Buttercup is an “impossibly lovely” milkmaid living on a farm in the fictional city of Florin. There is a farm boy named Westley who loves her, and says so with every utterance of his famous quote “As you wish.” He travels to America to obtain a fortune so he can marry her, but his ship is attacked by the Dread Pirate Roberts, said to kill all his enemies. The evil Prince Humperdinck must find a bride and coerces the heartbroken, loveless Buttercup to marry him, as an alternative to death. An avid, cruel hunter and greedy prince, he plans to have her killed and blame the neighboring country of Guilder so he can go to war against them and feed his bloodlust. So he hires a Turk giant, a Spanish sword master, and their leader, a humpbacked Sicilian who considers himself the most brilliant man alive. This is the story of the Princess Bride, which the author insists was told to him by his father when he was a sick child. “This is my favorite book in all the world, though I have never read it.” Now, he claims, he is given the privilege of traveling to “Florin” to create an abridged version, “the ‘good parts’ version. S. Morgenstern wrote it. And my father read it to me. And now I give it to you.” The Princess Bride is a hilarious, fictionalized autobiographical account of abridging a “classic” fairytale about “fencing, fighting, torture, poison, true love, hate, revenge, giants, hunters, bad men, good men, beautifulest ladies, snakes, spiders, beasts, chases, escapes, lies, truths, passion and miracles.”
Perfect for fans of:
- Fairy Tales
- Author autobiographies
- Playwright autobiographies
- Action and adventure fiction
- Battles of wits
- Comical love stories
- Humorous fiction
- Sword fights
- Breaking the fourth wall
- (probably not for fans of feminism, as the fake “author” is chauvinistic, and Wesley is almost verbally abusive)
The Recipe:
“The year Buttercup was born, the most beautiful woman in the world was a French scullery maid named Annette.” The Duchess for whom she worked turned their palace into “a candy castle. Everywhere you looked, bonbons. There were piles of chocolate-covered mints…baskets of chocolate-covered nougats.”
Buttercup was given cocoa to drink after the news that Westley’s ship had been captured by the Dread Pirate Roberts’ ship Revenge.
At Miracle Max’s, his witch wife Valerie was cooking hot chocolate over the coals, and she used the guise of being out of anymore to coerce her husband to take on the job of resurrecting Westley. Chocolate was one of his favorites, right after cough drops. Valeria also usually gives the resurrection pills “a coating of chocolate at the last minute; it makes them look a lot better.” (In the film, she says it makes them go down easier).
For these reasons, I developed a recipe for:
Chocolate Cupcakes with Chocolate Frosting
Chocolate Cupcakes with Chocolate Frosting
Ingredients:
For the cupcakes:
- 1/4 cup granulated sugar
- 1/2 cup brown sugar
- 1/2 cup canola oil or melted butter
- 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
- 1/2 cup unsweetened dark cocoa powder
- 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp salt (if using vegetable oil, none if using salted butter)
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 2/3 cup heavy cream or sour cream or Greek yogurt at room temperature
- 2 large eggs at room temperature
- 1/2 cup hot, freshly brewed coffee
For the frosting:
- 3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) salted butter at room temperature
- 3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
- 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 3-5 tbsp milk
- 1/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips
- 1 tbsp salted butter
Instructions:
- For the Cupcakes: Preheat the oven to 325° F. In the bowl of a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, cream together the brown and white sugars with the oil on medium-high speed for one minute. In a separate bowl, stir together the flour, cocoa powder, salt, baking powder, and baking soda. Drop the mixer to the lowest speed and slowly add the flour mix, followed by the heavy cream, two teaspoons of vanilla, and the eggs.
- Allow to combine for about two minutes, until the wet and dry ingredients seem fully incorporated. Stop the mixer to scrape down the insides of the bowl with a rubber spatula if anything is sticking to the walls of the bowl. While mixing on the lowest speed, slowly and carefully pour in the hot coffee a little at a time. When all of it is in the bowl, stop the mixer, scoop any batter from the bottom of the bowl to the top, and mix for two minutes at medium speed. Scoop into paper-lined cupcake tins a little over half-way full, or about 2/3 full each.
- Bake for 18-20 minutes, or until you can insert a toothpick into the center of a cupcake and it comes out clean of any raw batter or crumbs (the centers should be gooey from the melted chocolate). Makes 12-14 cupcakes.
- For the Frosting: In a small microwave-safe bowl, melt the chocolate chips with the tablespoon of butter for 10 seconds at a time. Stir between times. It should be melted after half to one minute (mine was done after 30 seconds total, in 10-second increments). In your stand mixer with the whisk attachment, whip the 1 1/2 sticks of butter with the cocoa powder on medium speed for one minute. Stop the mixer and add half the powdered sugar, plus the vanilla extract. Start the mixer off slowly, then as the powdered sugar disappears, add three tablespoons of milk and increase the speed to medium-low. Slowly and carefully add the remaining powdered sugar a little at a time. Stop the mixer to scrape down the insides of the bowl with a rubber spatula, and pour in all the melted chocolate from your small bowl. Mix on medium speed for another minute, then check the consistency. If it’s too thick, add another tablespoon or two of milk. Spoon frosting into a piping bag with a tip and pipe onto cupcakes that have cooled at least 15 minutes. I piped the frosting really high (as pictured), so if you choose not to, there may be extra frosting.
Discussion Questions
- What is the name of the fake author of The Princess Bride? In what ways did Goldman “sell it” and “break the fourth wall” to pretend this was the real author of a real novel? Did any of them convince you?
- How was Goldman actually the “guy who called his own new book a classic before it was published and anyone had a chance to read it”? Did he predict this accurately, about the book or movie?
- Morgenstern wasn’t setting out to write a children’s book, but rather “a satiric history of his country and the decline of the monarchy in Western civilization.” What “evidence” does Goldman give of this throughout the book, often in boring, long details left out of his “good parts” version of the book?
- Adela, another of the “most beautiful women in the world” became concerned with growing older and thought “If I’m not perfect, well what else is there?” How does immense beauty lend itself to vanity and become part of the identity of a person? What else is there, to answer her question, or should there be, to a person, besides beauty? What eventually becomes of beauty, necessitating the importance of something else in a person’s life? Why do some people (especially celebrities) seem unable to grasp this concept?
- What did the Farm Boy always reply to Buttercup? Where did he live?
- What are some of the confusing, contradictory time period elements of the novel—”before Europe but after Paris,”or “before glamour when glamour is an ancient concept” (but it was actually invented in the 18th century), etc.—and what might be the point of there being so many? What were the most humorous to you? (my favorite is “This was after taxes. But everything is after taxes. Taxes were here even before stew.”)
- What did Westley say whenever Buttercup ordered him around, saying “Farm Boy do this”? And what did the phrase he said mean?
- What did Prince Humperdinck look like and how did he walk?
- What was the Zoo of Death and what did it contain? Why was the fifth level empty?
- What was the country consistently at war with Florin (against whom had been the “Olive War,” and the “Tuna Fish Discrepancy”)? What went wrong with Princess Noreena of that country?
- What does it say about the character of Humperdinck that all he cared about having in a wife was “someone who is so beautiful that when you see her you say ‘Wow, that Humperdinck must be some kind of fella to have a wife like that.’”?
- What was funny about Buttercup’s refusal of marriage to Humperdinck? Why did she refuse him so many times and what made her finally agree?
- How did the Man in Black make it up the Cliffs of Insanity?
- Who was Yeste, and what arrangement did he have with Domingo, Inigo’s father?
- What happened to Domingo Montoya and why?
- What did Buttercup mean by saying “I died that day” on the day she heard Westley died?
- What did Buttercup mean by “Everybody always talks about how beautiful I am. I’ve got a mind, Westley. Talk about that”?
- Why was the following a profound revelation for Bill Goldman: “Life isn’t fair, Bill. We tell our children that it is, but it’s a terrible thing to do. It’s not only a lie, it’s a cruel lie. Life is not fair, and it never has been, and it’s never going to be”? What do you think about the statement?
- Which pain seems like it should have been worse for Westley, “the physical, or the mental anguish of having freedom offered if the truth is told, then telling it and being thought a liar”? How were they both the wrong answer, though Westley hid it? How did he “take himself away”? Is that an effective strategy for dealing with certain struggles or torment?
- How was it that Westley could endure the early stages of his torture without suffering at all, his screaming merely a performance? What changed all that?
- What types of creatures in the Zoo of Death actually frightened the giant Turk, Fezzik? The promise of what from Inigo gave Fezzik the burst of energy he needed to get free of the strangling snake’s grasp?
- How would you like to believe the book ended?
Similar Reads:
Other books by William Goldman include The Temple of Gold, the memoir Adventures in the Screen Trade, Your Turn to Curtsy, My Turn to Bow, Soldier in the Rain, The Thing of It Is…, Marathon Man, Magic, Control, and more. He also wrote many screenplays, including one for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and for The Stepford Wives, as mentioned in the introductions to this book.
Authors and books within this book mentioned by the fictional teacher Antonia Roginski were Stevenson, Cooper’s The Deerslayer, Sir Walter Scott, Dumas’ The Three Musketeers, Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and the short story “The Lady or the Tiger.”
Cary Elwes wrote an autobiographical account of the film called As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of the Princess Bride.
The writing style and sometimes deprecating, snarky humor of Neil Gaiman is similar to Goldman’s. His most similar novel is probably Stardust, about a boy who seeks a star for his beloved and learns piracy, swashbuckling, and how to defeat an evil witch to save the woman he comes to love, as well as a kingdom.
Another boy who longed for a girl he lived near and whose father he worked for is one aspect of another hilarious novel filled with odd, eccentric characters: I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith.
For more swashbuckling hero stories, you can read any of the following classic novels: The Count of Monte Cristo (which also has revenge and redemption elements) or Les Miserables, both by Victor Hugo, or about King Arthur in Le Morte D’Arthur by Thomas Malory.
Notable Quotes:
“This is my favorite book in all the world, though I have never read it.”
“Who can know when his world is going to change? Who can tell before it happens, that every prior experience, all the years, were a preparation for…nothing.”
“Here’s the ‘good parts’ version. S. Morgenstern wrote it. And my father read it to me. And now I give it to you. What you do with it will be of more than passing interest to us all.”
“The beef-witted featherbrained rattleskulled clodpated dim-domed noodle-noggined sapheaded lunk-knobbed boys.”
“This was after taxes. But everything is after taxes. Taxes were here even before stew.”
“I love you. I know this must come as something of a surprise, since all I’ve ever done is scorn you and degrade you and taunt you, but I have loved you for several hours now, and every second, more. I thought an hour ago that I loved you more than any woman has ever loved a man, but a half hour after that I knew that what I felt before was nothing compared to what I felt then. But ten minutes after that, I understood that my previous love was a puddle compared to the high seas before a storm.”
“Do I love you? My God, if your love were a grain of sand, mine would be a universe of beaches.”
“I have stayed these years in my hovel because of you. I have taught myself languages because of you. I have made my body strong because I thought you might be pleased by a strong body. I have lived my life with only the prayer that some sudden dawn you might glance in my direction. I have not known a moment in years when the sight of you did not send my heart careening against my ribcage. I have not known a night when your visage did not accompany me to sleep. There has not been a morning when you did not flutter behind my waking eyelids.”
“I’ve been saying it so long to you, you just wouldn’t listen. Every time you said ‘Farm Boy do this’ you thought I was answering ‘As you wish’ but that’s only because you were hearing wrong. ‘I love you’ was what it was, but you never heard.”
“She had entered her room as just an impossibly lovely girl. The woman who emerged was a trifle thinner, a great deal wiser, an ocean sadder. This one understood the nature of pain, and beneath the glory of her features, there was character, and a sure knowledge of suffering.”
“Once he was determined, once he had focused on an object, the Prince was relentless. He never tired, never wavered, neither ate nor slept.”
“The Prince constructed it [the Zoo of Death] in the hopes of someday finding something worthy, something as dangerous and fierce and powerful as he was.”
“Just as the chapters on whaling in Moby-Dick can be omitted by all but the most punishment-loving readers, so the packing scenes that Morgenstern details here are really best left alone.”
“ I want someone who is so beautiful that when you see her you say ‘Wow, that Humperdinck must be some kind of fella to have a wife like that.”
“Morgenstern hated doctors, and was always bitter when they outlawed miracle men from working in Florin proper.”
“This was long after hairdressers; in truth, ever since there have been women, there have been hairdressers, Adam being the first, though the King James scholars do their very best to muddy this point.”
“Don’t expect too much from life, Buttercup told herself as she rode along. Learn to be satisfied with what you have.”
“People are always thinking I’m so stupid because I’m big and strong and soemtimes I drool a little when I get excited.”
“You’re an enemy of art and I pity your ignorance.”
“Everybody always talks about how beautiful I am. I’ve got a mind, Westley. Talk about that.”
“It will all be happy at the end. Consider: a little over three years ago, you were a milkmaid and I was a farm boy. Now you are almost a queen and I rule uncontested on the water. Surely, such individuals were never intended to die in a Fire Swamp….because we’re together, hand in hand, in love.”
“Life isn’t fair, Bill. We tell our children that it is, but it’s a terrible thing to do. It’s not only a lie, it’s a cruel lie. Life is not fair, and it never has been, and it’s never going to be.”
“It’s not so much that there’s nothing he can’t do; it’s more that he can do it all better than anybody else can do it.”
“He had felt no pain, not once, none. He had closed his eyes and taken his brain away. That was the secret. If you could take your brain away from the present and send it to where it could contemplate skin like wintry cream…”
“Beloved: I think I love you now, and I pray you only give me the chance to spend my life in constant proving. I could spend my life in the Fire Swamp and sing from morn til night if you were by me. I could spend eternity sinking down through snow sand if your hand held my hand.”
“…just as he knew that the sun was obliged to rise each morning…so he knew that Buttercup was obliged to spend her love on him. Gold was inviting, and so was royalty, but they could not match the fever in his heart, and sooner or later she would have to catch it. She had less choice than the sun.”
“I want you to know one thing before tomorrow night happens to you, and I mean it: you are the strongest, the most brilliant and brave, the most altogether worthy creature it has been my privilege to meet, and I feel almost sad that, for the purposes of my book and future pain scholars, I must destroy you.”
“I say you are a coward and you are; I think you only hunt to reassure yourself that you are not what you are: the weakest thing to ever walk the earth. He will come for me and then we will be gone, and you will be helpless for all your hunting, because Westley and I are judged by the bond of love and you cannot track that, not with a thousand bloodhounds, and you cannot break it, not with a thousand swords.”
“Someone would have to keep his wits, and Inigo has assumed automatically that since Fezzik had so few, he would find retaining them not all that difficult.”
“I am Inigo Montoya and still the Wizard; come for me.”
“I am Inigo Montoya and I do not accept defeat.”
“I am the Dread Pirate Roberts and there will be no survivors.”
“Mawidge is a dweam wiffin a dweam…The dweam of wuv wapped wiffin the gweater dweam of everwasting west. Eternity is our fwiend, wemember that, and wuv wiw fowwow you however.”
“Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”
“To the death.” “No, to the pain.”
“Your ears you keep, so that every shriek of every child at seeing your hideousness will be yours to cherish—every babe that weeps in fear at your approach, ever woman that cries out ‘Dear God, what is that thing?’ will reverberate forever in your perfect ears. That is what ‘to the pain’ means. It means that I leave you to live in anguish, in freakish misery until you can stand it no more; so there you have it, pig, there you know, you miserable vomitous mass, and I say this now, and live or die, it’s up to you: Drop your sword!”
“I really do think that love is the best thing in the world, except for cough drops. But I also have to say, for the umpty-umpth time, that life isn’t fair. It’s just fairer than death.”
© 2020 Amanda Lorenzo