Nutmeg Bars #Christmas #Recipe by Maya Corrigan

 

Nutmeg bars were one of my family’s annual holiday sweets. I can still picture my father doing the hard job of grating the nutmeg. When my daughter and I recently made the bars, I suggested using ground nutmeg from the spice rack. But she insisted on grating whole nutmegs because that’s what Poppy had always done while Nanny mixed the other ingredients. Tradition!

These 5-ingredient cookies are quick to make and they travel well. The original recipe called for margarine, which my mother always preferred to butter.

                     Ingredients

1 cup butter, softened

1 cup sugar

1 egg, separated

2 cups flour

1 1/2 tsp ground or grated nutmeg 

Directions

Preheat the oven to 275 degrees.

Cream the butter and sugar until fluffy. Add the egg yolk and beat well. Stir in the flour and the nutmeg.

Spread the mixture evenly in an ungreased 15” by 10” by 1” pan. We use our fingertips to spread out the mixture in the pan. 

Beat the egg white slightly and brush it over the top.

Bake in the oven until golden brown (50 minutes to an hour).

Remove the pan from the oven and slice into bars while the still hot.

The original recipe calls for 2” by 3/4” bars, but I don’t remember my mother being precise about the size and neither am I, as you can see in the photo.   

Move the bars to a rack and serve them after they've cooled. They can be stored in an airtight container. 

 

READERS: Do you enjoy any holiday treats from the past?  

Speaking of treats, how about a holiday mystery from a Mystery Lovers' Kitchen author for yourself and/or for a friend? 

Here's a description of my holiday book, Gingerdead Man.

"A wonderfully seasonal cozy mystery"

--Criminal Element

Gingerdead Man: Five-Ingredient Mystery #7 features cafe manager Val and her energetic grandfather solving murders in their Chesapeake Bay town.

During Bayport's Dickens of a Holiday festival, Val is hosting a private tea party for the volunteers dressed as Dickens characters including Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Past. A Santa who's more naughty than nice also comes to tea. An unexpected guest arrives, "shrouded in a deep black garment" like the eeriest Dickens ghost, and hands out gingerbread men with white icing skeleton bones. Though the creepy treat called a gingerdead man looks like a Halloween leftover, cookie addict Santa can't resist it. When the man in red turns blue, Val and Granddad have a cookie-cutter killer to catch.

"If you are looking to settle in with a well plotted cozy this Christmas, Gingerdead Man is for you. Grab a gingerbread man and some hot chocolate and enjoy." -- Mark Baker, Carstairs Considers

"Plenty of red herrings, mixed motives, and recipes for foodies make for a spirited holiday cozy." -- Kirkus Review of Gingerdead Man

"Maya Corrigan is skillfully able to take elements from several of my favorite Golden Age mysteries and weave them together....Gingerdead Man is a superb mix of cozy Christmas mystery shenanigans and hair-raising thrills." -- Miranda Owen, Fresh Fiction

 Purchase Links and Sample Chapter

Maya Corrigan writes the Five-Ingredient Mysteries featuring café manger Val and her live-wire grandfather solving murders in a Chesapeake Bay town. Maya lives in a Virginia suburb of Washington, D.C. Before writing crime fiction, she taught American literature, writing, and detective fiction at Northern Virginia Community College and Georgetown University. When not reading and writing, she enjoys theater, travel, trivia, cooking, and crosswords. Visit her website for book news, easy recipes, and mystery trivia.

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Banana Graham Muffins by Maya Corrigan #Recipe #Thanksgiving

Mr. Turkey watching over Thanksgiving breakfast

Yesterday a large overripe banana presented me with a challenge. I usually make banana bread with mushy bananas, but my favorite recipe for it requires 2-3 mashed bananas. I was lucky to find a recipe for banana muffins on the graham cracker box in my pantry. The recipe would work with one banana, as long as I adjusted the ingredients to bake eight muffins instead of twelve. 

If your Thanksgiving guests stay over, these muffins make a (relatively) healthy breakfast or tea time treat. Graham flour gained a reputation as a health food in the early 19th century. The coarsely ground whole wheat flour was for named for Sylvester Graham, a Presbyterian minister and dietary reformer. He promoted temperance and vegetarianism, and believed whole grains were a remedy for poor health. His followers, known as Grahamites, developed and marketed graham flour, bread, and crackers.

The ingredients below make 12 muffins. I used approximately 2/3 of each ingredient to match the amount of mashed banana I had. I also substituted 1% milk for the fat-free version, and I left out the nuts.  

Ingredients

16 Nabisco graham crackers, finely crushed (approximately 2-2/3 cups)

1/4 cup sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 egg

1 cup fat-free milk

2 Tablespoons honey

2 fully ripe bananas, mashed

1/4 cup walnuts, used a topping for each muffin

Heat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

Break up the graham crackers into smaller pieces and put them into a resealable freezer bag. Flatten the bag to remove excess air and seal the bag. Use a rolling pin to crush the crackers into crumbs. Instead, you can use a food processor to turn the crackers into crumbs.

Crackers in pieces appear at the bottom.
Crushed crackers are shown at the top.

Mix together the graham cracker crumbs, sugar, and baking powder. 

Combine the egg, milk, honey, and mashed banana in a large mixing bowl. Add the crumb mixture and stir until the batter is moistened. Spoon it into paper-lined or buttered muffin cups. Top each muffin with nut pieces if you're using them. 

The photo might not make it obvious that I filled the unused cups with a little water. I learned years ago to fill any empty cups. The purpose might be to add moisture to the baking environment and/or to keep the empty cups from getting too hot and burning. 

Bake the muffins for 15 to 18 minutes. To test they're done, insert a toothpick into the center of a muffin. It should come out clean when the muffin is sufficiently baked.   

Cool the muffins for 5 minutes. Then remove them and put them on a wire rack to continued cooling. 

READERS: Do you have a favorite breakfast dish for Thanksgiving Day or the day after?

Enjoy your Thanksgiving!

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The gift-giving season is coming up fast. If you have a friend who'd enjoy a holiday mystery, Gingerdead Man would make a great gift. 

"A wonderfully seasonal cozy mystery"

--Criminal Element

Gingerdead Man: Five-Ingredient Mystery #7 features cafe manager Val and her energetic grandfather solving murders in their Chesapeake Bay town.

During Bayport's Dickens of a Holiday festival, Val is hosting a private tea party for the volunteers dressed as Dickens characters including Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Past. A Santa who's more naughty than nice also comes to tea. An unexpected guest arrives, "shrouded in a deep black garment" like the eeriest Dickens ghost, and hands out gingerbread men with white icing skeleton bones. Though the creepy treat called a gingerdead man looks like a Halloween leftover, cookie addict Santa can't resist it. When the man in red turns blue, Val and Granddad have a cookie-cutter killer to catch.

"If you are looking to settle in with a well plotted cozy this Christmas, Gingerdead Man is for you. Grab a gingerbread man and some hot chocolate and enjoy." -- Mark Baker, Carstairs Considers

"Plenty of red herrings, mixed motives, and recipes for foodies make for a spirited holiday cozy." -- Kirkus Review of Gingerdead Man

"Maya Corrigan is skillfully able to take elements from several of my favorite Golden Age mysteries and weave them together....Gingerdead Man is a superb mix of cozy Christmas mystery shenanigans and hair-raising thrills." -- Miranda Owen, Fresh Fiction

 Purchase Links and Sample Chapter

Maya Corrigan writes the Five-Ingredient Mysteries featuring café manger Val and her live-wire grandfather solving murders in a Chesapeake Bay town. Maya lives in a Virginia suburb of Washington, D.C. Before writing crime fiction, she taught American literature, writing, and detective fiction at Northern Virginia Community College and Georgetown University. When not reading and writing, she enjoys theater, travel, trivia, cooking, and crosswords. Visit her website for book news, easy recipes, and mystery trivia.

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Cranberry History by Maya Corrigan Potluck Monday

Photo by Julie Rothe courtesy of Pixabay

With Thanksgiving on the horizon, fresh cranberries have shown up at the supermarkets. They will be used for sauce to be served with turkey, for desserts, and for decorations. Unlike many other fruits, cranberries are native to America. The first written reference by a European to cranberries being used by Native Americans was in 1550, decades before the permanent English settlements in the New World. Historians believe that cranberries were probably part of the first Thanksgiving. 

Native Americans used the berries as a dye and a food. A 1672 book describes how cranberries were used in cooking: "The Indians and English use them as mush, boyling [sic] them with sugar for sauce to eat with their meat; and it is a delicate sauce, especially with roasted mutton. Some make tarts with them as with gooseberries." 

Sauces and desserts remain the primary uses of cranberries, but only about 2% of the cranberries harvested are sold fresh. The rest are commercially canned, bottled as juice, and dried. 

Cranberry harvest, New Jersey, public domain USDA

Cranberries prefer cool climates. They're grown in Massachusetts, Wisconsin, New Jersey, Oregon and Washington as well as in Chile. 

CRANBERRY TRIVIA--Scroll down for the answers

1. Which state in the US grows the most cranberries?

2. When were cranberries first canned? 1880, 1912, 1928

3. When did canned jellied cranberry logs first appear in stores? 1900, 1932, 1941

4. Which member of Mystery Lovers' Kitchen writes the Cranberry Cove Mysteries?

A selection of cranberry recipes from the MLK archives

Vicki Delany's Cranberry Orange Scones

Libby Dodd's Fresh Cranberry Relish

Peg Cochran's Cranberry Apple Cake

Maya Corrigan's Cranberry Tart

CRANBERRY TRIVIA ANSWERS

1. Though people often associate cranberries with Massachusetts, Wisconsin produces the most cranberries.

2. Cranberries were first canned in 1912.

3. Though the berries were first canned in 1912 for sauce and juice, the jellied cranberry log did not appear until 1941. That was also the year my parents got married and perhaps that explains my mother's love for that log. Though most of my family preferred made-from-scratch cranberry relish, we always had to offer the jellied log if my mother was at the table.     

4. Peg Cochran is the author of the Cranberry Cove Mysteries.

What is your favorite cranberry dish?

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Maya Corrigan writes the Five-Ingredient Mysteries featuring café manger Val and her live-wire grandfather solving murders in a Chesapeake Bay town. The 8th book in the series, Bake Offed, comes out in November 2022. Maya lives in a Virginia suburb of Washington, D.C. Before writing crime fiction, she taught American literature, writing, and detective fiction at Northern Virginia Community College and Georgetown University. When not reading and writing, she enjoys theater, travel, trivia, cooking, and crosswords.

• Visit my website for easy recipes, mystery history and trivia, and a culinary mystery story. 
• Sign up for my newsletter. One subscriber wins a free book each time I send a newsletter.
• Follow me on Facebook.

Coming Nov. 29, 2022-Pre-order now! 

Gingerdead Man: A Holiday Cozy-Available Now!

8-BOOK GIVEAWAY!

Comment on yesterday's post to win a copy of GINGERDEAD MAN and 7 other books.

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What's your favorite way to eat cranberries?

Chocolate's Dark Side by Maya Corrigan Potluck Monday

Though chocolates express love as a Valentine’s or Mother’s Day gift, they’ve been associated with death in history and mystery. Two hundred years ago chocolate was something you drank, but by the mid-19th century, confectioners had devised ways to create solid chocolate. As truffles and chocolate creams became popular treats, their potential as vehicles for poison became obvious. Previously, poisoners had to be near a victim's food or drink to accomplish their goals. But poisoned chocolates could be delivered anonymously. Who can resist a box of chocolates from a secret friend or admirer? We don’t know how many murderers got away with using chocolates laced with poison, but here are two famous ones who were caught.

Christiana Edmunds, the "Chocolate Cream Killer,” was a serial poisoner in Brighton, England, during the early 1870s. She bought chocolate creams, injected them with strychnine, and returned them to the vendors, who then sold them to others without knowing they were poisoned. She even sent herself a box of poisoned chocolates to suggest she was also a victim.

On this side of the Atlantic in 1898, Cordelia Botkin mailed a box of arsenic-laced chocolates from San Francisco to her ex-lover’s wife in Dover, Delaware. The transcontinental crime was the earliest known use of the U.S. Mail for nefarious purposes. Bodkin was the first person prosecuted for a crime that took place in two different U.S. jurisdictions.

Inspired by true crime, mystery writers built plots around similar poisonings. In Anthony Berkeley’s 1929 mystery, The Poisoned Chocolates Case, six armchair detectives tackle the case of a woman who died after eating liqueur-filled chocolates. Each comes up with a different theory and a murderer no one else has considered. Agatha Christie also explored chocolate as a weapon in Peril at End House and in “The Chocolate Box,” a story in which Poirot chides himself for missing the key clue. 

In my 7th Five-Ingredient Mystery, Gingerdead Man, a murderer acts like the neighborhood’s Secret Santa, leaving holiday gift bags of chocolates on doorsteps. When an elderly victim appears to die of natural causes, the police don’t suspect the chocolates because there’s no sign of tampering. But my sleuth Val recognizes them as homemade. She convinces the police to test the chocolates by describing how easy it is to make chocolates at home. No need to inject a poison in them if it’s mixed into the filling.

Gingerdead Man is part of the 4-BOOK GIVEAWAY in yesterday's post. You can still enter to win the books by leaving a comment on that post. The contest is open until Wednesday, May 4.
 

Would you prefer a box of chocolates or a bouquet of flowers as a gift?

Have you read any mysteries with poisoned chocolates in them?

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Maya Corrigan writes the Five-Ingredient Mysteries featuring café manager Val and her live-wire grandfather solving murders in a Chesapeake Bay town. Maya lives in a Virginia suburb of Washington, D.C. Before writing crime fiction, she taught American literature, writing, and detective fiction at Northern Virginia Community College and Georgetown University. When not reading and writing, she enjoys theater, travel, trivia, cooking, and crosswords. Visit her website for easy recipes, mystery history and trivia, and a free culinary mystery story.

Chocolate Candy #Recipe by Maya Corrigan

These bite-size candies take almost no time to make and have only three ingredients: chocolate, dried cranberries, and pecans. They're perfect as hostess gifts or for guests who drop by on short notice. The cranberries make them a holiday treat, but they make great snacks all year round. You can substitute other dried fruit like raisins and any type of nuts.

Ingredients

8 ounces (1 cups) semi-sweet chocolate chips or chunks (milk chocolate also works)
1/2 cup coarsely chopped pecans 

1/2 cup dried cranberries 

Instructions

Line a baking sheet with parchment or wax paper and set it aside

Put the chocolate chips in a microwave safe bowl. Heat the chocolate at half power for 30 seconds and stir it. 

Heat the chocolate again at half power for 30 seconds and stir. Repeat until the chocolate is smooth. If it's close to being totally melted, heat it for only 15 seconds before stirring.

Chocolate beginning to melt

Final melted stage

Combine the nut pieces and cranberries in a bowl. Stir them into the melted chocolate, coating them well. 

Drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto the paper-lined baking sheet.

Fruit and nuts mixed with chocolate

Chocolate dropped by spoonfuls on paper

Chill in the refrigerator until the chocolate hardens before serving.

You can store the mounds in an airtight container at room temperature or in the freezer until you're ready to serve them.

Makes approximately 24 chocolates.

This recipe appears in Gingerdead Man, the 7th Five-Ingredient Mystery.

Though I make these treats for emergency use as gifts or for guests, I love reaching into the fridge or freezer to snack on them.  

What kind of snacks do you keep around during the holidays?

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Just in time for the holidays the Gingerdead Man e-book is 99 cents at Amazon, Kobo, Barnes and Noble, Google play, Apple Books.

During Bayport's Dickens of a Holiday festival, Val hosts a private tea party for the volunteers dressed as Dickens characters including Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Past. A Santa who's more naughty than nice also comes to tea. An unexpected guest arrives, "shrouded in a deep black garment" like the eeriest Dickens ghost, and hands out gingerbread men with white icing skeleton bones. Though the creepy treat called a gingerdead man looks like a Halloween leftover, cookie addict Santa can't resist it. When the man in red turns blue, Val and Granddad have a cookie-cutter killer to catch.

"A wonderfully seasonal cozy mystery" -- Criminal Element

"If you are looking to settle in with a well plotted cozy this Christmas, Gingerdead Man is for you. Grab a gingerbread man and some hot chocolate and enjoy." -- Mark Baker, Carstairs Considers

"Plenty of red herrings, mixed motives, and recipes for foodies make for a spirited holiday cozy." -- Kirkus Review 

🎄

Maya Corrigan writes the Five-Ingredient Mysteries featuring café manger Val and her live-wire grandfather solving murders in a Chesapeake Bay town. Maya lives in a Virginia suburb of Washington, D.C. Before writing crime fiction, she taught American literature, writing, and detective fiction at Northern Virginia Community College and Georgetown University. When not reading and writing, she enjoys theater, travel, trivia, cooking, and crosswords. Visit her website for book news, easy recipes, mystery trivia, and a free culinary mystery story.

Cran-Apple Crisp by Maya Corrigan #recipe

I always enjoy baking with fresh fruit when it's in season. A cranberry-apple crisp makes an easy treat for the late fall and early winter, when both cranberries and apples are plentiful. Though I love fruit pies, I make crisps more often. This dish uses oats rather than flour for the topping, giving it more crunch than a pie crust. And there's no dough to roll. 

Ingredients

2 cups fresh cranberries
3 cups peeled apples, coarsely chopped 

2/3 cup granulated sugar

1 1/2 cup rolled oats

2/3 cup packed brown sugar

1/2 cup butter

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Most of the ingredients

Ingredients left out of the other photo

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Mix the cranberries, chopped apples, and granulated sugar. Put the mixture into a buttered 8-inch square baking dish or a 9-inch pie pan.

Using your fingers or a pasty blender, make a crumbly mixture of the butter, brown sugar, and oats. Combine the salt and the cinnamon and work them into the oat mixture. Sprinkle it over the fruit. 

Bake at 350 degrees until the top browns, approximately one hour.  

Remove the crisp from the oven, wait until it is no longer hot. Cut or scoop out portions onto plates. Serve warm or cold, either plain as shown in the photo, or with cream or ice cream.

I enjoy desserts with fresh cranberries. A year ago I shared a recipe for a cranberry tart. Once upon a time, when I had few holiday ornaments, I made garlands of cranberries to decorate our tree. 

Do you find uses for cranberries this time of year?

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It's a perfect time for a holiday mystery!

"A wonderfully seasonal cozy mystery"

--Criminal Element

The 7th and latest book in Maya's series is Gingerdead Man.

During Bayport's Dickens of a Holiday festival, Val is hosting a private tea party for the volunteers dressed as Dickens characters including Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Past. A Santa who's more naughty than nice also comes to tea. An unexpected guest arrives, "shrouded in a deep black garment" like the eeriest Dickens ghost, and hands out gingerbread men with white icing skeleton bones. Though the creepy treat called a gingerdead man looks like a Halloween leftover, cookie addict Santa can't resist it. When the man in red turns blue, Val and Granddad have a cookie-cutter killer to catch.

"If you are looking to settle in with a well plotted cozy this Christmas, Gingerdead Man is for you. Grab a gingerbread man and some hot chocolate and enjoy." -- Mark Baker, Carstairs Considers

"Plenty of red herrings, mixed motives, and recipes for foodies make for a spirited holiday cozy." -- Kirkus Review of Gingerdead Man

"Maya Corrigan is skillfully able to take elements from several of my favorite Golden Age mysteries and weave them together....Gingerdead Man is a superb mix of cozy Christmas mystery shenanigans and hair-raising thrills." -- Miranda Owen, Fresh Fiction

 Purchase Links and Sample Chapter

🎄🎄🎄

Maya Corrigan writes the Five-Ingredient Mysteries featuring café manger Val and her live-wire grandfather solving murders in a Chesapeake Bay town. Maya lives in a Virginia suburb of Washington, D.C. Before writing crime fiction, she taught American literature, writing, and detective fiction at Northern Virginia Community College and Georgetown University. When not reading and writing, she enjoys theater, travel, trivia, cooking, and crosswords. Visit her website for book news, easy recipes, mystery trivia, and a free culinary mystery story.

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Dutch Baby by Maya Corrigan +Giveaway

My favorite pancake is a Dutch Baby. I seldom make regular pancakes because I don't like to pour batter, flip, remove, and repeat over and over. For a Dutch baby serving 2-3, I pour batter once and bake it in the oven. My sleuth's Granddad, who won't try any recipe with more than five ingredients, would approve. What's your favorite kind of pancake? Respond in a comment for a chance to win the latest Five-Ingredient Mystery, GINGERDEAD MAN. 

INGREDIENTS

2 1/2 tablespoons butter or margarine

2 eggs

½ cup Gold Medal™ all-purpose flour

½ cup milk

pinch of salt

Optional: 1 teaspoon vanilla and powdered sugar for sprinkling

Preheat the oven to 425°F.

In a 9-inch glass pie plate or cast iron skillet, melt the butter in the oven; swirl or brush the butter along the bottom and side of the plate or skillet.

Whisk the eggs in a medium-sized bowl. Beat or whisk in flour, milk and salt just until mixed. A few lumps are okay. Pour the mixture into the heated plate or skillet.

Bake 12 to 15 minutes or until the Dutch baby is puffed up, golden in the middle, and browned along the edges.

If desired, sprinkle confectioners sugar over the top and add berries or treat it like a typical pancake, adding syrup or jam.

Cut in wedges like a pie to serve. A Dutch baby makes an excellent dessert as well as a breakfast dish!

For a chocolate version of Dutch baby, see Cleo Coyle's recipe on this blog.

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Maya Corrigan writes the Five-Ingredient Mysteries featuring café manger Val and her live-wire grandfather solving murders in a Chesapeake Bay town. Maya lives in a Virginia suburb of Washington, D.C. Before writing crime fiction, she taught American literature, writing, and detective fiction at Northern Virginia Community College and Georgetown University. When not reading and writing, she enjoys theater, travel, trivia, cooking, and crosswords.


Visit her website for easy recipes, mystery history and trivia, and a free culinary mystery story.

 

The 7th and latest book in Maya's series is Gingerdead Man.

During Bayport's Dickens of a Holiday festival, Val is hosting a private tea party for the volunteers dressed as Dickens characters including Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Past. A Santa who's more naughty than nice also comes to tea. An unexpected guest arrives, "shrouded in a deep black garment" like the eeriest Dickens ghost, and hands out gingerbread men with white icing skeleton bones. Though the creepy treat called a gingerdead man looks like a Halloween leftover, cookie addict Santa can't resist it. When the man in red turns blue, Val and Granddad have a cookie-cutter killer to catch.

Purchase Links and Sample Chapter

What’s your favorite type of pancake?

Comment before February 18 for a chance to win a paperback copy of Gingerdead Man. Be sure to put your e-mail address in the comment. For a winner who lives outside the U.S., I will substitute cozy mystery swag or downloadable goodies, due to the high cost of mailing books internationally.