I'm also known as Edith Maxwell, and under that name a book I wrote received the Agatha Award for Best Historical Novel last Saturday night!
Here's the blurb:
The winter of 1889 is harsh in Amesbury, Massachusetts, but it doesn't stop Quaker midwife Rose Carroll from making the rounds to her pregnant and postpartum mothers. When Charity Skells dies from an apparent early miscarriage, Rose wonders about the symptoms that don't match the stated cause of death. With several suspects emerging, each with their own possible motives, Rose and police detective Kevin Donovan race against time to solve the case before another innocent life is lost.
In normal times, the Agatha Awards are presented at the annual Malice Domestic banquet in North Bethesda, Maryland. The winners are feted and hugged and congratulated and photographed, and then everyone adjourns to the bar for more basking in glory. This year? I watched the announcement on my kitchen latptop and got a brief congratulations from my non-fiction-reading partner (who promptly adjourned to his den). I poured myself a hefty bourbon and started reading hundreds of online congratulations.
Frankly? It wasn't as anywhere near as much fun, but what can you do? The Malice organizers assured the winners that we'll all be celebrated at the conference next year and will receive our Agatha teapots at that time.
My blogmates here encouraged me to announce the award on my next post, in case you are one of the few who hadn't heard. But the Quaker Midwife Mysteries take place in the late 1880s and do not include recipes. My occasional forays into preparing recipes from that era have not been successful, so I won't plague you with a fruitcake of enormous proportions.
The next best thing has to be an Agatha cake. That is, a cake mentioned in an Agatha Christie book! I went searching and discovered that A Murder is Announced has lots of food mentions. It includes a chocolate cake "of a melting richness" called Delicious Death because "it was so good, it was worth dying for." I hadn't read a Christie book in a long time, and I was a little surprised (I shouldn't have been) at how well the writing stood up. I see an Agatha-reading binge in my near future.
The cake described in the book had a block of chocolate, sugar, "much butter," and...raisins. Me, I don't put raisins in chocolate cake,and I was all out of blocks of chocolate (more's the pity). Being quarantined, I used cocoa powder and oil in this version of the cake, because I'm always afraid of running out of butter. But don't worry, the mocha frosting has nearly a stick of butter in it, and the cake definitely has a melting richness.
So let's get to it.
Delicious Death Cake
Ingredients
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda (not shown in photo)
1 egg
1/2 cup buttermilk at room temperature (if you
don’t have any, you can mix 1/2 tbsp lemon juice into room temperature 2% milk
and let it sit for 5 minutes before using)
1/4 cup canola oil
1/2 cup boiling water
Mocha Frosting
6 tbsp softened butter
3 3/4 cups sifted powdered sugar
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder, sifted into the
powdered sugar
2 teaspoons instant coffee or espresso powder (not shown in photo)
1/6 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
Extra milk, if necessary
Directions
Preheat oven to 350°.
Butter a nine-inch cake pan, line the bottom of the pan with a circle of parchment paper,
and oil the paper.
Whisk sugar, flour, cocoa, baking soda,
baking powder, and salt together in a mixing bowl.
In a separate bowl or measuring cup, whisk egg, buttermilk,
and oil. Pour the wet mix into the dry and beat on low until just
combined (scrape the bottom and sides several times to make sure there are no
dry clumps left). It will have a texture like very thick brownie batter. Stir
in boiling water until just combined, scraping again to make sure
everything is completely incorporated.
Transfer the batter to pan and bake for
25-30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
Cool pan on a wire rack for 10 minutes. Run a knife around the sides while hot. Turn the cake out of the pan and peel off the parchment paper. Allow
the cake to cool completely on the rack.
Beat butter in a large bowl until smooth. Stir coffee into powdered sugar mix. Mix 2 cups of the sugar mix a little at a time, beating continuously until smooth. Gradually beat
in the milk and vanilla. Beat in the remaining powdered sugar mix a
little at a time. If necessary, beat in extra milk 1 tbsp at a time to reach
spreading consistency.
Transfer cake to serving plate and frost.
Serve with a dollop of malice domestic!
The next Quaker Midwife Mystery is Taken Too Soon (not yet up for preorder) and will be out in early September. Doesn't it have a pretty cover? The book takes place on Cape Cod.
Readers: What's your favorite Agatha Christie book or movie?
Robbie Jordan is temporarily leaving Pans ’N Pancakes, her country store in South Lick, Indiana, to visit Santa Barbara, California—where wildfire smoke tinges the air, but a more immediate danger may lie in wait . . .
I hope you'll visit my alter-ego Edith Maxwell and me on our web site, sign up for our monthly newsletter, visit us on social media, and check our all our books and short stories.
Maddie Day (aka Edith Maxwell) is a talented amateur chef and holds a PhD in Linguistics from Indiana University. An Agatha-nominated and bestselling author, she is a member of Sisters in Crime and Mystery Writers of America and also writes award-winning short crime fiction. She lives with her beau north of Boston, where she’s currently working on her next mystery when she isn’t cooking up something delectable in the kitchen.
