The Bake Shop Ghost: A Sweet Book for Kids

My friend Carolyn gave The Bake Shop Ghost to my daughter, but I know Carolyn had me in mind. I love reading about food. And who could resist this description of the sweets made by the best baker in town, Miss Cora Lee Merriweather?

Few looked up from the glass-fronted cases filled with fluffy meringue pies, glistening fruit tarts, flaky strudels, and, most of all, cakes. Layer cakes, sheet cakes, cakes with glazes, cakes with fillings, cakes with frosting finer than Irish lace, chocolate cakes, white cakes, tiny petits fours and towering wedding cakes.

When Cora Lee Merriweather dies, she refuses to leave the bake shop, and her ghost scares off all the new buyers, until Annie Washington, a pastry chef fresh off a cruise ship, arrives. But how Annie and Cora Lee make peace is a delicious tale. And at the very end of the book, author Jacqueline K. Ogburn shares her family's favorite recipe for chocolate layer cake.

The Bake Shop Ghost, Jacqueline K. Ogburn, Houghton Mifflin Company, 2005

--Tracy Schneider