AMELIA MORRIS discusses her book BON APPETEMPT: A COMING OF AGE STORY (WITH RECIPES!)

Bon Appetempt: A Coming of Age Story (with Recipes!) Grand Central Publishing

When Amelia Morris found a beautiful chocolate cake in Bon Appétit and took the recipe home to recreate it for a Christmas day brunch, it collapsed into a terrible (but delicious) mess that had to be served in an oversized bowl. It also paralleled the never-quite-predictable situations she's gotten herself into throughout her life, from her one-day career as a six-year-old lady wrestler to her ill-fated job at the School of Rock in Los Angeles.

Now author of a blog named one of the best of 2012 by TIME magazine and awarded “Best Food Humor Blog” 2012 by Saveurmagazine, Amelia has woven those stories into Bon Appetempt: A Coming-of-Age Story (with Recipes!) – a funny and poignant memoir about collapsing cakes and coming of age in your twenties and thirties.

Full of hilarious and touching observations about food, family, unemployment, romance, and the excesses of modern L.A., and incorporating recipes as basic as Toasted Cheerios and as advanced as gâteau de crêpes, Bon Appetempt follows Amelia as she finds that even if some of her attempts fall short of the standard set by a food magazine, they can still bring satisfaction to her and her family and friends.

Praise for Bon Appetempt

"Bon Appetempt is a charming, thoughtful, and touching memoir about growing up and becoming the person and artist you've always wanted to be--both inside and outside the kitchen. It made me laugh, it made me cry, and I could not put it down. It also made me very, very hungry for crepes!"--Edan Lepucki, author of California

"Amelia Morris's debut, Bon Appetempt, is one of the most compulsively readable books I've picked up in years. It's spirited, funny, smartly nostalgic, wistful, real. I've never seen another author break a reader's heart, make them laugh, and offer up a recipe for broccolini in the span of two pages. It's all here: big love, big sadness, superb self-aware writing, and cake. Indulge in all of it as fast as you can, and enjoy the rewarding fullness of this incredible book."--Megan Mayhew Bergman, author of Birds of a Lesser Paradise and Almost Famous Women

"Amelia Morris uses her trademark humor and fierce honesty to tell a wry and touching coming-of-age story. It made me laugh, wrenched my heart and gave me an instant craving for beans and rice in coconut milk."--Luisa Weiss, founder of The Wednesday Chef and author of My Berlin Kitchen

"Morris adopts an interest in cooking as an adult, grabbing food glossies at grocery checkouts and trying to re-create the meals they picture. The impetus for the blog she starts, with which this book shares its name, was a growing realization that if words failed her, food wouldn't: cooking, as opposed to writing, became a place to lightheartedly attempt great things, and not feel personally hurt if she failed. . . Some recipes are described in the text, too, like the toasted cheerios Morris makes, immediately summoning childhood memories. Sure to appeal to fans of her personable blog, and to round up new ones."--Booklist

Amelia Morris is the creator of Bon Appétempt, which TIME magazine named as one of the twenty-five best blogs of 2012. Her work has also been featured in the Los Angeles Times, The Splendid Table, Saveur.com, BonAppetit.com, and McSweeney's. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, where she was the recipient of the Margaret Shannon Morton Fellowship. She currently lives on the east side of Los Angeles with her husband, baby son, and small dog. Visit her at www.bonappetempt.com and on Twitter @bonappetempt