Mary Poppins in the Kitchen: Zodiac Chocolate Cake

I collect Cookbooks, special cookbooks. Well Chocolate Cookbooks, of course, but I also collect Mystery, Art, Music, Movie, TV and 'Literary' Cookbooks. This should come as no surprise to anyone who reads my blog.

I recently did a post about Killer Cookbooks on my other blog Mystery Fanfare. I'll probably repost it on this blog in the future. In the meantime, I thought I'd begin a new feature here on DyingforChocolate.com: A Different Chocolate Recipe every week from my collection of 'Tie-in" Cookbooks. Well, that's my plan, and we'll see how it goes.

So today I thought I'd start with one of my favorite characters: Mary Poppins. She of the 'book' not the film.  The author P.L. Travers (1899-1996) was a drama critic, travel essayist, reviewer, lecturer, and novelist. She wrote several other books for children and adults, but it is for the character of Mary Poppins that she is best remembered. She lived in London, England. Mary Shepard (1910-2000) illustrated P.L. Travers's Mary Poppins books for more than fifty years. She also lived in London.

Mary Poppins in the Kitchen, as you see from the illustration, is A Cookery Book with a Story. Reading the story in this volume took me back to my childhood. I didn't live in England, but I lived in a rich fantasy world where I expected Mary Poppins to alight at any time to organize the nursery and start cooking!

This recipe for Zodiac Cake is the only chocolate dish in the Cookbook! Imagine...