A Storied Recipe: Kanelbullar is an Artist Project exploring and documenting a family favourite and tracking its variations through three countries (Canada, USA and Sweden) and three families and is a collaboration between three artists, Barbara Brown, Liz Nilsson and Adriana Ciocci.

A Storied Recipe: Kanelbullar is the result of Alchemy 2018: an international artist-led residency devoted to exploring the synergy between artistic practice and cooking and the sharing of locally grown food within a community setting. Twelve participants gathered in the summer of 2018 in the rural setting of Prince Edward County in Ontario, Canada to explore, create and cook together. I arrived at the residency with the idea of a book project based on gathering recipes and documenting the various cooks and the dishes they made. 

Each evening at the residency all the participants gathered to enjoy a meal together. I soon realized my ambition to document all the meals and the recipes was too big. Akin to eating too much, such an undertaking was too grand for our time together. So, I settled on documenting one recipe and gathering the surrounding stories and images and set to making this book. A Storied Recipe: Kanelbullar book project fermented after our time in the residency and has given rise to furthering international friendships.

On the occasion of an open-house for the community, two of the resident artist/cooks discovered a common culinary heritage and undertook to make A Storied Recipe: Kanelbullar or Cinnamon Buns. As these little gems also form part of my family story, I was keen to document the process and story of this family favourite. The result is a recipe book containing only one recipe but in three variations with accompanying photographs and stories.

It is my hope that this book will inspire younger folk to seek out older ones, to learn together how to create family food legacies. 

Bon appétit!

Barbara Brown

To order a copy click the link: A Storied Recipe: Kanelbullar