Toad Season is a book that discusses a lot of heavy topics, while balancing them with humor and lightheartedness. It talks about alcoholism, depression, self-harming, and assault. It talks about getting help, growing from who you used to be, and finding your person (the right one, and all of the wrong ones before).

It’s about being a woman in the military.

It’s about being lgbt and serving during Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

And it’s about acceptance.

When you’re a mom, you’re always busy.

As a working mom of two, Austrie doesn’t have much time to bake, so I wanted to make something quick and easy, that still had a lot of meaning.

Which meant box cake mix and pre-made frosting.

I wanted to make cupcakes, too, since the book is composed of 8 essays.

Austrie suggested incorporating a rainbow, since the book is centered around her accepting herself as a lesbian.

Naturally, I loved that idea.

But the book is also about hiding who you are from everyone around you.

And it’s about finding love.

So I wanted to incorporate a rainbow somehow, while still having the cupcakes look clean and uniform to represent her time in the military.

I decided to take the practice of Surprise-Inside cakes (having colored shapes that are revealed when you cut (or bite) into the cakes) and use it on these cupcakes. I wanted to use a heart to represent her search for love.

I settled on a white cake, not only because they look clean, but because the white batter takes food coloring better than vanilla batter does. The red actually looks red, and the blue looks blue., instead of the red looking orange and the blue looking green.

I also decided to use a plain vanilla frosting to keep the cupcakes looking clean. It also ensured that the rainbow center really stood out.

Let’s get to the good stuff, though!

M: What part of the writing process did you enjoy most, and were you surprised by it?

AM: I was surprised by how much support I received from my readers. I had family and friends from all over the world reading my book. My baby. This thing I had stressed over for so long and everyone was so positive. It made everything I did at UB (The University of Baltimore) feel validated.

The process itself was very stressful for me. I changed my thesis in the middle of our final year at UB and had to scramble to make sure all the essays would work well together.

M: What made you change your thesis?

AM: I love all genres of literature and, while I was attending UB, I took fiction, memoir, and poetry. I waited until my final year at UB to take the poetry workshops and I fell in love. I explored some feelings that were unresolved in my heart and knew that I needed to write more about them—as painful as that can be. That exploration caused me to change my thesis.

M: I’m definitely glad that you did. You touch on incredibly deep, some even taboo, subjects, like being in the military during Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. What was it like to write about that?

AM: It was difficult to write about because I had so many pent up emotions. I had to continuously remind myself that I was writing an essay and not a diary entry where I could go on a rant.

M: Was there a special method you used to keep yourself in the zone while you were writing, or did you go back and narrow the focus of your writing during the editing process?

AM: A few of my essays were originally poems that I wrote in the poetry workshops. A lot of the emotions were present in the poems, so I expanded upon them to create full essays with more of a story arc. But I definitely narrowed my focus during the editing process.

M: Are you working on anything new?

AM: I have written one thing since graduation: a poem. Otherwise, I’ve been teaching English and Communications full-time since I graduated from UB, and have been busy grading student essays and speeches. I always dream of having the time and space to commit to finally putting everything down on paper, it just hasn’t happened yet.

But I have been reading. I read a lot.

M: That’s great, though! Are you still selling your book?

AM: I am. You can buy a copy on my website, austriemartinez.squarespace.com

Hidden Heart Cupcakes

-1 box white cake mix (I used Duncan Hines because it was the cheapest)

-3 eggs

-1 c water

-1/3 c + 1 tbsp vegetable oil

-box of assorted food coloring

1. In a medium bowl, whisk together the eggs, water, and vegetable oil.

2. Slowly add the cake mix. Whisk after each addition to make sure your batter is smooth.

3. Set aside 5 cups/ mugs/ bowls. Each color will get their own bowl: red, orange, yellow, green, blue. I just grabbed whatever was closest.

4. Using a dry measuring cup, add 1/3 cup of the batter to each of the 5 bowls from step 3.

5. Whisk 14 drops of food coloring into each of the five bowls.

• Red: 14 drops of red

• Orange: 5 drops of red and 9 drops of yellow

• Yellow: 14 drops of yellow

• Green: 14 drops of green

• Blue: 14 drops of blue

6. Spray a 5x7 inch pan with a cooking spray, then place a sheet of parchment paper on the bottom of the pan. The parchment paper should lay flat on the bottom, and it shouldn’t go up the sides. I usually measure the parchment paper inside the pan before using the cooking spray, to ensure it fits properly.

7. Cut the very tip off of one corner of 5 Ziploc bags. These are going to be your piping bags.

8. Fill each Ziploc with the colored batters.

9. This is the hardest part—you have to pipe the colors into the pan in thin enough lines that you’ll be able to see all of the colors in the heart. The picture below is how I did it. Make sure you don’t make them too thin, though! You want this mini-rainbow-cake to have a bit of thickness to it, so you should use all of your colored batter.

10. Bake this mini-cake at 350 degrees for 9-11 minutes.

11. Let the cake cool, then stick it in the freezer for 20 minutes—the colder it is, the easier it will be to cut the hearts out. They’ll also have neater edges.

12. Using a heart-shaped mini-cookie cutter (I got mine at Michael’s and it was in a box of 5 mini-cookie cutters), cut pieces of the rainbow cake out. Obviously, you can do this however you’d like to, but I chose to try to get as many full rainbows as I could. I couldn’t get all of them to be perfect, but they were still really cute.

13. Line a cupcake pan with 8 cupcake liners (you should have enough batter for about that many cupcakes, which is all kinds of convenient: it’s just enough cupcakes for a family of four, and there were 8 essays in this book).

14. Scoop the leftover white cake batter into the liners, filling each one halfway.

15. Stick the cake hearts into the center of each cupcake, and make sure you remember which way you put it in, because you’re not going to be able to tell once the cake rises.

16. Spoon a little extra batter over the top of each heart, covering them completely.

17. Bake the cupcakes at 350 degrees for 16-18 minutes. Remember: If you’re checking with a toothpick, don’t check the center—the heart was done before you put the cupcakes in.

18. Let the cupcakes cool when they’re done, then frost with the icing of your choice.

Give a cupcake to someone you love and tell them to have a piece of your heart.

Or just eat them yourself. That’s always fun, too.