Meet our guest Ellen Byron – Pumpkin Chiffon Pie #Holidays #Giveaway

Hello from TINA KASHIAN! I have a special holiday treat for our readers today! My friend and guest is Ellen Byron, and she is sharing a delectable dessert of Pumpkin Chiffon Pie plus giving away a copy of Bayou Book Thief, Vintage Cookbook Mystery #1. Let’s welcome Ellen!

 

 

  

One of the pleasures of writing my Vintage Cookbook Mystery series is that I get to mine my own collection of vintage cookbooks for recipes to include with each book. I love finding dishes or treats that have fallen out of favor, so this recipe for Pumpkin Chiffon Pie, which will be included in French Quarter Fright Night, Vintage Cookbook Mystery #3, caught my eye.

 

The original recipe, which I’ve adapted and updated, is from Adventures in Good Cooking and the Art of Carving in the Home: Famous Recipes, A Duncan Hines Book (1948 ed.) Unlike Betty Crocker, a fictional character created in 1921 for a Saturday Evening Post contest,  Duncan Hines was a real person: a traveling salesman who compiled a list of restaurants he’d eat at during his travels that he shared with friends. This turned into a book and a food column. Eventually, he licensed his name for baked goods, hence the Duncan Hines mixes we know today.

 

Chiffon pies were popular in the 1950s and 1960s, but you don’t see them around anymore. After making this recipe, which creates a delectably light and fluffy pie, I think chiffons are due for a comeback.

 

Pumpkin Chiffon Pie

Ingredients:

1 cup brown sugar

3 eggs, separated

1 and ¼ cup pumpkin

2 tsp. cinnamon

½ tsp. ginger

¼ tsp. allspice

½ tsp. salt

1 T. gelatin

¼ cup cold water

2 T. sugar

10” baked pie shell (I used a graham cracker crust because I think it complements the pumpkin)

Directions:

 

Place brown sugar, egg yolks, pumpkin, cinnamon, ginger, allspice, and salt in a double boiler. Mix ingredients and cook until the mixture begins to thicken, then turn off heat.

 

Soak the gelatin in the cold water for five minutes. Add it to the hot mixture, stir until it’s thoroughly dissolved, and cool. Beat the egg white until they form stiff peaks, then beat the sugar into the egg whites. 

Fold the egg whites into the cooled mixture.

 

Pour into the baked pie shell and chill. Serve garnished with whipped cream. Servings: 6-8.

 

 

 

ABOUT: Ellen’s Cajun Country Mysteries have won multiple Agatha Awards for Best Contemporary Novel and Lefty Awards for Best Humorous Mystery. Bayou Book Thief, her first Vintage Cookbook Mystery,  won the Lefty for  Best Humorous Mystery Award and was nominated for Agatha and Anthony awards. She also writes the Catering Hall Mysteries (under the name Maria DiRico) and will soon debut a new series, the Golden Motel Mysteries.

 

Ellen is an award-winning playwright, and non-award-winning TV writer of comedies like Wings, Just Shoot Me, and Fairly Odd Parents. She has written over two hundred articles for national magazines but considers her most impressive credit working as a cater-waiter for Martha Stewart.

 

Giveaway to one lucky reader! (U.S. Only for print). Please leave an email address to enter to win. What is your favorite pie? 

WINED AND DIED IN NEW ORLEANS, Vintage Cookbook Mystery #2: 

It’s hurricane season in New Orleans and vintage cookbook fan Ricki James-Diaz is trying to shelve her weather-related fears and focus on her business, Miss Vee’s Vintage Cookbook and Kitchenware Shop, housed in the magnificent Bon Vee Culinary House Museum.

Repairs on the property unearth crates of valuable French wine over a century and a half old. Ricki, who’s been struggling with upping her social media profile to attract more customers to Miss Vee’s, is thrilled when her post about the discovery of this long-buried liquid treasure goes viral. She’s less thrilled when the post brings distant Charbonnet family members out of the woodwork, all clamoring for a cut of the proceeds when the wine is auctioned off, including Jean-Pierre Charbonnet, a long-lost French relative.

When a dead body turns up in Bon Vee’s cheery fall outdoor decorations the NOPD zeroes in on Eugenia Charbonnet Felice, as the prime suspect, figuring that as board president and the head of the Charbonnet family, she has the most to gain. Ricki is determined to uncover the real culprit, but she can’t help noticing that Eugenia is acting strangely. Ricki wonders what kind of secret her mentor has bottled up, and fears what might happen if she uncorks it.

In the second Vintage Cookbook Mystery, Ricki has to help solve a murder, untangle family secrets, and grow her business, all while living under the threat of a hurricane that could wipe out everything from her home to Bon Vee.