Happy Wednesday, spooky friends! Can you believe we’re three days away from Halloween? This month seriously went by in a blink. To help us count down to Halloween, Hailey Piper is here with a recommended horror read and one of my favorite desserts! Hailey also has a wonderful story in Not All Monsters, which was just released yesterday!

Hailey Piper is the author of The Possession of Natalie Glasgow, An Invitation to Darkness, and Benny Rose, the Cannibal King. She’s a member of the HWA, and her short fiction pops up in Daily Science Fiction, The Arcanist, Flash Fiction Online, Year’s Best Hardcore Horror, and elsewhere. She lives with her wife in Maryland, where they sometimes bake monstrosities of the living dead. Find her on Twitter via @HaileyPiperSays or at www.haileypiper.com.

From Hailey: My new cosmic horror novella The Worm and His Kings releases on November 15 from Off Limits Press! A swirl of shadowy monsters, creepy cultists, and a woman trying to find her missing girlfriend in a subterranean world beneath 1990 Manhattan. Paperback pre-orders are up at the Off Limits Press site.

Tell us what horror book you chose to highlight and why it’s a favorite of yours:

I chose White Is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi as my Delicious Treats book. In some ways, it’s about a troubled young woman Miranda Silver and her family, but it’s also about the terrible Silver House where they live and operate a bed-and-breakfast, and it’s also about another young woman, Ore Lind, with troubles of her own. But it’s also very much about sicknesses that spread and linger in families, racism as a legacy. White Is for Witching demands close attention; it is a dense, beautiful, haunting novel.

What did you decide to make to pair with the book, and what from the book inspired your delicious treat?

Warning: my treat offering isn’t exactly deep! In the novel, Miranda suffers from pica, a condition that compels a person to eat inedible things such as plastic or dirt. Miranda’s number one go-to pica craving is chalk. To that end, my wife and I made lemon bars coated in white confectioner’s sugar. Cut thin as shown here, they’re slivers of chalk that are perfectly safe to eat!

Can you share the recipe or a link to the recipe?

For this recipe, you’ll need:
CRUST
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup butter, softened
1/4 cup confectioner’s sugar

In a bowl, combine flour, butter, and confectioner’s sugar. Pat into an 8×8 baking pan. Bake at 350 degrees F for 20 minutes.

FILLING
2 large eggs
1 cup sugar
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 teaspoon grated lemon zest

Beat eggs, and then add other ingredients. Whip until frothy and pour into the cooked crust’s pan. Bake 25 minutes. Dust the top with confectioner’s sugar (much or little as desired). Let cool for 1 hour in the fridge for ease of cutting.

Thank you for having me, Sara!

Thank you so much, Hailey! I already want to make these as we plunge deeper into these wintery months. Lemon bars feel perfect for the season.

Check out submission guidelines here if you want to contribute to Delicious Horror! See you all tomorrow with another very delicious post.