Guest Meri Allen Hot Fudge sauce #recipe +#giveaway

TINA KASHIAN: Please welcome my good friend and fabulous author, Meri Allen, with her new book, Fatal Fudge Swirl. She'll give you a taste of what's in the book and also pick one person who comments to receive a signed copy. The recipe is also perfect for any-chocolate loving dads on Father’s Day! We all love hot fudge so much that we are giving readers a second version in one week. Take it away Meri! 

 

 

Many thanks to Tina for inviting me to visit the kitchen as I celebrate the upcoming release of my latest Ice Cream Shop Mystery, FATAL FUDGE SWIRL.

True confessions time: In the kitchen, I like easy. Easy recipes and easy clean up. Any recipe that gives me easy PLUS delicious? That’s a keeper. That’s why I love this simple hot fudge sauce that will give you deliciously decadent chocolate flavor using only four ingredients.

It’s perfect for dressing up any dessert. Put a drizzle over store bought pound cake to make it special, or over sliced strawberries, or definitely over your favorite ice cream to make a hot fudge sundae. If you have a pretty little jar, it makes an easy and elegant gift, too.

Makes four servings. Easy to double or triple.

 

Ingredients

1 cup sugar

1 cup heavy cream

1 cup dark cocoa powder

I stick (1/2 cup butter, cut into 8-10 pieces)

 

Place all ingredients into a small sauce pan over medium heat. Whisk constantly until the butter melts and everything combines into a velvety smooth mixture.

 

Pour into a heat safe container (mason jars work well). If you’re not using it right away, let it cool completely and store covered in the fridge. When you’re ready to use it, let the unopened jar come to room temperature, then rewarm it in a bowl of hot water until it’s the temperature you like. Enjoy!

 

To enter win a signed, print copy of "Fatal Fudge Swirl," what is your favorite dessert? (U.S. Only for Print). Please leave an email address to enter as well.

 

 Here’s a taste:

A movie production brings drama—and murder—to a close-knit New England village, forcing Riley Rhodes to scoop out the suspects.

Former CIA librarian and amateur sleuth Riley Rhodes is loving her fresh start as the manager of the Udderly Delicious Ice Cream Shop. The leaves are turning, tourists are leaf-peeping, and Penniman, Connecticut is putting finishing touches on the weekend long Halloween Happening. But the village is also buzzing. Former child star Cooper Collins is overseeing the production of a romantic comedy that’s filming on the town green and his domineering socialite mother, Diantha, is planning her lavish Halloween themed wedding at her Inn on the Green. Her fiancé has run the Inn's kitchen for years, ably aided by his recent ex-wife, chef Mary Ann Dumas. An old friend of Riley’s, Mary Ann turns to her when the bride requests a spooky ice cream wedding cake.

But the weekend takes a frightful turn when Diantha is found dead and suspicion falls on Mary Ann. The cast of potential suspects is long—each wedding guest had a chilling motive to kill the vicious heiress. Can Riley unmask the murderer before another guest ends up on ice?

 

Meri Allen is the author of the Ice Cream Shop Mystery series from St. Martin’s Press. The series stars Riley Rhodes, a former librarian for the CIA who uses her skills to solve the murders that somehow keep disturbing the peace of her idyllic New England village of Penniman, Connecticut.

 

 

 

 

Hot Fudge Sauce #recipe @LucyBurdette

LUCY BURDETTE: After being served the most divine profiterole in Paris, I knew I had to try making them. But this would also require a batch of hot fudge sauce. (I know, the sacrifices we make on this blog!) Today’s recipe is for the hot fudge sauce, which makes a lot. You could make half the amount if you don’t want it lingering in the fridge…or give it away in little mason jars to friends. The recipe was borrowed from the New York Times Cooking app. I might try freezing the leftovers and will report back on the results.

Ingredients

2 cups heavy cream

4 tablespoons unsalted butter

½ cup light brown sugar

¾ cup granulated sugar

¼ teaspoon fine sea salt

2 ounces bittersweet chocolate in small pieces

1¼ cups sifted good quality cocoa

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

In a medium pan, combine the cream, butter, sugars and salt and bring to a simmer. Meanwhile cut the chocolate into pieces and sift the cocoa. (I used King Arthur triple cocoa blend and Ghirardelli’s chocolate.)

When those ingredients are combined smoothly, add the chocolate pieces and stir until melted. 

Add the cocoa and whisk everything well. Bring it back to a simmer and whisk until thick and shiny. Take the pan off the heat and whisk in the vanilla.

Serve over ice cream, waffles, whatever suits your fancy! Store in the refrigerator and warm it over low heat on the stove or for 30 seconds or less in the microwave. (PS, we did freeze some of it and it tasted fine when melted!)

Coming to a bookstore or library or e-reader near you on July 4...

Is there a recipe for the perfect life?

Thirty-two-year-old ‘happiness guru’ Dr. Cooper Hunziker has it all—a dream job as assistant psychology professor at Yale University, a soon-to-be published self-help book, The Happiness Connection, and the perfect guy. But there’s a problem. Cooper isn’t happy.

Of course, it doesn’t help that she’s facing cut-throat competition for her tenure at Yale, an accusation of plagiarism that could cost her everything, or that her new book has irritated the department chairman, who assigns her to co-lead a happiness group at the New Haven library.

As her friendship with the other ladies in the group flourishes, Cooper finds herself questioning her choices. Forced to face a life-changing betrayal, a gargoyle’s wisdom, and her own traumatic past, can she navigate her own path to happiness?

Read the first chapter and buy the book!

Welcome, Janet Bolin!

Janet Bolin, Daryl Wood Gerber and I go way back. We all joined Sisters in Crime and their Guppy chapter about the same time. For years we were critique partners, which led to us becoming close friends. I'm always sorry that we live so far apart from each other, and now that I've actually seen the hot fudge sauce, I'm really sorry I wasn't close enough to sneak by Janet's house for the tastings!

And now, Janet!

Fudge, Pure and Simple

I confess—I love hot fudge sundaes. Hold the whipped cream, hold the chopped nuts, hold the cherry on top, and give me gobs of hot fudge sliding down a mound of ice cream and (if I’m lucky) stopping frozen in its tracks.

Years ago, friends and I always went to a certain restaurant for special occasions. Others would order sundaes with all the whipped cream and other goodies piled on top. I went for what they called the “Junior Hot Fudge Sundae.” Yes, the amount was small (well, sort of), but the fudge was semi-sweet and luscious, with no creamy or nutty distractions.

After I moved away, that restaurant closed (hmmmmm….)

What’s a fudge-lover to do?

Experiment?

First of all, chocolate is temperamental. It doesn’t look melted sometimes when it is, and overheating it can cause it to separate. And, as they say, microwave ovens vary, so I had adjust the timing and power to get the chocolate to melt just right. Which means you may have to keep trying and tasting…

First, I tried baker’s chocolate, and it nearly always came out grainy and gritty. It tasted fine, and I could pretend those grains were teeny chocolate chips. However, even in the photos I took, it looked a bit wretched.

The simplest recipe I came up with that can be made in only a few minutes while someone else is doing battle with an ice cream scoop and a container of hard ice cream (desperation for chocolate is the mother of invention) can be a bit grainy:

WORLD’S SIMPLEST 

HOT FUDGE SAUCE

Melt one square of unsweetened baker’s chocolate in a small, covered dish in the microwave oven. Stir in two tablespoons of honey. Warm it again, but only slightly, and spoon over the ice cream. Serves two admirably.

My old Joy of Cooking cookbook says that chocolate that hardens on the ice cream will “enrapture” children. The first time I tried the above recipe, basically half chocolate and half honey, I put the honey in the dish with the chocolate before I melted the chocolate. The honey boiled. The fudge sauce turned into crunchy chocolate candy. I liked it, but no one became enraptured.

Finally, after many experiments and taste tests (poor me), I gave up on baker’s chocolate and used unsweetened powdered cocoa instead, and the recipe turned out well the first time—yay! A keeper, it’s semi-sweet like the sauce I remembered from those Junior Hot Fudge Sundaes from long ago, and it only takes a few minutes:

EASY SEMI-SWEET 

HOT FUDGE SAUCE

In a microwaveable dish, combine:

½ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
¼ cup granulated sugar
6 tablespoons of cold water—added two at a time and stirred after each addition

Stir to create a thickish paste.

Add:

1 tablespoon unsalted butter

Cover the dish and heat in your microwave oven for approximately 2 minutes on a medium/low to medium setting.

Stir to completely melt the butter and blend it into the paste (which will now resemble a sauce!)

Cool slightly.

Stir in ½ teaspoon vanilla.

If necessary, reheat (gently) before drizzling the sauce on ice cream.


Hints: The rules for making fudge sauce are similar to the rules for making candy. For best results, make your sauce on a non-humid, non-rainy day. Cooking the sauce longer makes it (or the candy) harder. Don’t beat the sauce. Stir it gently to prevent it from becoming sugary. But don’t worry if it does separate. It will still taste good…

Make it in small batches—each time you reheat the sauce, you risk causing it to separate or turn into something resembling chocolate chips (which, as I said, isn’t necessarily a bad thing.)

With all that talk about whipped cream, nuts, and cherries on top, you probably think I’m a purist when it comes to hot fudge sundaes. Actually, hot fudge tastes just fine over the usual vanilla ice cream, but also over chocolate, mint chip, or orange sherbet. I’ve never tried hot fudge sauce over ginger ice cream. Just the thought makes me swoon…

Oh, and a brownie underneath it all might be nice.

In Janet Bolin’s Threadville Mysteries, Willow Vanderling teaches machine embroidery and helps solve mysteries in a village of textile arts shops. The first novel in the series, Dire Threads, was nominated for an Agatha for Best First Mystery and for the Bony Blithe. The second Threadville Mystery, Threaded for Trouble, is on the shortlist for the Bony Blithe. The third book in the series, Thread and Buried, which involves sleuthing on the way to and from an ice cream stand, will be on store shelves June 4 and can be pre-ordered from your favorite bookstore or from these booksellers. Two more Threadville Mysteries are in the works.

Janet lives on the shore of Lake Erie with two rascally dogs who resemble Sally-Forth and Tally-Ho in the Threadville Mystery series.

Visit Janet at Threadville Mysteries, on facebook and twitter.