Cleo Coyle's Chocolate-Stuffed PB Cookies + Book & Tote #Giveaway News!

From Cleo Coyle: These coffeehouse-sized peanut butter cookies are sweet, tender, and stuffed with enough ooey-gooey melted chips to make a chocolate lover swoon.

We're baking them up to continue celebrating the release of our new Haunted Bookshop Mystery, The Ghost and the Haunted Portrait.

~ GIVEAWAY NEWS! ~ 

2 Chances To Win Our New

Haunted Bookshop Mystery 

+ Our "Jack is Back" Tote Bag

1st Chance: Join us for a fun Q&A between

our (haunted) bookseller Penelope and

award-winning book reviewer Dru Ann Love.

Get to know our Pen & Jack...

To enter click here or on

the red button below...

Our giveaway at Dru's Book Musings 
will remain open until May 20th.

For a 2nd Chance to win the
prize package above, scroll
to the end of this post...

Now let's eat!

Cleo Coyle writes two
bestselling mystery

 series with her husband.
To learn more, click here.

A Note from Cleo

Readers of our 10th Coffeehouse Mystery, Murder by Mocha, will remember this cookie recipe as one Clare baked up for her daughter's boyfriend, NYPD Sergeant Manny Franco, in thanks for his backup at the International Confectioners' trade show. 

Why did Clare need police backup at a Chocolate and Candy Expo? You'll find the hilarious answer in Murder by Mocha. And keep in touch with us for news of our brand-new Coffeehouse Mystery, coming later this year: Honey Roasted.

May you read (and eat) with joy! 

~ Cleo

Click here to download
my recipe as a free PDF
that you can print, save,
or share.

Click for Cleo's free recipe PDF.

Cleo Coyle's
Chocolate Stuffed Peanut Butter Cookies

Makes 18–20 big, stuffed cookies


1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
1¼ cups peanut butter (standard creamy, do not use sugarless)
1 cup granulated sugar plus ½ cup, for dusting
1 cup light brown sugar, firmly packed
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon salt
1 cup good quality semisweet chocolate chips

Step 1—Make the dough: Using an electric mixer, cream the butter, peanut butter, and sugars in a bowl until light and fluffy. Add in the eggs and vanilla and blend well. Fi­nally, add in the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Mix only enough until a soft dough forms.

Step 2—Form and stuff: Pinch off generous pieces of dough and roll into big, golf-ball-sized rounds. Cradle the cookie ball in one hand. Use the thumb of your opposite hand to make a deep indentation in the center of each cookie ball. Fill the hole with about a teaspoon of chocolate chips and then seal the chocolate inside the dough ball. Gently roll the balls in white, granulated sugar for a fin­ished look.

Step 3—Freeze: Place the cookie balls on a wax-paper-covered plate in the freezer for 30 minutes. (The wax paper will prevent the dough from adhering to the plate.) This freezing step is the key to a successful cookie. If you don’t freeze the cookie dough before baking, the cookie may break while baking and the chocolate may ooze out instead of staying in the center of the cookie. (If you plan to freeze the dough longer than 30 minutes, wrap it in plastic and foil to prevent freezer burn.)

Step 4—Bake: Preheat the oven to 350°F. Place the chilled cookie balls on baking sheets lined with parchment paper, keeping the balls a few inches apart to allow for spreading. Bake them for 20–30 minutes. The cookies are not done until they flatten out, so be patient and wait for this to happen. The chocolate should stay inside. A nice “cover” for a cookie with oozing chocolate is to gently dust with confectioners’ sugar....

Yes, a bit of sweetness often 

rescues the day—and the cookie!

Note: When making cookies, always allow your baking sheets to cool before putting more dough on them. A hot baking sheet will cause any cookie to spread too much and please do… 

Eat (and read) with joy!

~ Cleo Coyle

New York Times bestselling author

of The Coffeehouse Mysteries and

Haunted Bookshop Mysteries

This is us -- Alice and Marc.

Together we write as Cleo Coyle. 

Visit our online coffeehouse here.

And follow us at these links...

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Just Released

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"Terrific Series"

~ Criminal Element

Buy Now at:

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“Jack and Pen are a terrific

duo who prove that love

can transcend anything.”

—The Mystery Reader

To learn more, visit our
online Haunted Bookshop
by clicking here.

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Mysteries in Order

The Haunted Bookshop Mysteries are
bestselling works of amateur sleuth fiction 

featuring an earnest young widow who runs a
quaint Rhode Island bookshop and the ghost
of a hardboiled PI who haunts her.

Click the image above for Cleo's
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Cleo's Haunted Bookshop

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For a 2nd Chance to win our

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Click for Cleo's free recipe PDF.

Book Club Week: Murder by Mocha and 5 Minute Microwave Fudge by Cleo Coyle #bookclubs

It’s Book Club Week at Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen, and I'm happy to send a shout-out to the "Sister Dear" book club of North Carolina, whose members inspired today's post. 

The club will be discussing Murder by Mocha next Saturday at a local coffeehouse, and my husband (and partner in crime writing) will be joining me in a conference call appearance at their gathering. We're looking forward to it!

If you’d like Marc and I to appear at your own book club via telephone, drop us a line at our public e-mail box: 

CoffeehouseMystery(at)gmail.com 

And if you're new to this site or our series, keep reading...

FAQC 


(Frequently Asked Questions of Cleo)

1) Question: Which of your books should I read first?

Answer: There are 12 books in our bestselling Coffeehouse Mystery series, with the 13^th Billionaire Blend, coming from Penguin in December. But you don’t have to read them in order. Each stands alone, and focuses on a different theme and a different aspect of New York City life.

2) Q: Do you have Reading Group Guides for my book club?

A: Yes! You can download free Book Club Discussion Questions for many of our books at our Reading Group Guide page, just click here.

Take our "killer" New York tour
at Mystery Fanfare by clicking here.

3) Q: What are your books about?

A: My husband and I have been living and working in New York City for three decades, and our Coffeehouse Mysteries—a unique blend of crime, humor, action, and romance—are set in and around the Village Blend, a landmark coffeehouse in Greenwich Village. The coffeehouse is managed by Clare Cosi, a divorced, single mom who continually finds herself mixed up in murder. View the series trailer by clicking the arrow in the window below...

-------------------------------- 

------------------------------------

4) Q. Who else is in the cast besides Clare?

A. Clare Cosi is often assisted in her city-wide sleuthing with a colorful cast of characters. Click here to visit their avatar page and read about them in their own words. In brief, they include...

Madame Dreyfus-Allegro-Dubois, the octogenarian owner of the century-old Village Blend...

Her adult son, Matt Allegro, a globe-trotting coffee hunter, ...

A quirky family of young baristas, whom Clare not only manages but often mothers, and...

A good man and smart cop, NYPD Detective Mike Quinn, who becomes emotionally involved with Clare over the course of the series.

5) Q: What is the exact order of your titles?

A: For a checklist with the correct order of all 13 titles in the series and brief descriptions of every plotline click here. If you’d rather go to our website for this information, click here and scroll down.

6) Q: Are your books available in audio?

A: Yes. They’re produced by AudioGo (BBC America Audiobooks), and you can see the entire line by clicking here. They’re also available (simply search by title) via Amazon, Audible, and iTunes.

7) Q: What book would you select for a book club discussion?

A: The holiday season is coming, so if you’re looking for a holiday-themed discussion, try...

HOLIDAY GRIND in which Clare Cosi solves

the heartless slaying of a kind sidewalk Santa...

                       OR

HOLIDAY BUZZ,

in which Clare tracks down the
killer of a young cookie baker. 

And, yes, there are plenty of 

delicious holiday and cookie 

recipes included in both books.

Holiday or not, I'm also happy to suggest the same book that the "Dear Sister" Book Club chose for their discussion at a local NC coffeehouse next Saturday...

MURDER BY MOCHA

Marc and I were inspired to write this mystery after learning about an actual culinary crime. Like the other titles in the series, Murder by Mocha can be read as a stand-alone, and it offers many twists and turns. There are long-buried secrets, stunning surprises, and the characters make choices that will (no doubt) be the subject of lively discussions and even disagreements. 

To read suggested Book Club Questions for Murder by Mocha, click here.

As the story opens, Clare Cosi is working on a special project. Her employer has asked her to provide premium coffee beans to an old friend (Alicia) for the development of a new product. Mocha Magic Coffee is supposedly laced with herbal aphrodisiacs that will put the "magic" back into your love life.

Clare is skeptical about the drink’s potency—though she does plan to share it with NYPD Detective Mike Quinn (when he’s off duty, of course). Before she gets that chance, a corpse turns up in Alicia's hotel suite. Then it quickly disappears without any evidence a crime has taken place. At the product’s launch party, a pretty young executive is found dead. With half the cast going a little loco from the Mocha, Clare concludes that someone wants control of this coffee’s secret formula enough to kill for it.

In the meantime, Mike becomes embroiled in a cold case murder and shocks Clare when he informs her that she holds the key to solving it. Toss in a stunning revelation about Clare’s beloved employer, and a budding relationship between Clare’s daughter and a rogue cop named Franco, and you’ve got one heck of a caffeinated tale. 

Murder by Mocha was a blast to write, and it made two Top-10 lists for Best Cozy Reads. Thanks to our readers, it was also a bestseller in hardcover and paperback. 

Read the prologue and 
first chapter by clicking here.

Take a peek at the book's
recipe section (with foodie photos)
by clicking here.

Culinary theme:

Chocolate!

In Murder by Mocha Clare Cosi not only caters a chocolate-themed party, she must sniff out clues at a confectioners' expo, where she also snags a sinfully delicious sample from Valrhona, one of the world's most renowned chocolatiers.

Your book club group can join Clare with a chocolate-tasting of your own because
Valrhona's online store offers tasting tins of their gourmet chocolate. You can see the line by clicking here. 

OR you might want to make your own chocolate treat from Murder by Mocha's recipe section. Today I'm sharing a very easy one: Five Minute Chocolate-Hazelnut Fudge. You can even make it in your microwave...

Cleo Coyle’s "Magic"

Five Minute Microwave
Chocolate-Hazelnut Fudge

“Oh, chocolate fudge I’ll eat. What I can’t swallow is fudging, as in fudging statistics, fudging results, fudging the truth. Mathematicians call it a fudge factor—putting an extra calculation into an equation just so it will work out as expected. It’s what we law enforcement types call a scam.”

                                                ~ Detective Mike Quinn,
Murder by Mocha 

Scamming does indeed play a role in Murder by Mocha's plotline, but there is no fudging in this fudge recipe. The claim that you can make it in a microwave is true, and the results are creamy, dreamy, and absolutely delicious. It's a great fudge to serve a parties or give as a gift, so you might want to keep this recipe handy for holidays... ~ Cleo

To download this recipe in a PDF document that you can print, save, or share, click here.

Ingredients:

1 (14 ounce) can of sweetened condensed milk

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

1 (12-ounce) package of good quality semisweet chocolate chips

1/4 teaspoon Kosher salt

1-1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

1/2 cup Nutella chocolate-hazelnut spread (room temperature)

Step 1 – Prep pan: Crisscross the bottom of an 8 x 8 square pan with two sheets of parchment paper. The parchment sheets should be long enough to extend, like handles, over the edges of the pan. 

Step 2 – Melt with microwave: Place the milk into a microwave safe bowl. Cut the butter into the milk. Pour in the chocolate chips, and microwave it all for 30 seconds. ONLY 30 seconds. Remove and stir. Nuke it for another 30 and remove to stir again. This should be enough time to melt the chocolate and butter. If not, continue microwaving and stirring in 20 second increments until everything is melted.

NOTE: Do not simply microwave this mixture for 2 solid minutes without stirring. You run the risk of scorching the chocolate and completely ruining the fudge. Once chocolate is burned, there is no saving it. Be sure to melt it slowly, in increments. 

Step 3 – Finish the fudge: Into the melted mixture, sprinkle the salt and measure in the vanilla and Nutella. 

NOTE: Nutella should not be cooked in a microwave because high heat will alter its texture and flavor, which is why I'm careful how I use it in recipes. What I want you to do is simply stir the Nutella into the warm, melted mixture that comes out of the microwave. Be sure to stir from the bottom, lifting and folding to blend everything well. 

Step 4 – Chill and cut: Now pour the chocolate mixture into your lined pan. Using a rubber spatula or back of a spoon, smooth the top, leveling it off. 

Chill the pan in the refrigerator until firm—this will take 2 to 3 hours. Remove and cut into small squares. To store, place fudge in an airtight container and keep in the refrigerator, and, of course... 

Eat (and read) with joy! 

~ Cleo Coyle

New York Times bestselling author of

The Coffeehouse Mysteries 

Yes, this is me, Cleo (aka Alice). 

Friend me on facebook here.

Follow me on twitter here. 

Visit my online coffeehouse here.

Sign up for my
free newsletter here.

To download the free illustrated guide to 

Murder by Mocha’s recipe section, click here.