Peppermint Bark Brownies #Recipe Peg Cochran/Margaret Loudon #Christmas

 

 

As you've probably guessed, I'm all about quick and easy under certain circumstances.  At the last minute, I was asked to bring a dessert to our Newcomers Christmas gathering.  This recipe starts with a store bought brownie mix that turns festive with white chocolate icing and crushed candy canes.  As the TV chef Ina Garten would say, "how easy was that?"

1 (18 oz) box brownie mix

⅓ cup vegetable oil

1 large egg

2 cups white chocolate chips

2 large candy canes or several smaller ones, crushed

 

Prepare pan -- either grease pan with cooking spray or use parchment paper to create a "sling." 

 

Mix brownie mix, vegetable oil and egg in a bowl.  Bake according to package directions. Let cool.

Melt white chocolate chips in microwave in 30 second bursts and stir.  Continue until chips are melted.

Place candy canes in a zip lock bag and use a mallet or other object to crush candy canes into small pieces.

 

Spread melted white chocolate on top of cake.

 Sprinkle candy cane pieces on top. (To speed up the hardening of the chocolate, place in refrigerator.)

 

 

SPEND CHRISTMAS IN CRANBERRY COVE! 

 

 

  

 

When a wealthy local benefactor is slain on the farm, Monica has to figure out who wanted to cash in on the killing . . .

As Sassamanash Farms hunkers down for the long winter, Monica agrees to let the local animal shelter host their Christmas-themed fundraiser there. The draw of the event—a chance to have your pet’s picture taken with Santa—brings in animal lovers from far and wide. But when the crackling fire dies down and the festive holiday props are all carted away, Monica discovers a very un-jolly sight next to the barn—the dead body of one of the shelter’s biggest donors. With the farm’s good name in jeopardy, Monica goes to work to root out the killer.

By all accounts the victim was a charming and generous supporter of the shelter, but Monica discovers that he was loathed by those who knew him for being tight-fisted and unscrupulous. Suspecting money might be the motive, she turns her sights on his stylish wife and her lavish lifestyle, along with the manager of the struggling shelter, who stood to collect a hefty bequest from his will. But as Monica closes in on one final clue, the culprit closes in on her. Caught unawares, she’ll have to survive the brutal winter weather, as well as a cold-blooded killer . . . 

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Fudgy Cottage Cheese Brownies #Recipe Peg Cochran/Margaret Loudon

 

You've probably noticed that protein is having a moment.  Every weight loss diet or diet geared toward strength training emphasizes protein.  Consequently, cottage cheese is also having its time in the limelight.  Recipes using cottage cheese abound on the internet--cookies, bread, brownies, mousse, salad dressing--people are putting cottage cheese in everything.  I don't think these brownies are necessarily "healthy" although they do get a boost of protein from the cottage cheese.  And they are wonderfully moist and fudgy.  I adapted the recipe from the Balanced Nutritionist.  I decorated the top with white chocolate chips since I had them on hand and wanted to use them up.  I also didn't get a decent photo of the finished product since everyone dug into them almost immediately.  Always the sign of a successful recipe!

½  cup chocolate chips or chopped chocolate, melted

1 cup cottage cheese

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 egg

¼  cup melted butter  

¾  cup milk

½  cup sugar  

½  cup cocoa powder

¾  cup flour  

½ tsp. baking soda

¼ tsp salt

1/3 cup mini chocolate chips

 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Add cottage cheese, melted chocolate, melted butter, vanilla extract, egg, milk, sugar and cocoa powder to a food processor. Process on high until blended.  

 

 

Combine flour, baking soda and salt.

Combine wet ingredients with dry ingredient and mix until just combined. Fold in mini chocolate chips.

Transfer to a 9×9" baking dish lightly oiled or lined with parchment paper. 

 

Bake for 20-25 minutes in the oven, or until a toothpick comes out clean.  

 

Allow to cool and then slice into 16 brownies.

 

 

 

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Guest Emmeline Duncan whips up Ground Rules Peppermint Mocha Brownies #Recipe and a #Christmas #Giveaway

Please welcome my friend, Emmeline Duncan, to the Kitchen with her delicious and festive recipe for Ground Rules Peppermint Mocha Brownies. Yum!

Like her Ground Rules Mystery series, Emmeline Duncan is based in Portland, Oregon. Her series includes Fresh Brewed Murder, Double Shot Death, Flat White Fatality, and Death Unfiltered, plus Fatal Brouhaha, which comes out in March 2025. She’s also the author of the Halloween Bookshop Mystery Series, which launched with Chaos at the Lazy Bones Bookshop in 2024 and includes Mayhem at a Halloween Wedding in 2025.

When not writing, she spends her time seeking out new coffee shops and hiking trails to explore, frequently accompanied by her Great Pyrenees. You can track her online at emmelineduncan.com

Granted, I'm biased, but one of the best recipes in the Ground Rules series is the espresso brownie recipe in Flat White Fatality. Most of my baking is dairy-free, unless I'm not planning to eat it, and then I'll use butter. You can't tell from the taste of these fudgy brownies that they’re made with oil.

To celebrate the holiday season, I've added a festive peppermint frosting.

If you're a fan of peppermint mochas, add espresso powder to the frosting. If that sounds like too much coffee flavor, leave it out, and you'll have a festive peppermint brownie.

I used a dairy-free dark chocolate chip for the frosting, but white chocolate fans could consider subbing in white chocolate chips with an optional dark chocolate drizzle. For additional holiday flare, add crushed candy canes to the top, which you can make yourself by putting a candy cane in a zip lock bag and relieving holiday frustration by pounding the candy cane with a meat tenderizer, or you can buy already crushed candy canes.

If you use dairy-free chocolate chips, these brownies will be dairy-free but not vegan. You can sub butter in for oil if desired. One added bonus of baking with oil is that baked goods tend to stay moist longer. I prefer canola oil when baking because the flavor is very neutral.

Ground Rules Peppermint Mocha Brownies

 

 

Brownie Ingredients

· 1 cup chocolate chips

· 8 tablespoons canola oil

· 3 tablespoons cocoa

· 1 teaspoon of espresso powder

· 1¼ cups sugar

· ½ teaspoon salt

· 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

· 3 eggs

· 1 cup all-purpose flour

 

Peppermint Frosting Ingredients

· 1 cup chocolate chips

· 2 teaspoons oil (coconut, canola, etc—butter or vegan butter work as well), or more if needed

· 1 teaspoon espresso powder (optional!)

· ¼ teaspoon peppermint extract

· ½ teaspoon vanilla extract

· Crushed candy canes (optional)

 

Preparation

First, bake the brownies.

Preheat the oven to 350°F (or, if you use a Breville smart oven like me, 325°F. But when I make this in my regular oven, 350 works best). Line an 8"-by 8" pan with parchment paper.

Mix the chocolate chips and canola oil in the top of a double boiler. Melt over medium-low heat, stirring regularly.

Once the chocolate has melted, remove it from heat and whisk in the cocoa powder and espresso powder. Put aside.

Whisk together the eggs, sugar, salt, and vanilla. Once it's combined, whisk in the chocolate mixture. Once it's mixed, add the cup of flour, taking care to incorporate the flour without over-whisking the mixture.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 35–40 minutes. Keep an eye on the baking time since some ovens might bake this faster. When a toothpick comes out mostly clean, your brownies are ready.

Let the brownies cool for about an hour before removing them from the pan.

Once the brownies are cool, make the peppermint frosting by melting the chocolate chips in the top of the double boiler with the oil (or butter/vegan butter) you've chosen. If it's too dry, add a splash of more oil. You want the chocolate to be spreadable but not too liquid. You can always toss a few more chocolate chips in to thicken the frosting while melting it if needed.

Once the chocolate chips are melted, stir in the peppermint, espresso powder, and vanilla extract.

Spread the frosting on the brownies, and top with crushed candy canes (if using).

Cut into squares, and enjoy with a cup of coffee or tea. Store any leftovers in an airtight container and consume them within a day or two.

Emmeline is giving away a copy of a Ground Rules Mystery or a Halloween Bookshop Mystery of choice to a lucky winner, so leave her a lovely comment below.

As the owner of Portland, Oregon’s popular Ground Rules coffee cart, hard-working young master barista Sage Caplin is excited to expand her business with a brick-and mortar store. But not everyone gives her a warm welcome . . .

Ground Rules isn’t the only newcomer set to open in Portland’s grand new Button Building. Fortunately, most of the fellow micro-restaurant owners and patrons are great—with two exceptions. There’s Rose, a true-crime podcaster and active TikToker who’s pestering Sage for an interview about her estranged con-artist mother; and Bianca, the familiar and perpetually unpleasant owner of Breakfast Bandits. Bianca is abrasive to everyone, so Sage doesn’t feel singled out. . . . Until Bianca falls dead at the building’s grand opening—a to-go cup of Ground Rules coffee in her hand. Laced with Ketamine, also known as Special K.

It doesn’t help that just before she collapsed, Bianca was publicly rude to Sage. Or that Bianca’s boyfriend points the police toward Sage. Or that Rose, still hung up on investigating Sage’s mom, has declared she’ll solve the murder. Now it will be up to Sage to sift through a complex blend of motives, blackmail, and old and new rivalries to get to the truth of a very bitter brew . . .

 

Gluten-Free Rocky Road Brownies #Recipe by @LibbyKlein

 Libby Klein Brownies are one of the easiest recipes to make gluten-free. A good brownie requires very little flour to begin with. My jumping off point for this recipe was Martha Stewart's Rocky Road Brownies, in case you want to make the original. I had to tweak the recipe to be gluten free, and I add a couple ingredients to round out the flavor. The first addition is my homemade vanilla extract, and the second is a teaspoon of espresso powder. Espresso powder makes chocolate taste a little more chocolaty. If you absolutely hate the flavor of coffee, just leave it out. 

Have you tried adding a little coffee or espresso powder to your chocolate? Leave me a note in the comments and let me know.

Gluten-Free Rocky Road Brownies

Yield: 9 large or 12 medium squares

Ingredients:

½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, cut into pieces, plus more for pan
1 bag (12 ounces) semisweet chocolate chips
½ cup granulated sugar
½ cup packed light-brown sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract
1 teaspoon salt

1 tsp espresso powder
2 large eggs
¾ cup gluten-free flour blend
1 ½ cups marshmallows
½ cup chopped nuts

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line an 8-inch-square baking pan with parchment paper, leaving an overhang on two sides.

In a heatproof bowl set over (not in) a saucepan of simmering water, combine butter and 1 cup chocolate chips. Heat, stirring occasionally, just until melted, 3 to 5 minutes. 

Remove mixture from heat; stir in sugars, vanilla, salt, then eggs, and finally flour and espresso powder, stirring just until combined. 

Spread batter evenly in prepared pan. Bake 30 minutes. The center should not be jiggly at this point. Remove from oven, and sprinkle with most of the remaining chocolate chips (reserve some for the very top), then marshmallows, then nuts, then the rest of your chocolate chips. 

Bake until chocolate is shiny and marshmallows are puffed, about 5 minutes. (My marshmallows did not puff very much. They were also firmer than my usual brand.) Cool completely in pan. Using paper overhang, lift cake onto a work surface; cut into 16 squares. These were delicious! If you want to toast the marshmallows and make them gooey right before serving, you can stick them under the broiler for a minute - but keep an eye on them!

Have you tried adding a little coffee or espresso powder to your chocolate? Leave me a note in the comments and let me know.

Gluten-free baker Poppy McAllister and her aunt Ginny are looking forward to a quiet, homey Christmas at their B&B in Cape May, but unfortunately, death isn’t taking a holiday this year . . .

Ever since Thanksgiving, Poppy and her pals have been left with an unsolved mystery of the romantic kind. But at least this mystery isn’t the kind that involves murder. That all changes when the body of a fish supplier is discovered in the kitchen of her ex’s restaurant—and he’s frozen, not fresh.

For once, it’s not Poppy who tripped over the corpse, yet she can’t escape being drawn in since the victim has a note taped to him reading Get Poppy. Figures—an engagement ring isn't labeled, but the dead guy is addressed to her. Now, while Aunt Ginny plans a tree-trimming party and pressures Poppy to decode a mysterious old diary, the amateur sleuth is asked to “unofficially” go undercover at the restaurant to help the police. Until then, the only crime Poppy had been dealing with was Figaro’s repeated thefts of bird ornaments from the tree; now it looks like it’s going to be a murder-y Christmas after all.

 

Libby Klein grew up in Cape May, NJ where she attended high school in the '80s. Her

classes revolved mostly around the Culinary sciences and Drama, with one brilliant semester in Poly-Sci that may have been an accident. She loves to drink coffee, bake gluten-free goodies, collect fluffy cats, and translate sarcasm for people who are too serious. She writes from her Northern Virginia office where she serves a very naughty black smoke Persian named Sir Figaro Newton. You can keep up with her shenanigans by signing up for her Mischief and Mayhem Newsletter on her website. www.LibbyKleinBooks.com/Newsletter/

York Sensational Brownies from @MysteryMacRae

 

Do these brownies live up to their name? Yes! We’ve been making them at least since 1989. 

Here’s the original clipping, possibly from Parade Magazine, in the recipe holder our oldest made in kindergarten in 1987. Now his youngest is in kindergarten. Aww.

Here’s my advice and a prediction for the new year. Sit down with one of these brownies (or two. Three?) and you’ll handle everything in 2023 with aplomb.

York Sensational Brownies

 

Ingredients

3 sticks unsalted butter (1 ½ cups), melted

3 cups sugar

1 Tablespoon vanilla extract

5 eggs

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup cocoa powder

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

24 1 ½-inch peppermint patties

 

Directions

Heat oven to 350℉ (325℉ if using a glass baking dish)

Grease a 13x9x2-inch baking pan.

In large bowl, whisk together butter, sugar, and vanilla. Add eggs and whisk until well blended.

Stir in flour, cocoa, baking powder, and salt. Blend well. Reserve 2 cups of batter.

Spread remaining batter in prepared pan. Arrange peppermint patties (unwrapped) evenly over batter. (I used mini patties this time and they worked just as well as the small ones – and they came unwrapped.) 

Oops. I was so intent arranging the mini patties that I forgot to take a picture until it was almost too late!

Spread reserved batter over patties.

Bake 50-55 minutes, or until brownie edges begin to pull away from sides of the pan. Cool in pan on a wire rack. Cool completely before cutting. Makes 36 (or fewer, depending on how big you cut them). 

 

The Boston Globe says Molly MacRae writes “murder with a dose of drollery.” She’s the author of the award-winning, national bestselling Haunted Yarn Shop Mysteries and the Highland Bookshop Mysteries. As Margaret Welch, she writes books for Annie’s Fiction. Her short stories have appeared in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine and she’s a winner of the Sherwood Anderson Award for Short Fiction. Visit Molly on Facebook and Pinterest and connect with her on Twitter  or Instagram.

 

Blondies #recipe by V. M. (Valerie) Burns

VMBURNS: I have a confession! I don't always keep baking chocolate in my house. Crazy, right? I don't know why not, but I don't. So, what's a girl to do when she wants brownies, but doesn't have chocolate? And, she's in the middle of a deadline and can't take the time to go to the store OR even wait for grocery delivery? She makes BLONDIES! What are blondies? Basically, it's a brownie without the chocolate and using brown sugar instead of white. These blondies are super easy and quite tasty.  Plus, you can freeze them and warm them up for later, which is another big win! If you've never had a blondie, give this simple recipe a try.

BLONDIES

• INGREDIENTS
• 
  
• 1 cup melted butter
• 2 cups dark brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
• 1 3/4 cups flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 
  
• INSTRUCTIONS

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees and spray an 8×8 pan with cooking spray or coat with butter.
• In a large bowl, mix melted butter and brown sugar.
• Add eggs and vanilla and stir vigorously until smooth.

4. Add the flour, baking powder, and salt and stir until well incorporated.

5. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and smooth out.
6. Bake for 45 minutes until edges are golden and a toothpick comes out mostly clean.
7. Cool completely, then cut into squares.

READERS: Do you have a favorite Go-To dessert? If so, drop it in the comments for your chance to win an electronic copy of IN THE DOG HOUSE, the first book in my DOG CLUB MYSTERY SERIES.

V. M. Burns

 IN THE DOG HOUSE, Dog Club Mystery #1.

V. M. Burns

Her new canine companion is a lot more loyal than her ex-husband—but that doesn’t mean she wanted him dead….
 
Lilly may be losing a husband but she's gaining a toy poodle. That could be seen as a win-win, since her new adopted pooch Aggie (named after Agatha Christie) is cute and adorable, and Lilly's dirty dog of a spouse is cheating on her with a blond bimbo—except for one problem: Albert Echosby’s just been murdered, and Lilly is the number-one suspect.
 
With the cops barking up the wrong tree, it's a good thing her best friend Scarlett "Dixie" Jefferson from Chattanooga, Tennessee, decided to take a break from the dog club circuit to pay a visit, along with her own prize pair of poodles. With help from Dixie, her defense attorney daughter, and a blue-eyed man in blue with a K-9 partner, Lilly is determined to collar the real killer. But when a second murder occurs, it's clear they're dealing with one sick puppy . . .