Susannah Hardy’s Crumpkin Cookies

 

A very warm welcome to Susannah Hardy, who was kind enough to make a Thanksgiving recipe for us this week. Susannah writes the Greek To Me Mysteries. OLIVE AND LET DIE is in bookstores now!



Thanks so much, Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen authors, for having me back to celebrate the release of Olive and Let Die, book 2 of the Greek to Me Mysteries. (Click here to read my prior guest post, which contains my recipe for Vasilopita, a Greek almond cake)

Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday, and not just because of the pie! Oh, fine. I’ll be honest: maybe it is about the pie, if it’s my mom’s crumb-topped apple pie crowned with a slice of local cheddar cheese. I’ve never been able to make it quite the same as she does, but I continue to try!

My Thanksgiving roots go way back. All the way back, in fact. My maternal ancestors were present at the first Thanksgiving—John Alden and Priscilla Mullins were my 9th great-grandparents. Today in our family, we eat dinner rather late in the day, then play Pitch, a card game with different names and different rules depending on what part of the country you are in. You may know it as Setback or Euchre. We play for a nickel a point until the coins are smoking hot from the friction of being pushed around the table so often. At the end of the evening, the nickels go back into the change jar for next time. I guess none of us wants to lug around a pocketful of metal when we’re already hauling around all the delicious food we ate all day. Our Pilgrim ancestors were probably not vying for High, Low, Jack, and Game, but traditions evolve, don’t they?

In honor of Thanksgiving, and because you can never have enough pumpkin—or cranberry—recipes around the holidays, here is my original recipe for a cookie celebrating those iconic native American foods. These are soft, cakey, nicely spiced morsels with a rich molasses flavor, and they’re even better the next day. Enjoy!




Susannah Hardy’s Crumpkin Cookies


2-1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup light brown sugar, packed

¾ cup canola oil

¼ cup molasses

1 cup canned pumpkin (plain pumpkin, not pumpkin pie filling)

1 egg

1 tsp baking soda

2 tsp pumpkin pie spice extract (if you can’t find this, substitute 1 tsp cinnamon, 1 tsp ground ginger, and ½ tsp ground cloves)

1 tsp orange extract

1 cup white chocolate chips


1 cup dried, sweetened cranberries (such as Craisins)


In large mixing bowl, using electric mixer on medium, combine thoroughly 1-1/2 cups flour with the sugar, oil, molasses, pumpkin, egg, baking soda and extracts. Add remaining 1 cup flour and mix on low speed until combined. Using wooden spoon, mix in chips and cranberries. Refrigerate dough for at least 30 minutes.


Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone mat (You can probably use a nonstick baking sheet, or generously grease a regular sheet, but parchment or the silicone mats work so well and make cleanup so easy, why bother?). Drop dough by rounded teaspoons onto cookie sheet. (These cookies do not spread much, so you can place them fairly close together)


Bake for 11 minutes, or until the bottom is set and the cookie loses some of its glossiness and springs back lightly when touched. Don’t burn yourself! Allow to rest on cookie sheet for about a minute, then remove to a wire rack to cool. Allow baking sheet to cool (or use a second sheet) and keep extra dough in the fridge between batches. This helps cookies retain their shape when baking.

Makes about 3 dozen cookies.

Olive and Let Die

As manager of the Bonaparte House, a historic landmark and Greek restaurant in upstate New York, Georgie Nikolopatos knows her local legends—and her traditional Greek recipes are to die for.

Between her soon-to-be ex-husband Spiro coming out of the closet and her budding romance with Captain Jack Conway, Georgie’s life is beginning to feel like a soap opera. And that’s before a surprise visit from her estranged mother Shirley, better known as soap star Melanie Ashley. But the dramatic family reunion takes a chilling turn when another long-lost relative turns up dead.

Just outside Spiro’s new restaurant, Georgie and Melanie find the body of Doreen Webber—a cousin Georgie never knew she had. With Spiro’s partner Inky on the list of suspects, Georgie begins to wonder what else her mother may be hiding. Is the dead-broke diva capable of murder? She’d better find out before someone adds a new twist to the family plot.


Includes delicious Greek recipes!

*****

Links:

Olive and Let Die: goo.gl/4pPol3

Feta Attraction: goo.gl/M7DutM

Website: www.susannahhardy.com

Facebook: goo.gl/cZKbC6

Twitter: goo.gl/v3bVFF, @susannahhardy1

Bio: Susannah Hardy thinks she has the best job in the world: making up stories and inventing recipes to go along with them. A native of northern New York, where she attended St. Lawrence University, Susannah now lives in Connecticut with her husband, teenage son, and Elvira the Wonder Cat.

To celebrate the release of OLIVE AND LET DIE, Susannah is giving away a copy to one

--> lucky person who leaves a comment by midnight Wednesday the 18th. Don't forget to leave your email address so she can contact you!

Guest Blogger Susannah Hardy #Vasilopita #recipe

Today MLK  welcomes Susannah Hardy who writes the brand new "Greek to Me" mysteries!

Susannah Hardy:  Thank you so much for hosting me, Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen authors! Can I just take a moment here to calm myself? Because I’m having a big ole fangirl moment here. If you’d told me two years ago that I’d be sharing recipes with Krista Davis, Cleo Coyle, Lucy Burdette, Avery Aames, Sheila Connolly, Peg Cochran, and Victoria Abbott, I’d have laughed myself silly.

And yet, here I am, with a culinary mystery to call my own. FETA ATTRACTION is set in a Greek restaurant in the Thousand Islands area of Northern New York State, along the St. Lawrence River. My heroine isn’t Greek (neither am I, so I hope my research is good), but she married a Greek man and manages the family restaurant. The Bonaparte House restaurant closes for the winter, so readers won’t see today’s recipe on the fictional menu, but Georgie’s mother-in-law makes this cake every year.

Vasilopita is a cake or bread, baked with a coin inside, that is traditionally eaten on New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day, in honor of St. Basil, for whom the dessert is named. Whoever receives the coin in his or her portion will be blessed in the coming year. I don’t know anyone who couldn’t use more blessings, so I see no reason not to make this easy, delicious cake any time.

Vasilopita (Greek New Year’s Cake)

1 cup butter, plus a couple of teaspoons for greasing cake pan
2 cups white sugar, plus an additional 1/4 cup
3 cups flour
6 eggs
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 cup warm milk
½ teaspoon baking soda
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon almond extract
½ cup whole almonds

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Thoroughly wash a coin (I used a shiny, golden U.S. one-dollar coin, but you can use a quarter), and wrap with aluminum foil.

Cream 1 cup butter and 2 cups sugar until light and fluffy. Gradually mix in flour (mixture will look crumbly). Mix in eggs, one at a time, until well incorporated.

Now for a little science experiment: Add baking powder to warm milk, and mix into batter. Add baking soda to lemon juice (this is fun—it will foam up), and mix this into batter as well. Mix in almond extract.

Pour batter into a 10-inch cake pan that has been liberally greased with the remaining 2 teaspoons of butter. I found that this recipe made too much batter for my cake pan, so I filled the 10-inch pan two-thirds full, then greased another, smaller pan and baked the remaining batter in that. Next time I would probably bake this in a 13” x 9” pan.

Poke the foil-wrapped coin down into the batter. Bake for 15 minutes.
While cake is baking, place almonds and remaining sugar into a small food processor and chop (or chop by hand). The almonds should not be a dust or paste, but should be a little chunky, like a streusel topping.  After cake has baked for 15 minutes, remove from oven and sprinkle the sugar/almond mixture over the partially baked cake and return to oven. Bake another 15 to 20 minutes, or until cake is lightly browned and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Allow to cool 20 minutes, then run a knife around the outside of the cake and it should pop right out.

Place on a pretty serving dish, almond side up, and sprinkle with powdered sugar.

To serve, slice up the cake and top with whipped cream. You can never go wrong with whipped cream, right? The oldest person in the room is traditionally served first and then subsequent pieces are given out according to age, oldest to youngest. Whoever finds the coin in her/his cake is blessed.

I think this is a lovely idea, don’t you? To be entered in today's giveaway, please leave a comment with your email and describe one of your family's traditions...


Susannah Hardy thinks she has the best job in the world: making up stories and inventing recipes to go along with them. A native of northern New York, where she attended St. Lawrence University, Susannah now lives in Connecticut with her husband, teenage son, and Elvira the Wonder Cat. You can find her on Facebook, Twitter, or at her website.