Two friends eating and drinking their way through Goldfinch–Book 6 of the Plated Prisoner series by Raven Kennedy!
SPOILERS FOR THE SERIES
Recipes for food and cocktails mentioned in this episode:
Mini Honey Cakes (aka Little Suns of Freedom)
Ingredients:
1 cup all-purpose flour
½ cup sugar
½ tsp baking powder
¼ tsp baking soda
¼ tsp salt
1 large egg
¼ cup melted butter (or oil if you want them extra soft)
¼ cup honey
½ cup milk (or buttermilk for an extra tender crumb)
1 tsp vanilla
Optional: ½ tsp cinnamon or a pinch of nutmeg
Glaze:
2 tbsp honey
1 tbsp lemon juice
½ cup powdered sugar
(You can thin or thicken this as needed.)
Instructions:
Heat your oven to 350°F. Line a mini muffin pan or grease it like you’re trying not to get stuck in the cage again.
In a bowl, whisk flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and optional spices.
In another bowl, whisk egg, melted butter, honey, milk, and vanilla.
Pour the wet ingredients into the dry. Stir gently until just combined. The batter should look like it’s trying to be smooth but hasn’t fully committed.
Scoop into your muffin tin, filling each about ¾ full.
Bake 10–12 minutes until the tops are lightly golden and springy.
While they cool, whisk together your glaze.
Dip the tops of the warm cakes into the glaze or drizzle it over them so it runs down like liquid gold.
Optional DramaticFlair:
Add a tiny bit of edible gold dust to the glaze.
Top each cake with a thin twist of candied lemon peel.
Or place a single blueberry on top like a jewel from Auren’s private stash.
These little cakes travel well, look adorable on a table, and taste like honeyed joy. Perfect for a grand finale that feels sweet, triumphant, and just a tad dangerous if eatenby the dozen.
Wine/Cocktail Pairing: Dreaming Tree Sauvignon Blanc
This wine is bright, crisp, and refreshing… which is more than we can say for the trauma Raven Kennedy put us through for five books. But the name? Dreaming Tree? Yeah, that’s basically Auren in her final form: rooted, powerful, no longer contained, and finally dreaming for herself rather than surviving someone else’s nightmare.
The Sauvignon Blanc itself has those clean citrus and herbal notes that feel like a deep breath after clawing your way out of a rot pit — light enough to lift the emotional weight of this series, but not so delicate that it disappears the second Slade walks on page like a magical green-eyed distraction.
So grab your glass, raise it to Auren’s glitter-soaked resilience, and toast to the fact that we, too, survived The Plated Prisoner and came out on the other side… maybe not golden, but definitely feral and emotionally damaged in afun way.
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