Read and Cook – Hotel Pastis: A Novel of Provence by Peter Mayle, and my new cake art and baking books series #ReadandCook #bookreview #cakeart
Posted: October 8, 2025 Filed under: Adventure, Book Review, Books, cooking, Creativity, Fiction, Nonfiction, Read and Cook, Recipes, Review, romance, Suspense | Tags: Baking, Cake Art, Fondant Art, Hotel Pastis, Peter Mayle, Read and Cook, Robbie Cheadle, Something Fancy, Writing to be Read 34 Comments
Hotel Pastis: A Novel of Provence by Peter Mayle
What Amazon says
A beguiling novel of romance, adventure, and tongue-in-cheek suspense set in the South of France, from the beloved, best-selling author of A Year in Provence.
Simon Shaw, a rumpled, fortyish English advertising executive, has decided to leave it all behind, and heads of to France to transform an abandoned police station in the Lubéron into a small but world-class hotel. On his side, Simon has a loyal majordomo and a French business partner who is as practical as she is ravishing. But he hasn’t counted on the malignant local journalist—or on the mauvaise types who have chosen the neighboring village as the site of their latest bank robbery. Slyly funny and overflowing with sensuous descriptions of the good life, Hotel Pastis is the literacy equivalent of a four-star restaurant.
My review
I read a few of Peter Mayle’s autobiographical books about life in Provence when I was in my twenties. I came across this novel a short while ago and was eager to revisit Provence, this time through Peter Mayle’s fiction. I was not disappointed. After a bit of a slow start, Peter Mayle’s typically humorous style of writing and his deep dive into the food and culture of Provence were very evident in this entertaining novel. What was new was his descriptions of life in the advertising industry in London.
I’m making an educated guess that this novel is set in the 70s in London as that is when the author worked in London as an advertising executive. The characters all smoke heavily which was quite interesting for me given that I’ve always worked in a no smoking inside buildings culture. I found the author’s descriptions of his work colleagues, spoiled wife and her equally over privileged friends, and super wealthy clients very entertaining. Of course, these scenes are depicted through a humorous lens, so the negative attributes of these people are all exaggerated but as someone who has always worked in corporate, it had the ring of truth. I could also relate to Simon’s exhaustion with this fast and fake lifestyle. It can be hard to feel sympathy for people caught up in this sort of all work with short intermissions of excessive play lifestyles because of all the money they have, but it is not a nice way to live your life. Having to work all the time and appease others and wine and dine them isn’t as glamorous as it appears on the outside. This is evident from the general wreckage you see in such people’s personal lives including broken marriages, alcoholism, and drug addiction. I really hoped that Simon would find a better way of living that brought him more personal happiness.
There is a romance between Simon and a fascinating woman from Provence, a butler who is very competent and savvy and equally weary of Simon’s (and thus his own) life in the London fast lane, as well as a ring of local petty criminals who are planning the heist of their lives.
This book is not a classic and does not contain intense and serious messages about life, relationships, and saving the world. This is a slice of escapism and is light and enjoyable like pavlova. If this is the sort of book you are looking for, then you will enjoy Hotel Pastis.
Purchase Hotel Pastis: A Novel of Provence from Amazon US here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0679751114
Cake art and other confectionary related delights
I have wanted to publish a book containing my favourite baking recipes and cake and other confectionary art for some years. I have finally gotten around to it and the first book in my new series, Something Fancy: A Winter Wonderland Celebration book 1 is now available for pre-order on Amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/Something-Wonderland-Celebration-Celebrating-Confectionary-ebook/dp/B0FTX21BXL
This book isn’t just about cake art and baking, it also includes some history about the origin of Christmas cakes in a number of different countries and the origin of gingerbread and gingerbread houses in Europe and other places. It also includes several of my baking related poems and poets written specifically for various cake creations.
Blurb
Robbie’s cake and fondant creations are full of imagination and enchantment as demonstrated by her gingerbread bakery, populated by three mince pie figurines, and her Ice cream Rainbow Fairies Christmas Cake, decorated with seven fondant fairy figurines for each colour of the rainbow.
This book is intended as a celebration of Christmas in poetry, cake art, and gingerbread constructions and includes several of Robbie’s delicious Christmas recipes as well as design ideas for Christmas themed confectionaries. Bite sized smatterings of historical information relating to various culinary delights are also included.
Robbie Cheadle is a poet, writer, and artist. Over the past twenty years, she has created art cakes, gingerbread constructions, and fondant figurines for a variety of purposes including as illustrations for the Sir Chocolate children’s book series she wrote with her son, Michael Cheadle.
These are examples of the type of cake art featured in this book:
The gallery sets out my Ice cream rainbow fairy tiered Christmas cake with two close up pictures of the details on this cake.
Gingerbread houses, from small and easy …
to large and complex …
Advice and assembly instructions are included in the book.
About Robbie Cheadle
Robbie also has two novels and a collection of short stories published under the name of Roberta Eaton Cheadle and has horror, paranormal, and fantasy short stories featured in several anthologies under this name.
You can find Robbie Cheadle’s artwork, fondant and cake artwork, and all her books on her website here: https://www.robbiecheadle.co.za/
Find Robbie Cheadle
Blog https://wordpress.com/home/robbiesinspiration.wordpress.com
Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/robbiecheadle.bsky.social
YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVyFo_OJLPqFa9ZhHnCfHUA
Goodreads https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/15584446.Robbie_Cheadle
___________________________________________
Like this post? Are you a fan of this blog series? Did you know you can sponsor your favorite blog series or even a single post with an advertisement for your book? Stop by the WtbR Sponsor Page and let me advertise your book, or you can make a donation to Writing to be Read for as little as a cup of coffee, If you’d like to show your support for this author and WordCrafter Press.
__________________________________________
This segment of “Read and Cook with Robbie Cheadle” is sponsored by the Midnight Anthology Series and WordCrafter Press.
Discover more from Writing to be Read
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Share this:
Growing Bookworms – The benefits of cooking and baking with children
Posted: May 10, 2023 Filed under: Children's Books, Growing Bookworms, Literacy, Parenting, Teaching children | Tags: Baking, Children, cooking, Growing Bookworms, Robbie Cheadle, Teaching Life Skills, Writing to be Read 54 Comments
I wrote this post six years ago when I hadn’t been blogging for very long and didn’t have many followers. During my recent attendance at the South African Festival of Children’s Literature where I was asked to speak about cake and fondant art and its benefits to children, I thought again about all these benefits and decided to share it again for Growing Bookworms.
Most children love to spend time in the kitchen either cooking or baking. It is a fabulous bonding experience with Mom or another caregiver and they always enjoying eating the results of their hard work afterwards.
I love to bake and both my sons have travelled the cooking, baking and eating road with me. Michael, particularly, loves to cook. He prefers to make more practical things than I do such as savoury and/or sweet pancakes, French toast and even stews and curries which he sometimes makes with his Dad. I like to cook but I also enjoy making all sorts of fancy sweet treats and cakes.
I remember baking with my small boys. Gregory used to love to measure and pour the ingredients into the bowl. Funnily enough, Greg also loved to wash up. Sadly, this did not continued into his teenage years. I used to strip him down to his nappy and stand him on a few chairs lined up in front of the sink [so that he could not fall off] and set him free in front of a sink of soapy water. He used to splash around happy with a cloth washing up the bowl and wooden spoon. I kept the washing of any sharp implements and breakables for myself.
Michael, on the other hand, has never been a fan of any kind of cleaning up. He likes to measure, pour and, especially, to mix. He also likes to “lick” out the bowl. I have photographs of Michael covered from head to toe in chocolate cake mix with the bowl upside down on his head. What fabulous fun.
Other than the obvious fun and bonding factors, there are a list of other great benefits to baking with your children. I did some research on this and this is what I found:
- Maths skills: Baking helps children to learn maths concepts, in particular, measurement and simple fractions (half a cup, a quarter of a lemon). In addition, multiplication and division are involved if you half or double a recipe. Other kinds of cooking may also involve patterning (for example with salads and kebabs) and simple addition (how many people are you feeding? how many cupcakes do you need for the class?);
- Art skills: Decorating cupcakes, cutting out biscuits and making animals and people out of fondant (sugar dough). All of these activities encourage creativity and develop design abilities. An element of construction can also be involved if you are making a gingerbread house or a marshmallow tower and children learn how to fit pieces together and get a tower to stand up;
Cupcakes decorated for charity by the children of St Columba’s Presbyterian Church Sunday School – Parkview, South Africa
- Comprehension skills: Baking and cooking teaches children how to read and interpret a recipe. They learn to follow a sequence of steps and how to organise the required ingredients. Baking also teaches children techniques and vocabulary such as folding, beating, kneading and blending;
- Science skills: Contrary to popular belief, baking is a science. Children learn the scientific effects of raising agents such as yeast and baking powder. They learn about the interaction between certain substances such as salt and bicarbonate of soda, cream of tartar and milk, yeast and warm water. If they make a mistake and/or leave out an ingredient, disaster often follows which helps enforce these learning points;
Picture credit: Photographs by Robbie Cheadle. Cream of tartar, Bicarb and milk mixed together create a good raising agent for biscuits. It also froths and bubbles and makes a perfect fuel for a biscuit rocket ship to the moon.
- Life skills: Baking and cooking with your children teaches them lifelong skills. In the future, the job of feeding themselves and their future families will become theirs. Baking and cooking skills will stand them in good stead when they leave home; and
- Self-esteem: Baking and cooking helps increase children’s self-esteem as they see and taste the results of their efforts. It also teaches children to work together with someone else in a team and that hard work pays dividends in the end.
I am not an occupational therapist but I found the following additional benefits listed on an OT website for children:
- Bilateral coordination;
- Eye-hand coordination;
- Hand strengthening; and
- Spatial perception and planning skills.
These four benefits make perfect sense to me in the context of baking and cooking with children.
So, what are you waiting for, get cooking. An easy way to start is with mini pizzas. You can buy the bases ready made from most grocery stores and you can also buy the tomato paste source to spread on the bases. Grate some cheese, cut up some mushrooms, pineapple, ham and anything else that you fancy and let the kids have fun assembling their own pizzas.
About Robbie Cheadle
Award-winning, bestselling author, Robbie Cheadle, has published thirteen children’s book and three poetry books. Her work has also appeared in poetry and short story anthologies.
Robbie also has two novels published under the name of Roberta Eaton Cheadle and has horror, paranormal, and fantasy short stories featured in several anthologies under this name.
The ten Sir Chocolate children’s picture books, co-authored by Robbie and Michael Cheadle, are written in sweet, short rhymes which are easy for young children to follow and are illustrated with pictures of delicious cakes and cake decorations. Each book also includes simple recipes or biscuit art directions which children can make under adult supervision.
Robbie’s blog includes recipes, fondant and cake artwork, poetry, and book reviews. https://robbiesinspiration.wordpress.com/
