LESLIE BUDEWITZ: Last week at a library event, a reader asked what had surprised me most as an author. No need to overthink that -- the connections with readers and the friendships with other authors. And one of the best has been with the woman I call my big sister, Catriona (said like Katrina) McPherson, who served as president of Sisters in Crime the year before me. She's an absolutely delight, although I do sometimes have to pause and translate from Scottish (or is that her own take on the tongue?) to American English. But beyond the humor is one of the hardest working writers I know, writing two series---the Last Ditch Mysteries featuring a Scot stuck in California and the Dandy Gilver historical mysteries, starring a gentlewoman detective in 1930s Scotland---and stand-alone suspense set in Scotland. Turns out she can bake, too!
One lucky reader will win a signed copy of SCOT IN A TRAP!
CATRIONA McPHERSON: SCOT IN A TRAP opens
on the morning of Thanksgiving, in a kitchen so full of food there’s a lemon
meringue pie in the dishrack. Lexy, my fish-out-of-water Scot in California, is
unbelievably snotty about the excess of butter and sugar on display. So I thought
I’d give her one in the eye with a traditional British recipe that’s not
exactly ketotastic. It is, however, delicious.
I have translated from
weight to volume for you, to the best of my ability, even though I use my
beloved counterweight kitchen scales and always will. A teenager once, seeing
these for the first time in my house, asked if they “still worked.” How could
they stop working? Unless you took them into space.
(Leslie's note: If you, like me, read the recipe and wonder 'where's the Madeira?,' perhaps while remembering a beloved professor singing "
Have some Madeira, my dear" at the law school talent show, turns out there is no madeira in the cake -- it's meant to be eaten with a few sips of the Portuguese wine to wash it down. But any wine, tea, or coffee will do. Cheers!)
Madeira Cake
Ingredients:
A stick and two sections of butter (5 ounces total), at room temperature
¾ of a cup of caster sugar (5 oz)
3 eggs, at room temperature
A very scant 2 cups (actually 1.87) of self-raising flour (5 oz)
A lemon – phew!
A drop or two of vanilla extract for an even richer cake
Plus optional icing and other toppings
Method:
The eggs and butter
should be at room temperature.
Pre-set the oven to 350F. Grease a 18cm(ish)
cake tin with the butter paper.
Cream the butter and
sugar in a big bowl until they are light and fluffy. You can use a spoon for
big muscles or an electric whisk for an easy life. I usually start with a whisk
and then bash them to bits with a spoon to finish.
Lightly whisk the eggs
in a jug.
Zest the lemon and
snip the zest into tiny pieces. Juice the lemon. Add to the creamed mixture, along with the vanilla if you're using it.
In four or five
batches, add the whisked egg and a spoonful of flour, beating thoroughly in
between batches.
Fold in the rest of
the flour. Pause to remember that episode of Schitt’s Creek where David
and Moira screech “fold in the cheese” at each other.
Scrape the mixture
into the prepared tin. Don’t worry about how stiff it is. That’s normal.
Bake for roughly 1 hr
and 15 mins. But you know your oven – adjust as necessary. I listen to my cakes
to see if they’re ready. (This time, when the stakes were so high, though, I
stuck a skewer in too.)
Traditionally, madeira cake is decorated with candied citrus peel. I chose chocolate butter icing and malt balls. Who’s going to stop me?
Are you a rebel or a
purist? Do you put cheese in carbonara and tomatoes in chili? I’d love to
know. Talk to us in the comments -- be sure to leave your email address -- for a chance to win a signed copy of SCOT IN A TRAP. (US addresses only. Winner will be chosen Friday, December 2.)
From the cover of Scot in a Trap by Catriona McPherson (out December 6, available for pre-order now:
A mysterious object the size of a suitcase, all
wrapped in bacon and smelling of syrup, can mean only one thing: Thanksgiving
at the Last Ditch Motel. This year the motel residents are in extra-celebratory
mood as the holiday brings a new arrival to the group – a bouncing baby girl.
But as one life enters the Ditch, another leaves it.
Menzies Lassiter has only just checked in. When resident counsellor Lexy
Campbell tries to deliver his breakfast the next day, she finds him checked
out. Permanently. Shocking enough if he
were stranger, but Lexy recognises that face. Menzies was her first love until
he broke her heart many years ago.
What’s he doing at
the Last Ditch? What’s he doing dead? And how can Lexy escape the fact
that she alone had the means, the opportunity - and certainly the motive - to
kill him?
About Catriona:
Catriona McPherson (she/her) was born in Scotland and immigrated to the US in 2010. She writes: preposterous 1930s detective stories, set in the old country and featuring an aristocratic sleuth; modern comedies set in the Last Ditch Motel in fictional (yeah, sure) California; and, darker than both of those (which is not difficult), a strand of contemporary psychological thrillers.
Her books have won or been shortlisted for the Edgar, the Anthony, the Agatha, the Lefty, the Macavity, the Mary Higgins Clark award and the UK Ellery Queen Dagger. She has just introduced a fresh character in IN PLACE OF FEAR, which finally marries her love of historicals with her own working-class roots, but right now, she’s writing the sixth book in what was supposed to be the Last Ditch trilogy.
Catriona is a proud lifetime member and former national president of Sisters in Crime.
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