The Cake Chronicles: Finding Sweet Hope in This Crazy World

A scientist, who is also a wife and mother of two daughters, has an epiphany on a hot July morning. Her children are bored and frustrated, complaining they have nothing to do. Mom decides to make a cake to cheer everyone up, concluding that hope abounds wherever and whenever there is cake. The younger daughter suggests they make a cake every week, and Saturday becomes Cake Day, the family's newest tradition. What they didn't realize when they began Cake Day was how often friends and family would gather with them to celebrate both cake and life. Everyone, it seems, was searching for the sweet and simple in this world; the things that cost little and provide solace and hope. This charming and witty chronicle of a year in the life of a Midwestern family includes a wonderful array of cake recipes. But it also reveals the rich interior life of a delightful and fearless woman who is trying to identify and hold onto the parts of life that matter most to her: family, friends, community, love, hope, and cake.

$1 of each book will go to Multiple Sclerosis research.

Jayne Robinson is biologist. She has two daughters, but is also a mother to all of the students who have come through her lab, patiently guiding them into the mysterious world of scientific research. By day, she explores the secret lives of microbes in her quest to vanquish the evil ones among them. She is addicted to shiny new hypotheses, particularly those that can be proven through experimentation. But what she has learned about love, parenting, and marriage has come through not-so-scientific experimentation on her husband and children. She believes that salvation and redemption emanate from the small and simple acts and pleasures of daily life. Cake is the latest of her unscientific experiments, and it has been a wholly successful one.