Jaronsky - The Cookies & Cups Cookbook: 125+ sweet & savory recipes reminding you to Always Eat Dessert First

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TO MY BOYS,

Chris, Christopher, David, Jake, and Max,

THE LOVES OF MY LIFE

Im gonna talk a little about me right now.

H i. Hello. Oh hey.

So here we are. Youre reading, Im writing. A book. OMG a book.

Hi. How should we start?

Im Shelly. Lets be food friends. No, thats weird.

Okay, lets just chat. First off, thanks for reading this part. I am the worst about glancing over all the WORDS in cookbooks and skipping to the pictures. I am guessing I am not the only one. I certainly expect my family and loved ones to read this (Hi, Dad!), but if you are not related to me and are still with me here, I love you forever!

Again.

Hi.

So I wrote a book. A cookbook. With food I want you to make and love and share.

Lets Begin at the End...

In the kitchen I live by few rules. I get asked ALL THE TIME, What do you do with all those desserts? Well, I try them. ALL. Some I eat entirely too much of, but most of the time I practice a moderate amount of self-control and give the food away. A brownie isnt going to hurt me. A whole tray of brownies might.

But really, dessert has always come first for me. Its my favorite meal. I choose restaurants based on the dessert menus alone. Its the truth. Now I can claim its all in the name of research, but lets be honest, dessert is fun. Dessert is a treat. Dessert is special.

And why not eat dessert first? Whoever made up the rule that desserts are a leftover thought if you have room is my mortal enemy. Nobody puts Baby in the corner.

So my book, like my life and my website, is a little backwards.

A normal cookbook has all your foods: appetizers, soups, entrees... with one tiny little chapter, barely a footnote, if you will, reserved for desserts.

I CRY INJUSTICE!

In my world desserts are the headline act. I mean, why not?

So yep, thats whats happening here. Desserts run the show. Ive got tons of amazing, brand-new sweet recipes for you, along with a few of your favorites from my website. PLUS a whole section at the end of the book set aside for some epic mealtime savories.

I hope you can trust my crazy for a bit and sit back and enjoy. I want you to dog-ear the crap out of this book. I want it to be the stained, sticky-paged, marked-up book that you come back to time and time again.

I want to be in your kitchen with you, and this is my shot.

Okay, Now the Beginning...

My love for baking (and cooking) began when I was a small girl in my grandmas kitchen. I used to spend entire summers with my grandparents. My parents would just ship me off after the school year was over and pick me up at the airport a week before summer break ended.

You think Im exaggerating? Im totally not.

But that was just fine by me. I loved it at my grandparents house. LOVED.

We shopped, we played golf, we swam, we baked, and all the focus was on me. Yes, I am a huge brat with possible narcissistic tendencies because of this, but thats neither here nor there.

My grandparents house was the best. The pantry was always stocked with Kraft Macaroni & Cheese and Pop-Tarts, my favorite foods then, now, and forevermore. My grandma and I would craft together, host dinner parties together, and paint our nails together, and my grandpa used to make those amazing frosting-filled graham cracker sandwiches (which are still one of my favorite food groups), eat saltines slathered with butter, and head to McDonalds every morning at ten for a biscuit and coffee. He even kept a little tin under his chair at night specifically for his Hersheys Kisses wrappers. A favorite food memory of my grandpa is back in the late 80s when SlimFast first came out. Everyone was doing it. So one summer my grandparents went on that liquid meal plan, only my grandpa would mix his SlimFast with ice cream. Not nonfat milk... or water... or whatever the blend was supposed to be. ICE CREAM. Seriously. Im not sure how much weight he actually lost, but I am sure it made the diet way more delicious. My point is, it doesnt take a genius to figure out how I ended up with a blog made up of 80 percent sweets.

Its not my fault, folks. I blame SlimFast.

P.S. My grandpa is still alive and kickin at ninety-three years.

Anyhow, beyond the SlimFast, my first memory of creating a recipe was with my grandma in her kitchen making monkey bread. We would make it at least once a week, changing it up a bit each time and taking it over to a neighbors house for coffee hour. Now, as a kid I hated coffee hour. All the adults sitting around talking was so boring. BUT the creating of the monkey bread made all the boring adult conversations totally worth it.

During the not-summer months I lived out most of my childhood in Houston, Texas. (I truly believe all people should be lucky enough to live in Texas at one point in their lives.) Then after college I moved to New Jersey. Yes, on purpose.

You see, my one true love called the Garden State home, which meant that Texas had to be left behind. The move was a tough choice, but love won out. I still live in New Jersey and Im married to the same dude.

We now have a family with four boys and two ridiculous dogs named Polly and Chewie. Happily ever after.

But Wait, Theres More...