it off the cuff! How much artistic talent and practice does she have?! "All these cutie-pies go into the oven for about three minutes. After that I'll take them out and pour the brown sugar batter on top..." "It appears she's making a roll cake if she's pouring batter into that flat a pan." "Aah, I see. It must be one of those patterned roll cakes you often see at Japanese bakeries. That seems like an unusually plain choice, considering the fanciful tarts she made earlier." "The decorations just have to be super-cute, too." "OOOH! She's candy sculpting!" "So pretty and shiny!" That technique she's using- that's Sucre Tiré (Pulled Sugar)! Of all the candy-sculpting arts, Sucre Tiré gives the candy a glossy, nearly glass-like luster... but keeping the candy at just the right temperature so that it remains malleable while stretching it to a uniform thickness is incredibly difficult! Every step is both delicate and exceptionally difficult, yet she makes each one look easy! She flows from one cutest technique to the next, giving each an adorable flair! Just like she insisted her apple tarts had to be served in a pretty and fantastical manner... ... she's even including cutesy performances in the preparation of this dish!”

IngredientsCakeCandyColorsSculptingArtistic CreativityCutenessRollsMomo AkanegakuboBatter
Book:食戟のソーマ 29 [Shokugeki no Souma 29]
Create image

“Saturday is birthday cake day. During the week, the panadería is all strong coffee and pan dulce. But on weekends, it's sprinkle cookies and pink cake. By ten or eleven this morning, we'll get the first rush of mothers picking up yellow boxes in between buying balloons and paper streamers. In the back kitchen, my father hums along with the radio as he shapes the pastry rounds of ojos de buey, the centers giving off the smell of orange and coconut. It may be so early the birds haven't even started up yet, but with enough of my mother's coffee and Mariachi Los Camperos, my father is as awake as if it were afternoon. While he fills the bakery cases, my mother does the delicate work of hollowing out the piñata cakes, and when her back is turned, I rake my fingers through the sprinkle canisters. During open hours, most of my work is filling bakery boxes and ringing up customers (when it's busy) or washing dishes and windexing the glass cases (when it's not). But on birthday cake days, we're busy enough that I get to slide sheet cakes from the oven and cover them in pink frosting and tiny round nonpareils, like they're giant circus-animal cookies. I get to press hundreds-and-thousands into the galletas de grajea, the round, rainbow-sprinkle-covered cookies that were my favorite when I was five. My mother finishes hollowing two cake halves, fills them with candy- green, yellow, and pink this time- and puts them back together. Her piñatas are half our Saturday cake orders, both birthday girls and grandfathers delighting at the moment of seeing M&M's or gummy worms spill out. She covers them with sugar-paste ruffles or coconut to look like the tiny paper flags on a piñata, or frosting and a million rainbow sprinkles.”

SaturdayCandyMexicanSprinklesBirthday CakeBakeryFamily BusinessFrostingPinata
Book:Hungry Hearts: 13 Tales of Food & Love
Create image