Mystery Lovers' Kitchen: honey

Sunday, August 13, 2023

Welcome to our Guest Jennie Marts #GIVEAWAY

Peg Cochran here, please give a warm welcome to our guest today--Jennie Marts! She's sharing a delicious-sounding recipe and doing a fantastic giveaway of a Cozy Mystery Kindle Prize Pack!

Hi everyone! I’m Jennie Marts, and I’m so excited to be here to share a recipe from my new book, TAKE THE HONEY AND RUN: A Bee Keeping Mystery.

First, a little about me. I live in Colorado with my husband and two adorable dogs, Maggie is a Sheltie/mini-collie, and Cooper is a sweet Golden Retriever who thinks he’s a lap dog and looks just like the dog on the cover of the book. I am the USA TODAY Bestselling and award-winning author of over thirty books that range from cozy mystery to romantic comedies to western romance, but all my books are filled with humor and heart and feature quirky characters and the sense of community that comes from living in a small town.

TAKE THE HONEY AND RUN is the story of Bailey Briggs, a single mom mystery author, who returns home to her small mountain town of Humble Hills, Colorado. She and her twelve-year-old daughter, Daisy, arrive to hear her grandmother, Granny Bee, threatening to kill the town mayor. The next morning, Bailey discovers the mayor’s dead body, and Granny Bee’s Honey I’m Home Hot Spiced Honey turns out to bee the murder weapon. Now Granny’s got herself into a sticky situation, and Bailey has to use her fictional detective skills to solve a real murder and keep her grandmother from ending up bee-hind bars.

Oh, and did I mention that upon arriving in town, she runs into Sawyer Dunn, the love of her life, whom she hasn’t seen in thirteen years, not since he got shipped off to his uncle’s farm in Montana the night they stole a tractor and accidentally drove it into a pond? And did I also mention that Sawyer now happens to be the town sheriff?

Granny Bee is the beekeeper in this book, and her book club, affectionately known as The Hive, consists of her two spinster sisters (who live in an old purple Victorian called Lavender Manor), Rosa Delgado, and town librarian, Dottie Duffield. Bailey and her sidekick bestie, Evie Delgado Espinoza (Rosa’s granddaughter), have been described as a mashup of Lucy & Ethel and Thelma & Louise trying to solve a murder.

I had so much fun writing this book! My husband is a certified beekeeper, and he has always told such fascinating stories about the life and habits of bees, that I knew I had to incorporate them into a story somehow.

Granny Bee loves to bake and is always offering up honey-inspired dishes, so I knew I wanted to put recipes in this book. I recruited the best cook I know—my mom—and we spent a whole day in the kitchen testing out all the recipes and finding the best ones for the book.

What a day we had! Mom came over around ten that morning, and I finally finished cleaning everything up around midnight. Whew! We made different variations of several of the recipes to make sure we picked the best ones, so we baked all day then had the family over for dinner to be our guinea pigs…um…I mean, our taste testers.

I will admit, we had a few duds…nobody liked the honey lemonade, except for the characters in the book, of course. They loved it.

But overall, we made some delicious creations, and I think our favorite was the cream-cheese quesitos drizzled in honey. Sooo good!

Honey-glazed Quesitos (Cream Cheese Pastries)

From the kitchen of: Rosa Delgado

Ingredients:

· 1 sheet Pepperidge Farms Puff Pastry, thawed according to package instructions

· 1 (8 ounce) brick cream cheese, softened

· ¼ cup sugar

· 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

· 1 egg white, beaten slightly

· 3 tablespoons honey for drizzling

Instructions:

To start—preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Then on a lightly floured surface, cut puff pastry into 9 equal pieces (should be 4 x 4-inch squares).

In a bowl, mix cream cheese, sugar, and vanilla until soft and creamy. Drop a spoonful of mixture into the center of each puff pastry then fold one corner into the center. Dab a little egg white onto the tip of the opposite corner of pastry then fold it toward the center, just barely overlapping the first corner and using the egg white to stick the dough together. It should look like the quesito is hugging itself with the pastry meeting in the center and the filling showing on the sides.

Repeat with remaining pastries then transfer to the parchment lined baking sheet and brush each pastry lightly with egg white.

Bake for 15-20 minutes, until puffed and golden.

Remove from oven and drizzle pastries with honey.

Enjoy!

I’d love for you to check out all the recipes and find out who used the hot spiced honey to murder the mayor in Take the Honey and Run. Humble Hills and Honeybuzz Mountain Ranch are full of fun and quirky characters, and I hope you love them as much as I do.

Do you have any favorite recipes that you use honey in? I’d love to hear about them! I’m always on the lookout for new inspiration for the next book in the series, Kill Or Bee Killed, coming out next spring. Tell me about your favorite use for honey in the comments.

Thanks for hosting me today! I so enjoy the blog and was thrilled to be part of it today!

You can find TAKE THE HONEY AND RUN here:

https://books2read.com/TaketheHoneyandRun

Do you have any favorite recipes that you use honey in? Leave a comment to be entered to win a Cozy Mystery Kindle Prize Pack including an e-book copy of Take the Honey and Run, and an e-book of Another Saturday Night the first in my Pager Turner Mystery Series, I Ain't Got No Body! Sorry, US Only.

Jennie Marts is the USA TODAY Best-selling author of award-winning books filled with love, laughter, and always a happily ever after. Readers call her books “laugh out loud” funny and the “perfect mix of romance, humor, and steam.” Fic Central claimed one of her books was “the most fun I’ve had reading in years.”

She is living her own happily ever after in the mountains of Colorado with her husband, two dogs, and a parakeet who loves to tweet to the oldies. She’s addicted to Diet Coke, adores Cheetos, and believes you can’t have too many books, shoes, or friends.

Her books range from western romance to cozy mysteries, but they all have the charm and appeal of quirky small-town life. She loves genre-mashups like adding romance to her Page Turners cozy mysteries and creating the hockey-playing cowboys in the Cowboys of Creedence. The same small-town community comes to life with more animal antics in her latest Creedence Horse Rescue series. And her sassy heroines and hunky heroes carry over in her heartwarming, feel good romances from Hallmark Publishing. Her newest cozy mystery, Take the Honey and Run: A Bee Keeping Mystery, debuts this July.

Jennie loves to hear from readers. Follow her on Facebook at Jennie Marts Books, Twitter at @JennieMarts, and at jenniemartswriter on Instagram. Visit her at www.jenniemarts.com and sign up for her newsletter to keep up with the latest news and releases.

Tuesday, September 27, 2022

HONEY APPLE CAKE #DairyFree from Author @CleoCoyle #RoshHashanah

Our readers may remember this delectable Honey Apple Cake from our culinary mystery Honey Roasted. Our amateur sleuth, Clare Cosi, serves it up in her landmark Greenwich Village coffeehouse while investigating an especially sticky crime in her neighborhood. It is...

🍎 A honey of a recipe...

Cleo Coyle writes two
bestselling mystery

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

☕ A Note from Cleo

Apples and honey are a traditional treat for Rosh Hashanah, symbolizing hope for a sweet new year, and this dairy-free sheet cake is a superb showcase for that happy pairing.

The cake batter is spread across the pan and topped with spiced, shredded apple, then drizzled with honey before baking. Out of the oven, the golden canvas of tender baked cake carries the crowning caramelized sweetness of honey-kissed fruit.

Enjoy this cake as an after-dinner dessert, on your coffee break, or (as our amateur sleuth Clare did in Honey Roasted) a way-past midnight snack! As far as honey, use a good-quality raw honey for amazing flavor. And the best apple for this recipe is Golden Delicious, not to be confused with Red Delicious. Golden Delicious apples are slightly sweet and buttery and an excellent apple for baking.

Happy New Year to all those celebrating this week. And may everyone...

Eat with joy!

~ Cleo

To download this recipe in a

PDF document that you can print,

save, or share, click here or

on the image below...

Click for free recipe PDF.

🍏 Cleo Coyle's

Honey Apple Cake

Dairy-Free (no milk, no butter)

Ingredients:

3 medium apples, peeled (See my note below on type of apple)
1/4 cup honey (For outstanding flavor, I use raw honey)
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger (do not use fresh)
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
4 large eggs
3/4 cup light brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated white sugar
3/4 cup canola or vegetable oil
1/2 teaspoon Kosher salt (or 1/4 teaspoon table salt)
1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour

🍎 Note on Apple Type: I like Golden Delicious for this cake—not to be confused with Red Delicious. Golden Delicious apples are slightly sweet and buttery and a very nice apple for baking. To see more reviews of apples for baking, click here to read a helpful post from Huffpost.

Directions:

Step 1 - Prep pan: Fit a 9 x 13-inch pan with a parchment paper sling (see my photo below). The excess paper that hangs over the sides will act as handles and allow you to lift the cooled cake onto a serving platter. (Tip: I like to spray the pan lightly with non-stick spray first to help the paper to stick better to the pan’s bottom and sides.) The sides without paper should be sprayed with non-stick spray also.

Step 2 – Make the honey-apple topping: Shred the peeled apples with a boxed grater or food processor.

Put the shredded apples in a saucepan and toss well with honey, cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg. Cook and gently stir over medium-high heat for 10 to 15 minutes. This pre-cooking will evaporate the excess moisture from the apples and soften and caramelize them for great flavor. When finished cooking, most (but not all) of the visible liquid should be gone from the pan; remove from heat and set aside, allowing the apple mixture to cool while you create the cake batter.

Step 3 – Mix batter with one-bowl mixing method: Whisk eggs in your mixing bowl until slightly frothy. Add brown and white sugars, oil, salt, and baking powder, and whisk until well blended. Sift the flour into the bowl. Stir only enough until a smooth batter forms; do not over-mix or you will develop the gluten in the flour and your cake will be tough instead of tender. Batter will be loose.

Step 4 – Pour batter and top with apples and honey: Pour the loose batter into your prepared sheet pan and gently tilt the pan back and forth until the batter coats the bottom of the pan in an even layer.

Using a fork, gently pick up the shredded, cooked apple topping, leaving behind any visible liquid, and drop the apples in small mounds across the batter in the pan.

Use the fork’s prongs to separate these mounds and continue to spread the topping into an even layer across the batter.

Drizzle the final 1 to 2 tablespoons of honey over the cake top. (If using raw honey, warm it a bit for drizzling consistency.)

Step 5 – Bake: Bake in a well-pre-heated oven at 350°F for 30 to 40 minutes. The time will depend on your oven. Cake is done when the batter has turned golden brown and a toothpick inserted into the cake comes out free of batter. (Tip: The cake center will take a bit longer to cook than the outside edges, but take care that your cake’s edges do not over-cook.)

Serve: Cool the cake in the pan. Gently run a knife between the cake and the pan sides that are not covered with parchment paper (to loosen the cake and prevent sticking); and then use the parchment paper “handles” to gently lift the cake onto a cutting board or serving platter and slice into squares.

This cake is delicious on its own or with dairy-free whipped cream (made from coconut milk). If you’d like that easy recipe for making whipped cream (without milk or cream), click here to download a free PDF (give a few moments to load).