Alisha Eadle
- Jul 21, 2020
- 7 min read

The Queen by Jennifer L. Armentrout Blog Tour Giveaway & Feature: Cooking With Caden

Welcome!

I can't tell you how excited I am to be one of the blogs that get to feature Jennifer L Armentrout's conclusion to The Summer King trilogy, The Queen. Jennifer is one of my favorite authors (if not THE favorite), so, seriously, before I ramble on and embarrass myself, thanks for stopping here on my little corner of the internet. Grab a cup of coffee ... I promise, it will go well with this post.

The Queen was released on July 14th, but I was one of the lucky ones who got to read an advanced copy of The Queen before release day. It was absolutely amaze-balls - check out my full review here. I highly recommend picking up the Summer King Bundle if you haven't read the first two novellas in the trilogy - The Prince and The King.

Closing out The Queen's blog tour, is a little feature called Cooking With Caden. The Wicked Trilogy, and The Summer King bundle, is set in New Orleans. New Orlean's is famous for a lot of delicious food, including the yum-tastic, literal orgasms in the mouth, Beignets. So to celebrate the release of The Queen, I honor the swoon-worthy Caden, his sunshine Brighton, and the ultimate queen, Jennifer Armentrout, by making beignets.

Synopsis:

From #1 New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Jennifer L. Armentrout comes the next installment in her Wicked series.

The King must have his Queen....

Bestowed the forbidden Summer’s Kiss by the King of the Summer fae, Brighton Jussier is no longer just human. What she is, what she will become, no one knows for sure, but that isn’t her biggest concern at the moment. Now Caden, the King, refuses to let her go, even at the cost of his Court. When the doorway to the Otherworld is breached, both Brighton and Caden must do the unthinkable—not just to survive themselves, but also to save mankind from the evil that threatens the world.

**Every 1001 Dark Nights novella is a standalone story. For new readers, it’s an introduction to an author’s world. And for fans, it’s a bonus book in the author’s series. We hope you'll enjoy each one as much as we do.**

AMAZON BUY LINK: https://amzn.to/2ZwqPk9

*Note: This is only available on Amazon for the first month, then is available on other retailers.

FOR AMAZON CANADA BUY LINK, CLICK HERE

Cooking With Caden

Today, I will be making Paula Deen's French Quarter Beignets. You can check out the original recipe here.

No bubbly, inspirational reason as to why I picked beignets for you to skim over before actually giving you the recipe. I only had two reasons for doing so.

Beignets screams New Orleans, and seemed appropriate (Tink would approve)
I wanted them in my belly.

First step. Gather your Ingredients.

You will need: Flour (original recipe calls for bread flour, but I used All-Purpose), sugar, powdered sugar, vegetable oil, shortening, evaporated milk (my four year old tore off the label), salt, yeast, eggs, water, and any non-stick cooking spray.

Second Step. Activate the Yeast

This part will MAKE OR BREAK the recipe. I have only made beignets once before, and they were a total fail because my yeast wasn't fresh enough. In lukewarm water, add half a cup of granulated sugar, and one packet of yeast, and lightly stir. Wait 10 minutes until its nice and frothy.

While that is going down, in a separate bowl ...

Third step. Mix the wet ingredients.

Mix together slightly beaten eggs (I used large sized ones), salt, and evaporated milk. Don't go too crazy with it, but mix well.

Fourth step. Mix yeast mixture into your egg mixture.

Is your yeast frothy? (Mine above has about 1/4 of an inch of froth on top). If it is, it's ready to be mixed with the eggs and milk. Blend it in till it's mixed thoroughly.

Fifth Step. It starts to get messy.

Add in half the flour, and mix well. By now you will have a slightly sticky goop. It gets delicious, I promise.

Sixth step. Shortening and more flour.

First add shortening. Mix until shortening is blended in (it will be a bit clumpy, that's okay.). Then add rest of the flour mixture, 1 cup at a time, until you end up with a sticky ball.

Little tip - before adding the rest of the flour, switch to the kneading attachment (unless you are hand mixing, obviously). Don't do what I did. I switched to one AFTER I had a flour explosion go off in my kitchen using my regular mixing paddle.

Seventh Step. Knead that dough.

Drop that sticky bowl of awesome onto a "lightly" floured surface, and massage and knead that ball of dough until it comes out looking smooth, and is no longer sticky. Be careful that you don't add too much flour, and dry it out.

Eighth step. Time to Wait

Spray a clean bowl with any non-stick cooking spray (or coat in a light layer of vegetable oil), cover in plastic wrap or a towel, and place in a warm place. I turn the warmer on in my oven, and sit the bowl on top of the stove (not in. That's too warm). Wait for two hours (unless you have quick rise yeast, I only waited an hour), or until double in size.

In the meantime, why not read The Queen? Or the whole Summer King bundle? Just saying. It's a pretty awesome way to pass the time.

Ninth Step. Prep to cook

Pour the vegetable oil in a pot until it's about three inches deep. Heat till about 350. While it takes its time to get bubbly, roll out your dough (you don't need to flour). If you care about uniform beignets, roll out to a rectangle. If you don't care, and your family is hounding you for yummy, warm beignets, like mine was, do it all willy-nilly and slice with a pizza cutter into 1 inch squares ... or what I did.

By the way, the recipe SAYS it yields 3 dozen. Bull. Shit. I ended up with well over 200.

Tenth step. Cook those beignets

I always feel like a witch over her bubbling cauldron when I cook something like this. ha.

Takes about two minutes for the beignets to finish cooking. When they are a golden brown, they are done. They also need to be constantly flipped. I'm lazy, and just stirred every few seconds.

Eleventh step. Sweeten those thangs.

Drain those suckers in some paper towel for about a minute before throwing them in a plastic or paper bag full of powdered sugar. Then shake until they are covered in beautiful, tasty sugar.

Twelfth step. Put them in your belly.

Eat those suckers. They taste BEST when they are fresh. After eating - no joke - six of them, I looked at my husband and said it was like "sex in my mouth", to which he said he didn't know how to feel about that ... but agreed they were awesome.

The teenagers loved them.

The preschooler turned her nose up at them, due to the lack of chocolate.

Now for the best part! The giveaway!

Prizes:

Winner gets a character in a future JLA book named after them! (Blog hosts can enter, too!)
FIVE Paperback copies of the Summer King Bundle

Open Internationally

Runs 7/6 - 7/21 (ends at 11:59PM EST on the 21st)

Synopsis:

From #1 New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Jennifer L. Armentrout comes The Summer King Bundle…

THE PRINCE

She’s everything he wants….

Cold. Heartless. Deadly. Whispers of his name alone bring fear to fae and mortals alike. The Prince. There is nothing in the mortal world more dangerous than him. Haunted by a past he couldn’t control, all Caden desires is revenge against those who’d wronged him, trapping him in never-ending nightmare. And there is one person he knows can help him.

She’s everything he can’t have…

Raised within the Order, Brighton Jussier knows just how dangerous the Prince is, reformed or not. She’d seen firsthand what atrocities he could be capable of. The last thing she wants to do is help him, but he leaves her little choice. Forced to work alongside him, she begins to see the man under the bitter ice. Yearning for him feels like the definition of insanity, but there’s no denying the heat in his touch and the wicked promise is his stare.

She’s everything he’ll take….

But there’s someone out there who wants to return the Prince to his former self. A walking, breathing nightmare that is hell bent on destroying the world and everyone close to him. The last thing either of them needs is a distraction, but with the attraction growing between them each now, the one thing he wants more than anything may be the one thing that will be his undoing.

She’s everything he’d die for….

THE KING

As Caden and Brighton's attraction grows

despite the odds stacked against a happily ever after, they must work together to stop an Ancient fae from releasing the Queen, who wants nothing more than to see Caden become the evil Prince once feared by fae and mortals alike.

THE QUEEN

The King must have his Queen....

Amazon Buy Link: https://amzn.to/38vliyw

Amazon CANADA But Link HERE

The Queen Herself, Mrs. Jennifer L. Armentrout

#1 New York Times and #1 International Bestselling author Jennifer lives in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. All the rumors you’ve heard about her state aren’t true. When she’s not hard at work writing. she spends her time reading, watching really bad zombie movies, pretending to write, hanging out with her husband and her Border Jack Apollo, six judgemental alpacas, two rude goats, and five fluffy sheep. In early 2015, Jennifer was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, a group of rare genetic disorders that involve a breakdown and death of cells in the retina, eventually resulting in loss of vision, among other complications. Due to this diagnosis, educating people on the varying degrees of blindness has become of passion of hers, right alongside writing, which she plans to do as long as she can.