Kim, Author at Cinnamon and Sugar

Chicken Gabriella

The newest release in the Dinner Club Mystery series by Linda Wiken, ROUX THE DAY, brings the reader back to the table for a delicious second installment! The protagonist, J.J. Tanner, has gained confidence both in her job working as an event planner at Make It Happen, and cooking for the dinner club, Culinary Capers, that she belongs to. I liked the premise of the story with J.J. working at a casino fund-raising event for a non-profit charity aboard a cruise boat on Champlain Lake. The setting provides a glamorous backdrop for the murder along with a limited pool of suspects…of which J.J. finds herself in. The beginning felt a bit slow to me with the author cautiously doling out clues. However, it wasn’t long before twists and turns in the plot had me turning pages to read “just one more chapter” late into the night.

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The book also captures the spirit of friendship J.J. has with her friends, especially with Connor Mac. Though she had dated him a few times, J.J. believes in him and wants to clear his name when he becomes a murder suspect. Even after finding out that he has been hiding several things from her, she remains loyal. J.J. also is quick to help out her friends when they need assistance and the author creates a nice subplot within the story involving thievery at her good friend’s cafe, Cups ‘N’ Roses.

Linda Wiken also creates a close bond between the members of the Culinary Capers group along with some amazing dishes that they share! A specific cookbook is chosen each month by the host of that particular month’s get-together. The cookbook highlighted in ROUX THE DAY is The Mystery Writers of America Cookbook… I’ll admit, I’m feeling the need to purchase it now! Linda has included several recipes at the back of her book; some of them are her own and others are shared by the authors who contributed to The Mystery Writers of America Cookbook. Linda Wiken and Sara Paretsky (whose newest VI Warshawski novel is Fallout) have graciously allowed me to share Sara’s recipe for Chicken Gabriella. The chicken is flambéed with Armagnac, then braised in a flavorful wine-based broth and finished with a handful of Calimyrna figs. The resulting dish is tender, moist chicken. I served it over wide egg noodles to soak up the super flavorful sauce.

Amazon Synopsis

In the latest mystery from the author of Toasting Up Trouble, the Culinary Capers dinner club is back in business when a charity casino event makes a real killing…

Event planner Jennifer “J.J.” Tanner is planning a cruise ship casino night—and she’s really going overboard. She even arranged for radio DJ Connor Mac and TV personality Miranda Myers to help the good times roll. But the party comes to a screeching halt when Miranda is found dead on the main deck…

With a boatload of suspects, the police focus in on J.J., who, though recently linked with Connor, never knew he was once engaged—to Miranda. With Half Moon Bay’s gossip mill running full tilt, J.J. turns to her fellow dinner club members to help fish for clues and keep herself out of hot water…

A special thanks to Linda Wiken, for providing a copy of ROUX THE DAY for one lucky winner! Contest ends Thursday, March 30, 2017 at 11:59 pm PST, and is limited to U.S. and Canadian residents only. Please use the Rafflecopter box located below the recipe to enter. The winner will be announced on this page and on Cinnamon & Sugar’s Facebook page, as well as notified by email (so check your spam folder!)

Chicken Gabriella

Ingredients

Enough olive oil to cover the bottom of a skillet, plus 1 tablespoon
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 fryer chicken, cut into pieces
1/4 cup Armagnac
1 cup pinot grigio (or other dry white wine)
6 Calimyrna figs, cut into quarters

Instructions

Coat the bottom of a skillet with olive oil and heat for about 30 seconds.
Add garlic and sauté until golden brown, stirring constantly.
Remove garlic and reserve.
Add the additional 1 tablespoon olive oil to the skillet.
Turn heat to high, quickly add chicken, and sear each piece on both sides.
Remove the skillet from the heat.
Pour the Armagnac into the skillet and flame it with a match. (Light the Armagnac the instant you put it in the pan or it will not flame.)
Return the pan to the heat.
Once the Armagnac has cooked off, add the pinot grigio and simmer the chicken, covered on low heat until tender, approximately 30 to 45 minutes.
Add the figs and sautéed garlic for the last 10 minutes of cooking.
Season to taste with salt and pepper.
Serve with a green salad and a crisp, cold white wine.
Yield: 4 servings

Recipe shared with permission granted by Sara Paretsky, whose newest VI Warshawski novel is Fallout.

My Tips

If you can't find Armagnac, you can substitute Cognac.
After cooking chicken, remove from skillet and keep warm. If the sauce seems too thin, mix 1 teaspoon cornstarch with 2 teaspoons cold water in a small cup. Whisk the mixture into the sauce and bring to a simmer. Cook for 1 minute, stirring constantly, then remove from heat. Serve with the chicken.

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Sullo Scio – Rustic Italian Soup

WHEN THE GRITS HIT THE FAN, book three in the Country Store Mysteries, by Maddie Day (aka Edith Maxwell) is another solid addition to a terrific series! Robbie Jordan, owner of Pans ‘N Pancakes, is a believable and likable protagonist. I enjoyed her down-to-earth attitude and her willingness to jump in and get whatever needed to be done, done… be it knocking down walls to remodel her building; or exploring a tunnel even though she’s very claustrophobic; or solving a murder when a good friend is the suspect. The author also makes sure Robbie puts in the time required to running her restaurant, instead of letting her co-chef and friend, Danna, handle it all. This small detail added authenticity to the plot, along with the Indiana rural colloquialisms that are sprinkled throughout the book. My in-laws lived in Illinois, ten miles from the Indiana border, so I’m very familiar with the small towns, shops, and mannerisms of the people living there and Maddie Day nails both the setting and the characters.

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While the story takes place during winter with lots of snow and ice, I always avoided visiting the Midwest during that season. I’m definitely a fair-weather Southern California type of gal but Maddie paints such a vivid picture with her words I could feel the cold and the terror Robbie experiences upon finding a dead body in an ice fishing hole. The murder mystery is well plotted with a sub-plot revolving around items Robbie finds hidden in the walls of her shop as she knocks them down to remodel. The author expertly weaves them together to reach a very suspenseful and exciting conclusion that will have you on the edge of your seat!

Running Pans ‘N Pancakes, Robbie is always cooking up delicious dishes that will have you drooling while reading. Fortunately, the author includes several recipes at the back of the book. Given the cold setting of WHEN THE GRITS HIT THE FAN, I was craving a bowl of soup by the time I finished the book. Maddie has graciously allowed me to share her recipe for Sullo Scio, a warm and nourishing bowl of comfort! Hailing from the Pisa region of Italy, this dish is easy to make using simple ingredients but the results are very satisfying. I had trouble finding tagliatelle pasta so I substituted fresh fettuccine noodles and when my husband asked, “Where’s the meat?” I added some shredded rotisserie chicken to his bowl… but I personally didn’t think it was necessary as this soup is filling as written. Sullo Scio will become a regular in our household on cold, chilly days!

Amazon Synopsis

Despite the bitter winter in South Lick, Indiana, business is still hot at Robbie Jordan’s restaurant. But when another murder rattles the small town, can Robbie defrost the motives of a cold-blooded killer?

Before she started hosting dinners for Indiana University’s Sociology Department at Pans ‘N Pancakes, Robbie never imagined scholarly meetings could be so hostile. It’s all due to Professor Charles Stilton, who seems to thrive on heated exchanges with his peers and underlings, and tensions flare one night after he disrespects Robbie’s friend, graduate student Lou. So when Robbie and Lou go snowshoeing the next morning and find the contentious academic frozen under ice, police suspect Lou might have killed him after their public tiff. To prove her friend’s innocence, Robbie is absorbing local gossip about Professor Stilton’s past and developing her own thesis on the homicide—even if that means stirring up terrible danger for herself along the way . . .

A special thanks to Maddie Day, for providing a copy of WHEN THE GRITS HIT THE FAN for one lucky winner! Contest ends Monday, March 27, 2017 at 11:59 pm PST, and is limited to U.S. residents only. Please use the Rafflecopter box located below the recipe to enter. The winner will be announced on this page and on Cinnamon & Sugar’s Facebook page, as well as notified by email (so check your spam folder!)

Sullo Scio

Ingredients

4 fat cloves of garlic, peeled and minced
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon minced fresh rosemary
1 large can whole tomatoes, rough chopped in the can
1 15-ounce can chick peas (garbanzo beans), drained and rinsed
1 quart chicken stock
1 package tagliatelle (if you can't find, substitute fettuccini)
1 teaspoon kosher salt
Black pepper to taste
Parmesan, freshly grated

Instructions

In a medium saucepan, sauté the garlic in the olive oil until soft. Do not brown.
Add the rosemary, tomatoes, salt and pepper to taste, and chick peas.
Add the stock and bring to a boil.
Add the tagliatelle and cook until al dente according to the directions on the package.
Serve hot with fresh grated Parmesan.

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Scallops with Maple-Glazed Bacon

Last year I heard a lot of buzz about the new Bel MacGrath Mystery series by Maggie McConnon and was intrigued. My great-grandmother immigrated from Ireland to America so I’m drawn to everything Irish and loved the premise of the story. When I had a chance to read BEL OF THE BRAWL, the second book in the series, I jumped at the chance! Even though I still haven’t read the first book (I need to correct that soon!), this second book was easily read as a stand-alone. There is just enough backstory to help the reader know what’s going on but not so much that it detracts from the pace of the book. BEL OF THE BRAWL starts out with a flashback to a dark mystery surrounding Belfast ‘Bel’ McGrath the summer after graduating high school. She can’t remember what happened the night her best friend disappeared and became “the girl who never came home”. Bel moved away from Fosters Landing and moved on with her life, becoming a chef.

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Fifteen years later Bel is back home and working as head chef for her family’s Irish wedding venue, Shamrock Manor, where the murder of a groom during his wedding, threatens to ruin their business. When one of their waitresses disappears with a huge sum of money belonging to her family, Bel decides she needs to get some answers. It’s not long before unsavory characters make their way to Shamrock Manor and Bel has her hands full trying to find the killer before another murder takes place. Working with her traditional Irish parents and her four brothers leads to shenanigans that had me laughing out loud at numerous scenes. While there is, at times, heart-wrenching anguish over the loss of Bel’s best friend, the author provides many humorous interludes to break up the darkness so that the reader doesn’t get overwhelmed with the tragedy. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a dark mystery, but a traditional cozy with a long unsolved disappearance theme running through it. Ms. McConnon skillfully writes the transitions so that the flow and pace of the story never lags making me want more after I devoured the very last page!

While there aren’t any recipes included with the book, there are plenty of mouth-watering mentions of food coming from Bel’s kitchen. I was inspired to create a recipe for one of the appetizers she serves at the wedding: Scallops wrapped in bacon. I added the addition of a maple soy glaze brushed on to the bacon before broiling. Besides providing a delicious flavor, the sugars add to the caramelization during broiling. While I made these as appetizers that quickly disappeared from the platter, next time I will make more and serve over steamed white rice for an entrée.

Amazon Synopsis

Bel McGrath loves her work as a wedding chef. But with her latest event set to take place at Shamrock Manor, she just can’t seem to catch a break. The Casey wedding has left her with ten thousand greenbacks in the hole, a missing staff member, and a dead groom. Now, in between Guinness beers and pub brawls, Bel must find a way to crack the case—even though what she should be cracking are eggs into the batter of the wedding cake. A good Irish girl’s work is never done. . .

What begins as local town fodder for an episode of “Wedding Gone Wild” is turning into “Gangsters with Guns.” With the Casey family spiraling out of control, and billable McGrath hours being lost by the minute, Bel is definitely in too deep. With all these shenanigans, she barely has time to obsess over her new boyfriend and her own unsolved mystery from years ago! Time is running out on getting the next couple down the aisle before the so-called luck of the Irish takes a deadly turn… Bel of the Brawl will keep Maggie McConnon’s fans, new and old, guessing.

A special thanks to the publisher, St. Martin’s Press, for providing a copy of BEL OF THE BRAWL for one lucky winner! Contest ends Thursday, March 23, 2017 at 11:59 pm PST, and is limited to U.S. residents only. Please use the Rafflecopter box located below the recipe to enter. The winner will be announced on this page and on Cinnamon & Sugar’s Facebook page, as well as notified by email (so check your spam folder!)

Scallops with Maple-Glazed Bacon

Ingredients

12 bacon slices
1/4 cup cup maple syrup
2 teaspoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon brown sugar
12 large sea scallops (dry scallops are preferable)
24 Toothpicks

Instructions

Preheat oven to 400 degrees (F).
Soak the toothpicks in water.
Cut each bacon slice in half (kitchen shears work well for this task).
Line a baking sheet with foil and arrange bacon pieces on sheet.
Bake for 7 - 8 minutes, until bacon is partially cooked but not crisp.
Remove baking sheet from oven and place bacon on paper towels to absorb grease and cool.
Discard the bacon grease on the baking sheet, and wipe excess grease with a paper towel. Set baking sheet aside.
Whisk together the maple syrup, soy sauce, and brown sugar.
Slice each scallop in half, horizontally.
Wrap each scallop in bacon and secure with a toothpick.
Place the bacon-wrapped scallops on the baking sheet and brush with maple syrup glaze.
Turn the oven on to broil and broil the scallops for 2 minutes. Be sure to carefully watch and if a piece starts getting overly brown, turn it over.
Remove pan from the oven and turn each piece over then return to oven.
Broil for another 2 to 3 minutes until bacon is done. Turn pieces over again as necessary to complete cooking.
Remove to a serving plate and serve immediately.

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Mini Strawberry Tarts

While I read a lot of entertaining books that I really enjoy, every so often a new series comes along that, from the very first page, completely captivates me. Such is the case with ELEMENTARY, SHE READ by Vicki Delaney! From her quirky, endearing protagonist, Gemma Doyle (who may or may not be distantly related to the author of Sherlock Holmes) to the setting of the quaint New England Cape Cod town, I loved it all. And I was especially enthralled with Gemma’s shop, Sherlock Holmes Bookshop and Emporium located at 222 Baker Street, adjacent to her best friend’s shop, Mrs. Hudson’s Tea Room. I wish it was a real shop because I could spend hours browsing there! Gemma is a British transplant and brings a unique inflection to the New England setting. She is amazingly perceptive at noticing the smallest of details yet is a bit of a klutz and quite forgetful at times. Gemma is also very outspoken and directly honest, which makes people around her uncomfortable at times, but she has a good heart and never does it with malice.

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While I’ve never read any Sherlock Holmes books (gasp! I can’t believe I’ve overlooked them or am even admitting it!!!) I envision Gemma as a modern day type of Holmes with her best friend, Jayne, a reluctant Watson. The pair complement each other, bringing light humor to the situations they find themselves in. The plot moves along at a fast pace and the author weaves in a priceless magazine that contains the first published Sherlock Holmes story, with a reclusive multi-millionaire, feuding heirs, and a murdered caregiver. There are numerous suspects and Gemma methodically examines them all while dealing with the town’s new detective that seems to have it in for her. The reveal neatly wraps up the threads of the story in an exciting conclusion, leaving me wanting more!

While there aren’t any recipes included with the book, Mrs. Hudson’s Tea Room provides plenty of tempting treats to whet your appetite. Vicki has graciously shared her recipe for Mini Strawberry Tarts. These delectable bites are the combination of flaky, buttery crusts providing the perfect platform for the rich, creamy custard and garnished with juicy, sweet strawberries. A delicious ending to spring and summer dinners while elegant enough to impress both family and guests!

Amazon Synopsis

Gemma Doyle, a transplanted Englishwoman, has returned to the quaint town of West London on Cape Cod to manage her Great Uncle Arthur’s Sherlock Holmes Bookshop and Emporium. The shop–located at 222 Baker Street–specializes in the Holmes canon and pastiche, and is also the home of Moriarty the cat. When Gemma finds a rare and potentially valuable magazine containing the first Sherlock Homes story hidden in the bookshop, she and her friend Jayne (who runs the adjoining Mrs. Hudson’s Tea Room) set off to find the owner, only to stumble upon a dead body.

The highly perceptive Gemma is the police’s first suspect, so she puts her consummate powers of deduction to work to clear her name, investigating a handsome rare books expert, the dead woman’s suspiciously unmoved son, and a whole family of greedy characters desperate to cash in on their inheritance. But when Gemma and Jayne accidentally place themselves at a second murder scene, it’s a race to uncover the truth before the detectives lock them up for good.

Fans of Sherlock Holmes will delight in the sleuthing duo of Gemma and Jayne in Elementary, She Read, the clever and captivating series debut by nationally bestselling author Vicki Delany.

A special thanks to Vicki Delaney for providing a hardcover copy of ELEMENTARY, SHE READ for one lucky winner! Contest ends Friday, March 17, 2017 at 11:59 pm PST, and is limited to U.S. residents only. Please use the Rafflecopter box located below the recipe to enter. The winner will be announced on this page and on Cinnamon & Sugar’s Facebook page, as well as notified by email (so check your spam folder!)

Mini Strawberry Tarts

Ingredients

Pastry

2/3 cup all-purpose flour
1/3 cup + 1 tablespoon butter
1/2 cup confectioners' sugar
1 egg yolk

Pastry cream

2 egg yolks
3 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 rounded tablespoon all-purpose flour
2/3 cup milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Topping

1 egg
1/4 cup whipping cream
1/2 teaspoon confectioners' sugar
Strawberries to decorate

Instructions

Pastry

Mix flour and confectioners' sugar together in a bowl.
Add butter and rub in gently with your fingertips to make flaky crumbs.
Add the egg yolk and gently work together with fingertips to form a dough. If the dough is too sticky, gently mix in a teaspoon of flour at a time, until it is easy to handle and forms a ball.
Very gently knead the dough 2-3 times with your hand to form a ball.
Flour work surface lightly and dust rolling pin with flour.
Gently roll out the pastry to 1/8 inch thick.
Cut into circles to fit tart pans. Use a glass of appropriate size if you don’t have a round cookie cutter.
Place the circles over the tart tin and gently push them down.
Prick the pastry cases in several places with a fork.
Freeze for at least one hour. Can be left overnight.

Pastry Cream

Using an electric mixer on medium speed, whisk the egg yolks and 1 tablespoon of the sugar together until the mixture forms ribbons when the beaters are lifted, 3 or 4 minutes.
Beat in flour to make a thick pale yellow mixture, almost a paste.
Heat the milk gently with the remaining 2 tablespoons of sugar and add 1/2 tsp of vanilla extract.
Once the sugar is completely dissolved, bring to the boil.
Very slowly, pour milk onto the egg yolk mixture, stirring all the time to avoid curdling.
Pour the mixture back into the pan and heat on low to medium. Keep stirring with a whisk as you heat it. It will quite suddenly become thick and creamy.
Reduce the heat immediately and cook for a minute or two, but keep whisking all the time.
Remove from heat and pour straight into a bowl. Cool slightly.
If not using immediately, cover with plastic wrap to keep skin from forming and refrigerate until needed.

Bake the pastry cases

Pre-heat the oven to 350F.
Bake pastry shells for 5 minutes.
While the shells are cooking, beat one egg with a fork.
Remove the tarts from the oven.
Gently brush the pastry cases with beaten egg and then put them back in the oven for 5 minutes.
When done, they should be lightly golden round the edges.
Cool for five minutes.
Remove pastry shells from the tin and cool on a baking rack.

Fill tarts

Slice strawberries if they are too large to fit neatly on the tart.
Whip 1/4 cup of cream with 1/2 teaspoon of confectioners' sugar.
Whisk pastry cream lightly. Add whipped cream to pastry cream and mix on low speed
Fill tart shells with cream.
Top with the fruit and dust with confectioners' sugar.

Tip

Use pre-made frozen tart shells or refrigerated pie dough to simplify this recipe.
If you don't have mini tart pans, regular-sized or mini muffin tins can be used.

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Apple Kootchy-Kootchy-Koo Kuchen

The second book in the adorable Emergency Dessert Squad Mystery series by Laura Bradford, SILENCE OF THE FLANS is a solid, entertaining addition! Winnie Johnson is an engaging protagonist with a smart sense of humor and witty dialog. I love her interaction with her elderly friends who are more like family to her. One of the fun things about this series is the absolutely creative, whimsical names for desserts that Winnie bakes and delivers! The author enlisted the help of a couple of people to come up with the names in this book and I think it would be so much fun to see the variety they created before narrowing it down to a few. I am not a pun creative type of person which makes me appreciate and admire those who can.

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Winnie has a heart of gold: taking in a cat that hates her (which provides some comedy) along with helping out a troubled college student, whose grandmother is dying. Even though she’s warned about the girl, she still feels like she needs to do her best to help. Winnie says, “How much trouble can 1 college girl really cause?” and from there the story takes off with a bang when another college girl drops dead after eating Winnie’s Fade to Blackberry Crisp. Becoming a suspect with her dessert the cause of the poisoning, Winnie’s business comes to a standstill. Winnie’s tenacious determination to keep her business going and prove to the town that she’s innocent propels her into tracking down the real killer. Besides being a fun, entertaining read the mystery had a good flow and I enjoyed seeing her find new suspects and then rethinking old suspects which made it believable. The reveal wrapped up the plot and subplots with a satisfactory conclusion and made me anxious to find out what happens next!

With all the adorable, pun-filled dessert names floating around the book, I am grateful that Laura provides several recipes for the reader to drool over! She has graciously allowed me to share her recipe for Apple Kootchy-Kootchy-Koo Kuchen with you. I’ve never had Kuchen before and was impressed with the yummy pastry crust, rich custard filling, and tart apples. There is just enough cinnamon to delicately flavor it without overwhelming or detracting from the overall flavor. I really like that it bakes up into a large casserole dish and serves a lot of people. Perfect for breakfast, a coffee break, or warmed up with ice cream for dessert…any way you serve it, your friends and family will thank you!

Amazon Synopsis

Baker Winnie Johnson does her best work when the heat is on. As owner of the Emergency Dessert Squad, she has a deft touch in the kitchen and a soft spot for lost causes. So when her business professor beau, Jay Morgan, expresses misgivings over having to fail one of his fourth-year students, Winnie cooks up a sweet solution.

She’ll offer an extra credit opportunity in exchange for a little help with her growing business. But when her protégé’s first dessert delivery poisons a student journalist, the publicity threatens to burn Winnie’s business to a crisp. Now the entrepreneur-turned-detective must uncover the ingredients behind a recipe for murder before she crumbles under pressure…

A special thanks to Laura Bradford for providing a signed copy of SILENCE OF THE FLANS for one lucky winner! Contest ends Friday, March 10, 2017 at 11:59 pm PST, and limited to U.S. residents only. Please use the Rafflecopter box located below the recipe to enter. The winner will be announced on this page and on Cinnamon & Sugar’s Facebook page, as well as notified by email (so check your spam folder!)

Apple Kootchy-Kootchy-Koo Kuchen

Ingredients

Crust

1 cup flour
1/4 cup confectioners' sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter, melted

Filling

4 Granny Smith apples (peeled, and cut into 6 - 8 wedges each**)
2 eggs
1 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 tablespoon cinnamon
3 tablespoons flour
1 8-ounce container sour cream

Instructions

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

Crust

Combine all the crust ingredients in a bowl to form a dough.
Pat gently into a 13 x 9-inch pan, lightly coated with non-stick cooking spray.

Filling

Arrange the apple wedges across top of the crust.
In a separate bowl, beat eggs.
Blend in sugar, salt, cinnamon, flour, and sour cream.
Pour over fruit topped crust.
Bake at 450 degrees for 10 minutes, then reduce heat to 325 degrees and bake for 30 - 35 minutes, until filling is set.
Top with whipped cream if desired. Koochy-Koochy-Koo Kuchen is great served warm with ice cream.
Store leftovers in the refrigerator.

My Note

**My taste testers indicated they preferred the apples sliced thinner, which I'll try next time.

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Peanut Butter Blossom Cookies

I had the pleasure of being able to read an early copy of PEKOE MOST POISON, the eighteenth book in the Tea Shop Mystery series by Laura Childs! For some unexplained reason, that I seriously need to remedy, this is the first book of this series that I’ve read…and I found I’ve been missing out! The good news is I won’t be short of pleasurable reading for a long time while I catch up.

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Theodosia Browning owns the Indigo Tea Shop in Charleston, South Carolina. Her very good friend, sixty-plus-year-old Drayton Conneley, is her tea sommelier and sidekick. They make a great team and I enjoyed their friendly banter and the way they interacted and cared for each other. Drayton invites Theodosia to attend a ‘Rat Tea’ at the Calhoun Mansion. I found the historical tidbits the author includes on why Charleston society holds Rat Teas, complete with the waitstaff wearing rat costumes, to be intriguing and a bit creepy. She gives the reader a glimpse into a genteel tea party…until the story starts off with a bang and the host drops dead right in front of Theodosia, murdered by poison. The plot continues at a fast pace and I was kept both entertained and guessing as clues were placed throughout the story.

Drayton is ‘blackmailed’ by the widow, who threatens to withhold a large financial grant for his Heritage Society, unless he convinces Theodosia to find the real killer. Theodosia is miffed about the widow using ‘blackmail’ but realizes that she is inherently curious and would be asking questions anyway. I liked that the protagonist is a fix it type of person. When anyone has a problem, they come to her for help in finding resolutions to their sticky issues. She provides assistance from the generosity of her heart and not for financial gain. Theodosia is a very caring person yet manages to retain a sassy attitude. I chuckled out loud as she calls a disagreeable publicist the “Wicked Witch of the West on a nuclear-powered broomstick”! Laura paints vivid pictures using words to describe people and scenes, making the reader feel like they are right there.

Indigo Tea Shop serves all sorts of delectable treats and tea. Fortunately, Laura Childs includes many recipes and tea party tips at the back of the book. She has graciously allowed me to share her recipe for Peanut Butter Blossom Cookies. I’ve eaten these cookies numerous times before but I have never made them myself! They are much easier to make than I thought they would be and the combination of peanut butter and chocolate are a long time favorite. The cookie itself is slightly crispy on the outside yet soft and chewy on the inside. This recipe is definitely a keeper in my household!

Amazon Synopsis

In the latest Tea Shop Mystery from New York Times bestselling author Laura Childs, Theodosia Browning attends a “Rat Tea,” where the mice will play…at murder.

When Indigo Tea Shop owner Theodosia Browning is invited by Doreen Briggs, one of Charleston’s most prominent hostesses, to a “Rat Tea,” she is understandably intrigued. As servers dressed in rodent costumes and wearing white gloves offer elegant finger sandwiches and fine teas, Theo learns these parties date back to early twentieth-century Charleston, where the cream of society would sponsor so-called rat teas to promote city rodent control and better public health.

But this party goes from odd to chaotic when a fire starts at one of the tables and Doreen’s entrepreneur husband suddenly goes into convulsions and drops dead. Has his favorite orange pekoe tea been poisoned? Theo smells a rat.

The distraught Doreen soon engages Theo to pursue a discreet inquiry into who might have murdered her husband. As Theo and her tea sommelier review the guest list for suspects, they soon find themselves drawn into a dangerous game of cat and mouse…

A very special thank you to Laura Childs for providing a signed hardcover copy of PEKOE MOST POISON for one lucky winner! Contest ends Tuesday, March 7, 2017 at 11:59 pm PST, and limited to U.S. residents only. Please use the Rafflecopter box located below the recipe to enter. The winner will be announced on this page and on Cinnamon & Sugar’s Facebook page, as well as notified by email (so check your spam folder!)

Peanut Butter Blossom Cookies

Ingredients

1/2 cup butter, room temperature*
1/2 cup granulated sugar, plus extra
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 egg
1/2 cup peanut butter
1 teaspoon baking soda
1-1/2 cups flour
Milk chocolate or Hershey's Kisses

Instructions

Preheat oven to 375 degrees (F).
In a large bowl, cream together butter, white sugar, brown sugar, and vanilla.
Add egg and beat well.
Stir in peanut butter, baking soda, and flour until well mixed.
Using a spoon, form mixture into small balls, then roll in granulated sugar.
Bake for approximately 8 - 10 minutes.
Remove from oven and quickly place a piece of milk chocolate in the center of each cookie (chunk of milk chocolate or Hershey's Kiss).
Let cool and serve.
Yields 12 to 15 cookies, depending on size.

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