Julie Powell, who turned her popular cooking blog, The Julie/Julia Project, into the bestselling memoir Julie & Julia, has died at 49, the New York Times reports. The cause of death was cardiac arrest.

Powell, a native of Austin, Texas, worked in public development when she started her blog, with the aim of cooking every recipe in Julia Child’s legendary Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

After the blog became popular, Powell turned it into Julie & Julia, published in 2005 by Little, Brown. A critic for Kirkus wrote of the book, “Indulge in this memoir of marrow and butter, knowing there is always a bitter green to balance the taste.”

A film partially based on the memoir, directed by Nora Ephron and starring Meryl Streep and Amy Adams, was released in 2009. Powell wrote a second book, Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession, which was published the same year.

News of Powell’s death was met with shock on social media. The account for Smitten Kitchen, a cooking blog run by Deb Perelman, tweeted, “I was shocked to learn this morning of the passing of Julie Powell, the original food blogger. Cooking through Julia Child’s books, she made Child relevant to a new generation, and wrote about cooking in a fresh, conversational, this-is-my-real life tone that was rare back then.”

And journalist Molly Templeton wrote, “I remember with alarming clarity what it felt like to find Julie Powell's blog in the mid-2000s, when I was bored and frustrated and not writing what I wanted to; she made things feel possible in a way I had not seen them before. I’m so sad about this news.”

Michael Schaub, a journalist and regular contributor to NPR, lives near Austin, Texas.