Welcome guest Maya Corrigan aka Mary Ann!

Maya (Mary Ann) Corrigan lives in Virginia, an easy drive from Maryland’s Eastern Shore, the setting for her Five-Ingredient Mysteries: By Cook or by Crook, Scam Chowder, and Final Fondue. The fourth book in the series comes out in 2017. Her novel, The Art of Deceit, won the Daphne du Maurier Award and the New England Readers’ Award for unpublished Mystery/Suspense. She has taught courses in writing, detective fiction, and American literature at Georgetown University and NOVA community college. She loves hearing from readers.

PS  She's offering a GIVEAWAY below.  Check it out and leave a comment!

Take it away, Maya aka Mary Ann!

*

Thank you, Daryl, for hosting my guest post on Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen, my go-to site for great recipes.

The third book in my Five-Ingredient Mystery series, Final Fondue, comes out on June 28th. David Sax writes in The Tastemakers, his book about food fads, that fondue is a conjurer of the past. The past permeates Final Fondue. The Chesapeake Bay town where café manager Val Deniston lives with her widowed grandfather is celebrating the 300th anniversary of its founding. As Granddad readies his old Victorian house for weekend visitors to the town’s festival, he finds a fondue pot, reminisces about fondue parties of the 1960s and 70s, and whips up fondue to greet the houseguests. One of the guests is murdered while eating chocolate fondue. As Val delves into the pasts of the houseguests in search of a motive for the murder, her own past catches up with her. Two men she knew as a cookbook publicist in New York show up in town, complicating her love life and her attempts to identify the killer.

The following recipe for chocolate fondue doesn’t require any special pots or a lot of time, thanks to a device not available in homes when chocolate fondue was first popular—the microwave. Readers of the first two books in my series, By Cook or by Crook and Scam Chowder, know that Val’s grandfather, AKA the Codger Cook, slashes her recipes down to five ingredients. With only three ingredients, this recipe is simple even by his standards. All the books in the series contain Granddad’s five-ingredient recipes.

Chocolate fondue makes an elegant dessert for a dinner party and an easy after-school snack for children.

Chocolate Fondue

Ingredients

¾ cup heavy cream

12 ounces of good quality semisweet chocolate or milk chocolate, chopped fine

Optional: 1–2 tablespoons cognac or liqueur or for a kid-friendly version -- orange juice!

Mix the cream and the chopped chocolate in a microwave-safe bowl. Heat the cream and chocolate at half-power, stopping the microwave every 30 seconds to stir the mixture. When the chocolate is melted (usually after 2-3 minutes), whisk in the optional liquid.

Pour the chocolate into a small pot or bowl on a stand over a lit candle to keep it warm. (If you have a vintage fondue pot, don’t use the alcohol burner that comes with it because that creates too much heat and may burn the chocolate.) You can also serve the fondue in an ordinary bowl and reheat if necessary at half-power for 10-20 seconds in the microwave.

Serve with your choice of fresh fruit, dried fruit, angel food or pound cake, ladyfingers, cream puffs, cookies, or marshmallows.

Serves 6. Reheat leftover fondue in the microwave at half-power, stirring every 30 seconds.

GIVEAWAY!

To enter a giveaway for a signed copy of Final Fondue, leave a comment with an email address. A U.S. winner will get a signed mass-market paperback and international winner will get a Kindle copy. To enter, comment below with your favorite comfort food and your email address so I can notify you if you win. Good luck!

Visit Maya at her website (http://www.mayacorrigan.com) or on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/mayacorriganbooks/)

Sign up for her newsletter at http://www.mayacorrigan.com/newscontact.html

SaveSave