Over the last few weeks in Romance HQ, it’s felt rather like living in a fluffy cloud of icing sugar. Willy Wonka eat your heart out…we’ve got a candy supply to rival the most fantastical of factories. Of course, as our treat shelf overflows with all things sweet and scrumptious it can only mean one thing…Great British Bake Off is back! And we couldn’t help but notice that love stories and baking are a match made in sugary heaven…

 

The powerful aphrodisiacal relationship between love and food has been explored throughout literary history. Indeed, at times we may wonder what we crave more…love or food, for neither could we live without. It’s a tangled relationship that extends far beyond fiction and into the hard facts of science…you see, eating a simple chocolate bar releases the same endorphins that we rely on to regulate our emotions – and sexual desire. One bite of sugary (not-so) goodness, and we’re experiencing the same pulse-quickening, heart-racing feeling of falling in love. Almost…

 

So, in combining the two in an ever-so-delicious literary recipe for romance, and you’re in for the read – and ride – of a lifetime. You can eat your cake and have love too! Don’t feel any remorse when you settle in your armchair with an M & B book and reach for a second brownie…you’re only maximising on your emotional experience, right?

 

In Ellie Darkins’ debut book for Mills & Boon, Frozen Heart, Melting Kiss (Romance, September 2014), just such a recipe is put to the test. Shy and vulnerable Maya Hartney hopes that taciturn workaholic Will Thomas will fall for her food…but doesn’t expect to fall for him too! Maya has one great passion – cooking, she’s turned her greatest pleasure into a thriving business and nothing fulfils her more than delighting her clients. Until she’s hired by Will… Where he’s concerned, Maya can do no right! The solution? Sign him up for one of her cookery courses and force him to love her food. A week of one-on-one cooking and tasting proves to be a lot more intense and emotional than either of them is expecting…and it comes with a delicious new taste sensation – a kiss!

 

The trouble is, sugar is dangerously addictive…just like love – and it’s just as hard to put the lid on our emotions as it is to put the lid back on the cookie jar. Yet don’t be fooled, that cookie isn’t true love…no matter what your growing ‘love’ handles might suggest. True love is a far more powerful thing, and it belongs to the heart, not your belly. Although we’re happy to feed both…!

 

We’d love to know, if Cupid could turn any cake into a man, which would you choose? My eyes are on a French Fancy… 

 

 

By The Mills & Boon team