Happy New Year's Eve!
2025 is over! Can you believe it? Time just goes faster and faster with every passing year. It seems like I've been on the Mystery Lovers' Kitchen blog forever, but it's only been a couple of years. I've loved my time in the kitchen with these amazing authors and it pains me to have to go. But life has gotten very busy and there just isn't as much time to write my Layla Virtue Mysteries as I need to create the depth of story that Layla deserves. I will miss you all commenting on my recipes. I hope you try to make some of them and let me know how they turn out for you.
I'll be finishing up the last few chapters in book 3 here in the next few weeks. The working title is currently When the Levee Breaks. Meanwhile, Gimme Shelter releases in April when the trade paperback of Vice and Virtue comes out.
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I’ll no longer be on the blog every other Wednesday, but you have an amazing new cook coming to the kitchen soon! In the meantime, feel free to sign up here for my hardly-ever-sent newsletter to be able to get all my news and nonsense right after I get it. It's the best way to stay in touch because I don't control Facebook or Instagram and we can't keep up with their algorithm changes. As a farewell, here is one of my all time best gluten free recipes that will be sure to amaze family and friends who won't believe there is no gluten.
Libby's Banana Cream Pie Puffs
Yield: 12 large or 24 small cream puffs
Choux Paste (sounds like Shoe paste) – a most intimidating sounding recipe - is actually very easy. I recommend using a stand mixer for incorporating the eggs.
INGREDIENTS:
1 stick (½ cup) unsalted butter
1 cup water
Hefty pinch salt
1 cup gluten-free flour blend that has xanthan gum already added
*if your gluten-free flour blend does NOT have Xanthan gum already added (like Bob’s Red Mill does not) add ½ teaspoon xanthan gum to the recipe
4 eggs
Vanilla Pastry Cream:
INGREDIENTS:
¾ cup sugar
¼ cup cornstarch
Heavy pinch salt
1 ½ cups whole milk – Not skim milk.
If you’re making pastry with skim milk you don’t deserve cream puffs.
6 egg yolks
1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract - or scrape one vanilla bean
Later:
1 ½ cups heavy whipping cream
2 Ripe Bananas
DIRECTIONS:
Preheat your oven to 375 degrees F. In a heavy saucepan, add 1 stick of butter and 1 cup of water and bring to a boil.
Transfer to the bowl of your stand mixer (or keep beating it to death with a wooden spoon like I show here) and add the eggs to the flour mixture, one at a time, mixing well after each addition.
Make the pastry cream filling.
In a heavy saucepan over medium heat, bring the sugar, milk, cornstarch, and salt to a simmer. Meanwhile, in a separate bowl, whisk the egg yolks.
Bring the mixture in the saucepan to a boil while stirring continuously. Continue to simmer until the mixture thickens. Remove from the heat and gradually whisk hot milk into the egg-yolk mixture a little at a time to bring up the temperature of the yolks. Add everything back into the saucepan and cook over medium-low heat while whisking continuously until the custard is so thick it coats a spoon, like soft pudding.
Now cook it until it boils for one minute. It will be very thick even while hot. Remove from heat and stir in 1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract or the vanilla beans. Transfer the custard to a bowl and cover it with plastic wrap down to the surface of the custard. Chill until the custard is completely cold. The plastic wrap won't even cling to the custard it's so thick.
In a separate bowl, beat the 1 ½ cups heavy whipping cream until stiff peaks form.
