Can You Make Golden Syrup? Yes! #recipe from @MysteryMacRae

Lyle’s Golden Syrup is an elusive ingredient here in the Midwest. It’s available online, but where’s the fun in that? Golden syrup—say it slowly and it sounds like a really top-shelf ingredient, one without equal. I, for one, always say ‘golden syrup’ with complete reverence and taught my children to do the same.

I know golden syrup from my time living in Scotland. According to British bakers, there’s no good substitute for it. Sure, you can approximate it by mixing light corn syrup with a tad of molasses or treacle, but let’s be real (and possibly snooty?) and say that substitutes just are not the same, because whatever you use will impart its own flavor—and that flavor is not golden syrup.

Or we can be practical, versatile cooks and say that honey or maple syrup will be a perfectly lovely variation for any recipe.

Still, I’ve pined for golden syrup for many years now, and finally discovered that you can make it yourself. That sort of removes the mystique, so I won’t talk about mine with any sense of reverence, but isn’t the color gorgeous?  

You can see a tin of Lyle’s Golden Syrup in Sheila Connolly’s recipe for Treacle Tart. She also used golden syrup or a substitute in Lemon Treacle Slice and Chocolate Biscuit Cake.

My next post, on Saturday March 12^th, will use my homemade concoction in Golden Syrup Steamed Sponge Pudding (which I have to make before then—so I’ll do it tomorrow when it’s blustery outside. MMmmmm, steamed pudding.)

 

Golden Syrup

 

Ingredients

1 ¼ cups water 

4 cups sugar

2 tablespoons lemon juice

(note - the pictured quantities are not accurate measures) 

Directions

Put sugar and water into a saucepan. Stir to combine.

Bring to a boil, stirring regularly to prevent burning until the sugar is dissolved. Stir gently to prevent the sugar water from splashing up the sides of pan and crystalizing there. (I failed at that. Next time I’ll try a gentle whisk.)

When the mixture is boiling, gently stir in the lemon juice. Reduce the heat to very low so that it simmers gently. Continue gently simmering, uncovered and without stirring, for 40-60 minutes, until the syrup is a beautiful, rich, golden color.

Turn off the heat, let your liquid gold sit for a few minutes, then pour the hot syrup into a glass jar and let it cool completely before closing the jar with a tight sealing lid.

You can store the syrup at room temperature for several months, although mine is in the refrigerator.

Makes about 3 cups of syrup.

Tips: If your syrup is too stiff, reheat it and add a bit of water. If it’s too thin, reheat it and caramelize the sugar a bit longer.

Something poisonous is coming March 1, 2022!

 

About Argyles and Arsenic – book 5 in the Highland Bookshop Mysteries:

After 93 well-lived years, Violet MacAskill is ready to simplify her life. Her eccentric solution? She’ll throw a decanting and decluttering party at her family home—a Scottish Baronial manor near the seaside town of Inversgail, Scotland. Violet sets aside everything she wants or needs, then she invites her many friends in to sip sherry and help themselves to whatever they want from all that’s left.

But a murder during Violet’s party leads to a poisonous game of cat and mouse – with the women of Yon Bonnie Books playing to win.

Available for pre-order in hardback and e-book from your locally owned independent bookstore, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon. Or ask your public library to consider ordering it.

 

The Boston Globe says Molly MacRae writes “murder with a dose of drollery.” She’s the author of the award-winning, national bestselling Haunted Yarn Shop Mysteries and the Highland Bookshop Mysteries. As Margaret Welch, she writes books for Annie’s Fiction. Her short stories have appeared in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine since 1990 and she’s a winner of the Sherwood Anderson Award for Short Fiction. Visit Molly on Facebook and Pinterest and connect with her on Twitter  or Instagram.

 

 

Irish Whiskey Cake for Sheila Connolly's THE SECRET STAIRCASE Book Birthday!

From Cleo Coyle: We all dearly miss Sheila Connolly. Gone far too soon, she was a brilliant and unique spirit and an inspiration to us all. Today happens to be the publication day of Sheila's third Victorian Village Mystery. Unfinished at her passing, her daughter, Julie Williams, took up the pen and finished the work for her mother. If you missed Julie's special guest post this past Sunday, click here now to see it. And...

To learn more or buy 
The Secret Staircase click here 

In the meantime, given that today is such a poignant book birthday, Marc and I thought it would be fitting to share a cake recipe. And what better cake to honor Sheila than an Irish Whiskey Cake. This is a fantastic recipe. Keep it on hand for the coming holiday season. In sharing it, we thought it best to let Sheila's own words celebrate the day. In memoriam, with the greatest respect and affection...

The following is author

Sheila Connolly's original post

from December 7, 2018

Irish Whiskey Cake

From Sheila Connolly: The Irish love sweets, which explains why the supermarket’s bakery department is near the front of the store and loaded with yummy cakes and tarts and breads.

So once again I went hunting for a holiday recipe, and discovered Whiskey Cake. This one comes from an Irish cookbook that I’ve had for years (and quite a few of the recipes include whiskey!).

I’ve been collecting bakeware for a long time—it gives me a reason to prowl antiques fairs and auctions, and the vintage or even antique items are usually very affordable. Baking this new cake gives me an excuse to try out yet another baking tin, which turned out to be a perfect size.

Irish Whiskey Cake

Ingredients (for one 8” cake):

1-1/2 cup raisins
Grated rind and juice of one lemon (grated rind will be for the cake, reserve the lemon juice for the icing below)
2/3 cup Irish whiskey
3/4 cup butter
3/4 cup brown sugar (make sure it’s soft)
1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp ground cloves
pinch of salt
3 eggs, separated

For icing:

1-1/3 cups confectioner’s sugar
the lemon juice from above
a bit of warm water 

Instructions:

Soak the raisins and grated lemon rind in the whiskey for several hours, or overnight.

Cream together the butter and brown sugar until light and fluffy. Mix together the flour, baking powder, cloves and salt.

Gradually beat the egg yolks (one at a time) into the butter and sugar mixture, alternating with the dry ingredients. Stir in the raisins and *whiskey.

*Note that the whiskey will include the grated lemon rind from the soaking in the first step.

Whisk the egg whites until stiff, then fold into the mixture.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. 

Grease an 8” cake tin. Spoon the batter into it.

Bake for about 1-1/2 hours until the cake is well risen and springy to the touch (don't overbake or the cake will dry out). Place the tin on a wire rack and let cool. (If you’ve greased the pan well, the cake will come out easily when cool.) 

Icing: Sift the confectioner’s sugar into a bowl. Make a well in the middle. Add half the lemon juice and combine. Add more lemon juice and a bit of water (if needed) until the mixture is thick and smooth. 

Place the cake on a plate, then spoon the icing over it,

letting it dribble down the sides.

I have to say the cake smells wonderful! The sweet/tart glaze makes a nice contrast to the cake itself, or you could skip that step if you want.

🍀  🍀  🍀

Thank you, Sheila, for your many years of happy fellowship and

especially for sharing your wonderful talents with all of us!

To learn more about Sheila and her books
visit her website SheilaConnolly.com

To learn more about Sheila's
Victorian Village Mysteries and

purchase the books, click here
or on the image above.

🍀

What to Make When It’s Too Hot to Do Anything #giveaway @mysterydenizen

LUCY BURDETTE: I am so super-excited to welcome today's guest to the blog: Julie Williams. She will offer a recipe, of course. And talk about finishing her mother Sheila Connolly's The Secret Staircase. We loved Sheila and still miss her here on MLK, so it's a treat to welcome Julie!

Leave a comment to be entered in the drawing for that very special book!

JULIE WILLIAMS: Hello, mystery lovers! I’m dropping in today to share an easy summer recipe and say a few words about The Secret Staircase, the last book by my mother, Sheila Connolly, which is out this week. 

I live in Chicago, and it's been hot here. Not as hot as in some parts of the country, but the temp is often still hovering around 90 degrees in the late afternoon, and the air feels like soup as I grudgingly take my daily walk around the neighborhood. When dinnertime rolls around, I am loathe to turn on the oven or even boil water, and I don't have a grill. So... what's in the fridge? I have been hitting the local farmers’ markets in earnest lately, trying to be more conscious of the seasons and the specific gustatory joys they bring, and I remembered a recipe using little tomatoes that I discovered in a restaurant a decade or more ago. (What restaurant, you ask? The memory is entirely gone. Somewhere near Boston? Anyway...) I particularly love this summer salad because it requires no cooking, it comes together quickly, and it surprises the taste buds with its contrast of sweet-tangy balsamic vinegar, creamy goat cheese, crunchy onion and fresh baby tomatoes. You can make a batch a day ahead and keep it in the fridge, but I prefer to eat it as soon as it’s ready – the discrete chunks of goat cheese in the mix are a delicious surprise.

I should mention that The Secret Staircase isn’t really a book about food. It’s the third installment in my mother’s Victorian Village series, and the primary focus is the renovation of an old house – which is interrupted, surprise surprise, by the discovery of a body behind the kitchen wall. But part of the editing process to get the book into its final form was adding sensory detail – places, people, objects, food.

 One of the elements I enjoyed building into the book was our hero Kate Hamilton's enjoyment of eating. She’s harried, she’s busy, but she is also something of a sensualist, and relishes stopping for a bite whenever she can, even if it’s a simple takeout pizza at the end of a long day. Part of this arc is Kate’s discovery that the humble luncheonette in town, run by Ted Wilson (a minor character who serves on the board of Kate's town restoration project), makes better food than Kate had realized. Kate used to hang out at Ted’s lunch counter as a bored teenager, probably consuming root beer and french fries exclusively, so she doesn't expect much from the place. But when she returns to the town as an adult and finds few local options to feed herself (she's not much of a cook), she discovers that Ted's food is delicious, full of fresh ingredients and satisfying flavors. I imagine this dish on Ted's lunch menu – only in July and August, of course, when his rooftop tomatoes are perfect and abundant.

You might read this recipe and find yourself thinking, "That's it? I'm done?" But on a busy weeknight, you'll be saying, "That's it! I'm done!" I made this one evening last week, next to a few fried breakfast sausages, and that was dinner. I handed the baby (a very willing eater of most foods) half a grape tomato, to see how she liked it. She put it into her mouth, made a face, took it out of her mouth, and handed it back to me. Dear reader, I ate it anyway. It was that good.

Five-Minute Tomato Salad

Ingredients:

1 pound grape/cherry tomatoes

Half a red onion

Balsamic vinegar

Olive oil

Fresh basil leaves (about a dozen)

4 oz. Goat cheese (a small log)

Process:

Rinse the tomatoes and slice them in two. Dice the red onion, fairly small. Place the onion and tomatoes together in a bowl, and splash on some olive oil and balsamic vinegar (more vinegar than oil). [photo 2] Tear up the basil leaves by hand, or chiffonade (roll up and then chop into ribbons) if you're feeling fancy. Turn the mixture a few times with a spoon, and let sit briefly. Just before serving, crumble some goat cheese (more or less than 4 ounces, depending on how much you love goat cheese) into chunks and sprinkle on top. Toss lightly and serve. 

And: I’m giving away a copy of The Secret Staircase! To enter, comment below with your favorite easy dish to make in hot weather.

About The Secret Staircase:

Kate Hamilton is feeling good about her plans to recreate Asheboro, Maryland as the Victorian village it once was. The town is finally on her side, and the finances are coming together.

Kate's first goal is to renovate the Barton Mansion on the outskirts of town. Luckily, it's been well maintained in the century since the wealthy Henry Barton lived and died there. The only substantial change she's planning is to update the original kitchen so that it can be used to cater events in the building. But when the contractor gets started, he discovers a hidden staircase that had been walled in years earlier. And as Kate's luck would have it, in the stairwell is a body.

After her initial shock wears off, Kate is relieved when the autopsy reveals that the man had died around 1880. Unfortunately, it also reveals that his was not a natural death—he was murdered. And serious questions remain: who was he and what was he doing there?

Kate begins a hunt to identify the man and figure out what he was doing at the Barton Mansion. But when a second body is found—this time from the present day—Kate realizes that real dangers lie in digging up the past...

Link to book at publisher 

Link to book on Amazon 

Find Julie: 

FB: https://www.facebook.com/mysterydenizen

IG: https://www.instagram.com/mysterydenizen/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/mysterydenizen

Sheila Connolly's Parting Gift--Apple Cake!

LUCY BURDETTE: As you heard on Monday, we lost our dear friend Sheila Connolly last week. Krista was searching our archives to look for photos and came across this amazing gift--a post from Sheila that had never been published. And so although we will mourn her for a long time to come, we are delighted to share one last post from our friend...

Apple Cake by Sheila Connolly

Thank you, members of Mystery Lovers Kitchen, for inviting me to cook with you. I just love to talk about food.

It’s apple time again! I mean the apples that come from trees around here, not the apples that are flown in from New Zealand and Chile. Warning: Do not stand next to me in the fruit section of a supermarket—I start foaming at the mouth. I do not want to eat food that has flown halfway around the world. If there’s flying involved, I want to be the one doing it.

Think calm thoughts…rolling acres of trees, their boughs bent almost to breaking with the weight of gleaming red clusters of ripe fruit…oops, now I’m hungry. I’m giving you my go-to apple cake recipe, the one that I take to every pot-luck. The one that is impossible to mess up and doesn’t even require peeling any apples. But first I want to talk about my mania for collecting antique cookware. You’ll just have to wait.

Actually, some of the cookware was my mother’s and I’ve just kept on using it. Then I started noticing pieces just like them at flea markets and (gasp) antique shows. Wait a minute—that Pyrex bowl set? That red-handled potato ricer? You’re telling me they’re antiques?

But when I’m not beating myself up about using my treasured heirloom items, I collect bakeware. I don’t even recall how I got started—probably because I saw something odd, like a muffin tin that makes square muffins—and I had to have it, and besides, it cost only $3. Now I’ve got a wall full. I can make any size and shape muffin you might want.

But I also have a lot of cake pans (I’m sneaking back up toward the apple cake recipe). Older cake pans are wonderful to bake with because usually they’re heavy-gauge metal, so they distribute heat evenly and you don’t end up scorching parts of your cake while the rest is still gooey. Besides, they used to make such interesting shapes. Modern ones just aren’t the same. I’m particularly fond of my spiral one (which I think is a steamed pudding mold).

Now the apple cake recipe. My favorite pan for that is one I’ve had for years, and it’s just the right size for the recipe—it’s 8 cups (well, now and then the batter likes to try to escape over the sides, so put a baking sheet under it just in case). It makes a handsome cake. There’s only one problem: there are only three of us at home, and I can’t make a whole cake for the three of us to consume (although we try).

So I was thrilled when a couple of years ago, I found the baby version in an antique store—same shape, same vintage, but half the size. Now I can make a half-recipe of the cake, without guilt. (And I confess—just this weekend I bought a friend for it.)

FRESH APPLE CAKE

1 1/2 cups vegetable oil
2 cups sugar
3 eggs
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp salt
3 cups shredded apples (do not peel -- the skin adds texture to the cake; the shredding disk of a food processor works very well)
2 tsp vanilla extract

Glaze:

2 Tbl butter
2 Tbl brown sugar
2 Tbl granulated sugar
2 Tbl heavy cream
1/4 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Butter and flour a 9- or 10-inch tube pan (8-cup capacity).

Combine oil and sugar in a bowl. Blend very well. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Sift together the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt. Sift these into the oil-egg mixture and combine thoroughly. Add the raw apples. Mix well with a spoon or spatula, then add the vanilla. Pour the batter into the pan.

Bake for 1 1/4 hours, or until the cake tests done (tester comes out clean). Remove from the oven and let rest while you prepare the glaze.

Glaze: Melt the butter, sugars, and heavy cream mixed with vanilla in a heavy pan. Boil for 1 minute without stirring, then remove from heat.

Let the cake cool for a few minutes before removing it from the pan. Spoon the glaze over the cake while it is still warm.

A word of warning about the glaze: it’s addictive. We usually double the recipe, and fight over who gets to lick the pan. My daughter pours it over ice cream, and she adds chopped nuts and coconut. And sometimes we just skip the cake and eat it with spoons right out of the pan. Yum! 

Thank you, Sheila, for being a part of our kitchen! We will carry you forward always in our hearts...and our recipe boxes...

Remembering Sheila Connolly

LESLIE BUDEWITZ: Friends, we are heartbroken to tell you of the passing of our dear friend, Sheila Connolly, on April 20, 2020, from cancer, in her beloved cottage in County Cork, Ireland. Whether you knew her from her books, her years of sharing stories and recipes here, her posts at Killer Characters, the Wicked Cozy Authors, and Poe’s Deadly Daughters, or in person as many of us did, you loved her. She was smart, and funny, and insatiably curious, and she told us the best stories.

Though I’d known her online for ages, through Sisters in Crime and the Guppies chapter, we first met in person at Bouchercon, the international mystery convention, in San Francisco in October of 2010. We walked down to the Ferry Terminal Market, where we ate, shopped, and chatted with the vendors. Naturally, she knew all about the apples.

Daryl, Sheila, Roberta and Krista
and books, books, books! 

The next year, Bouchercon was held in St. Louis, and we shared a room in a historic hotel a few blocks from the convention center. We’d planned a day of sight-seeing, but it was pouring. We went anyway, laughing as we crammed into the tiny elevator for the ride up to the top of the Arch, following the trail of Lewis & Clark in the Interpretative Center, eating cro-nuts—they were new and weird and we had to try them. Blog readers well remember her delight at discovering new foods, especially in Irish shops and markets. No surprise that a lot of our memories of Sheila involve food!


Sheila had an amazing variety of careers over the years—it seemed like I heard about a different one every time I saw her—but clearly the one she loved best was “writer.” She’d always wanted to write, but when 9/11 happened, she decided to commit to writing seriously and to pursuing publication. And we are all so glad she did.

Daryl, Sheila & Leslie in our pretty dresses
for the Agatha Awards banquet in 2017

Sheila joined Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen in 2010, posting every Friday through last June, when she began alternating with Vicki Delany, until early this year, when Edith Maxwell stepped in. She published more than forty books, in her Glassblowing, Museum, Orchard, paranormal, and Victorian village mysteries, and perhaps her most popular, the County Cork Mysteries. Her blog posts about traveling in Ireland, buying her cottage, and exploring nearby villages were treats for us all. She even let blog readers weigh in on what color to paint the front door of her cottage!

Janet Bolin, Linda Wiken, Vicki Delany, Kaye Geroge,
Daryl Wood Gerber, and Sheila Connolly
Malice 2019

Our dear friend, enjoying life

Sheila regularly attended Malice Domestic, and we have fond memories of sorting our group recipe cards while drinking wine, sharing a table at the banquet, and cheering for our friends who were nominated for Agatha Awards. Sheila's first novel, Through a Glass, Deadly, written as Sarah Atwell,  was nominated for the 2008 Agatha Award for Best First Novel. She served as president of the Sisters in Crime New England chapter, and was active in Mystery Writers of America and other writers’ organizations.

She is survived by her husband, daughter, and sister, and a brand-new grandchild. And thousands of readers, including all of us, who miss her already.

🍀

LUCY BURDETTE: Leslie has already told you a lot about Sheila, so I will be brief. I met her in 2005 or so through Sisters in Crime New England not long after I was published, and before she landed a contract. You might underestimate Sheila because she could come across as cheerfully befuddled from time to time. But underneath that, she was a whirling dervish. In the time one of us could figure out the plot for one mystery, she would have written three. And she was fearless in the kitchen--she'd try cooking anything, the odder the better. (Peruse all her recipes on this blog to see what I mean.) I so admired her drive--she wanted to be in Ireland and she made that happen. She wanted to live her last days in her beloved cottage, and she made that happen too. Sheila, we loved and admired you--rest in peace, our dear friend.

🍀

MADDIE DAY/EDITH MAXWELL: I met Sheila at my first Sisters in Crime New England chapter meeting in 2006, and she announced she had just signed her first two cozy contracts. She blurbed my first book. She preceded me as SINC-NE president. She showed me it was possible to write two, three, even four books a year, and I tried to channel her energy (I still do). She never lacked in good cheer or for ideas. I always loved her Friday recipe posts on this blog. Most important, she persisted writing stories readers wanted to read - and had fun while doing it.

Four SINC-NE presidents: Sheila, Barb Ross, Edith/Maddie, and Connie Hambley

Sheila, my dear friend, I will miss you for a very long time.

🍀

CLEO COYLE: It is almost beyond comprehension that we would lose her so soon. Because Sheila was always so full of life and always excited to share her love of Ireland, I'll just add two links for her many fans and friends to enjoy, once again, her own wonderful words, beautiful photos, and inspiring enthusiasm. Sheila’s last post for Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen was on November 8, 2019. Here is a link to her celebration of favorite Irish foods. She called the post “Irish Food Reprise,” and she started with a photo of that famous “full Irish” breakfast. And here is a link from her post in early October, when she first arrived in Ireland. She titled this gorgeous photo View from my front window...

"View from my front window" Photo by Sheila Connolly
Click to read her post "Back to Ireland"

Rest in heaven, Sheila, may God’s sun shine warm upon your face,
and his rains fall soft upon your fields.

🍀

ESSIE LANG: One of my favorite memories of the very memorable Sheila was at Malice Domestic a couple of years ago. Sheila, Mary Jane Maffini and I were making our way back to the hotel after an enjoyable afternoon event put on by our agents at BookEnds Literary Agency when we all heard the call of the olive oil siren. So, of course, we had to go into this delightful specialty olive shop and sample, and compare with each other, and buy a variety of olive oils. Shopping is fun but especially so when it's related to food and cooking, and in such great company. I will miss seeing Sheila at future conferences and catching up. Godspeed my friend.

🍀

MAYA CORRIGAN: I didn't know Sheila as well or as long as the rest of you did, but every time I saw her at mystery conventions she was friendly, funny, and full of sage advice for a less experienced writer. I'll miss her posts about Ireland and her recipes. And I'll miss seeing her smiling and enjoying the company of mystery writers and fans. 

🍀

KRISTA DAVIS: Sheila and I go way back to our days as unpublished Guppies in Sisters In Crime. We were both nominated for an Agatha award for Best First Mystery the same year. Nevertheless, when the winner of our category was being announced, Sheila sat next to me and we held hands. Alas, neither of us won, but we went off and enjoyed champagne together anyway. I will miss her terribly. Sheila once posted a photograph of herself sitting on the steps of a building. I think it may have been a European cathedral. I loved that photo of the young Sheila. I looked through her blogs, trying to find it. But I found something else instead. Sheila wrote a blog that was never posted. It was her last one and we didn't realize it was there. She left us, her fellow Mystery Lovers' Kitchen bloggers, a goodbye in the first sentence. The blog is classic Sheila. She's exuberant about the things she loved. We'll be posting it here at Mystery Lovers' Kitchen on Thursday. Please join us. It will be posted exactly as we found it.

Daryl:  Sheila, I will remember fondly our many chats at the conferences, Malice Domestic, Bouchercon, and more. Most often with a glass of wine in our hands.  You told such delicious stories. Your wit and, yes, your snark, will be missed.  "Death leaves a heartache no one can heal; Love leaves a memory no one can steal." Rest in peace.

🍀

 

We have the books, the recipes, the memories. Thank you, dear friend, for sharing your extraordinary life and spirit with us. 

Readers, we invite you to share your memories of Sheila and her books in the comments. 

Blueberry Pound Cake and #giveaway

Maddie Day here. We're all baking more, it seems. I know I am. 

Some of you have heard the very sad news that our great friend Sheila Connolly has died. We will honor her with a group post on Monday. She was a personal friend and a role model for how to work hard at writing mysteries while still having fun.

I slid into her second and fourth Friday slots here a few months ago. Sheila was an excellent baker, among other culinary skills, so it seems apt to post a recipe for blueberry cake.



Blueberry Pound Cake

Ingredients
2 tablespoons butter
¼ cup white sugar
2?¾ cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup butter
2 cups white sugar
4 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups fresh blueberries
¼ cup all-purpose flour


Directions
Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C). Grease a 10-inch tube pan with 2 tablespoons butter. Sprinkle pan with 1/4 cup sugar.

Mix together 2 3/4 cups flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.

In a large bowl, cream together 1 cup butter and 2 cups sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then stir in the vanilla. 

Gradually beat in the flour mixture. Dredge blueberries with remaining 1/4 cup flour, then fold 
Pour batter into the prepared pan.
Bake in the preheated oven for 70 to 80 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Let cool in pan for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack and cool completely.

What's your favorite use of blueberries? How about your favorite Sheila Connolly book? 

My next book is Nacho Average Murder, which comes out June 30 and is the seventh Country Store Mystery. I am happy to send one of you an ARC!






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.