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Et tu, Brute?

The Ides of March. That notorious date when Julius Caesar was killed, stabbed 23 times in the Roman Senate by Roman senators. Amongst the traitors was one of his closest friends, Marcus Junius Brutus.

Today, we honor some of our favorite literary backstabbers, those who, much like Brutus, betrayed characters near and dear to them. While Brutus’ actions changed the world and course of history, the actions of these literary characters alter and ultimately drive their respective stories.

But we’ve barely even scratched the surface. Have some picks you’d like to include? Leave them in the comments.

WARNING: Lots of spoilers to follow for Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, the Hunger Games, etc.

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Tover Je Eigen Ster, a Dutch bookshop in Spakenburg, Holland, recently put up a wonderful window display to promote Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. Roughly translated, the bookshop's name means Perform Magic to Get Your Own Star.

You'll note the title on the Dutch bookcover, De Bijzondere Kinderen Van Mevrouw Peregrine. This roughly translates to The Special Children of Miss Peregrine.

We'd like to thank the bookshop's owner, Alice van Tamelen, for creating such a beautiful display. Check out the rest of the photos of her shop below.

Today is National Potato Chip Day. Hey! Stop rolling your eyes and muttering there’s a holiday for everything. Potato chips are awesome. According to Punchbowl, 1.2 billion pounds of potato chips are devoured each year in the United States alone, proving that this food demands your respect. So honor potato chips properly. Put them on a sandwich.

In honor of the holiday (and my favorite snack), I’ve posted a recipe from Susan Russo’s Encyclopedia of Sandwiches, the Potato Chip Sandwich. Read on, enjoy, and make sure you say hi to Susan on Twitter and visit her fantastic blog.

Something might be wrong in the baking world today. Bakery shelves are stacked high with the trendiest dessert, filled or flavored or “kissed” with the latest popular ingredient, and hidden under a crazy design. These are delicious and fun to look at, but somewhere along the line, we have to ask ourselves, “Where is the cake?”

Look friends, birthdays happen and nothing hits the spot like a good old-fashioned sugar-eggs-flour-butter birthday cake. Every decent baker should have a good cake recipe as his or her trump card. If someone tells you they don’t agree, they’ve never had a from scratch birthday cake, and since you are reading this, it is now your responsibility to make them the birthday cake of all birthday cakes—Yellow Cake.

Yellow cake is a cake Ron Swanson from Parks & Recreation would appreciate. It’s no nonsense, has a couple ingredients, and tastes like cake. Let’s remember that on a birthday, it should be ok to indulge. This cake requires a couple more eggs and some more butter than most which gives it a rich taste while keeping the texture airy and moist. Paired with a simple fudgy frosting, which can be whipped together in a food processor, yellow cake is a marriage of kid birthday party nostalgia and adult sophistication. Adding touches like neon dinosaur shaped nonpareils (a friend of mine picked these up for me at Home Goods) or an assortment of colorful jimmies makes the decoration even more fun.

In my experience, if you show up to a birthday with a messy, handmade cake, you’ll be forgiven of faults and suddenly attract many more friends.

Raspberry Lemonade Marshmallows by Culinary Cory

The competition is heating up! The East Coast brought their A game in this past week’s around of #MarshMadness. Scope out this week’s participants below.

Small Kitchen College: Honeyed Grapefruit Marshmallows

Cinnamon Spice & Everything Nice: Banana Split Marshmallows

Culinary Cory: Raspberry Lemonade Marshmallows With Coconut

The Queen’s Notebook: Mango Banana & Purple Yam Bunny Marshmallows

And if you tuned in to Cleaning Plates this week, they hosted a special guest podcast with Marshmallow Madness’ editor, Margaret McGuire. Give it a listen. They chat about marshmallows, cooking, books, and more in the short and sweet episode.

Caroline over on Serious Eats has the full recap. Remember to keep up with the campaign via #MarshMadness on Twitter.

We love it when people enjoy our books, but when people take our content and use it to inspire their own creativity… well, that's even cooler. 

Sam Cushion has not only created a fansite for Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, he is also working on composing a soundtrack to the book! Cushion says he has always loved music and literature, but only recently did he start to put his two passions together. He has created music for other books, most notably the Hunger Games trilogy, and hopes to complete an entire album of music inspired by Miss Peregrine.

He has four songs recorded already, and my personal favorite is Flashlight Fish. You can listen to everything he's created so far over on his Bandcamp page.

Don’t forget to check out his fansite at PeculiarChildren.net.