Scottish Cheese Shortbread #Thanksgiving #recipe @LucyBurdette

LUCY BURDETTE: While on the trip to Scotland that became the backdrop for the next Key West mystery, you can bet that I paid close attention to the food. They make wonderful cheese in the British Isles, but they don't generally serve it at cocktail hour as we do in the US. On our Scottish menus, a cheese plate was frequently offered as a dessert option. Although I did try the sticky toffee pudding and Scottish Cranachan that are specialities, I often chose the cheese. I ate cheese until my digestive system rebelled.

"Are you okay?" my traveling companions asked when I arrived late to our little bus.

"Just one too many cheese plates," I admitted.

Today's recipe would be a perfect accompaniment to a cheese arrangement--any time! But after making them, I realized how deliciously perfect they could be for a pre-Thanksgiving nibble.

Scottish cheese shortbread ingredients

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
8 ounces extra-sharp white Cheddar cheese, finely shredded
1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour

Beat the butter together with the two kinds of pepper plus flour until mixed. Beat in the grated cheese until the dough begins to pull together.

Place the dough on a piece of parchment paper and shape it into a roll. Cover the dough and chill in the fridge for 1/2 hour or more.

Preheat the oven to  350. Slice the log into rounds, about 1/4 inch thick and arrange these on baking sheets covered with parchment. 

Bake for 13-15 minutes until the edges begin to brown. 

Cool ten minutes on the cookie sheets and then move to a rack or plate to finish cooling. They freeze perfectly so you can bake them ahead of time but have something special to serve while the turkey is cooking. You will need to remind your guests that these aren't sweet cookies, but then they will vanish... 

HAPPY THANKSGIVING from all the Key West gang

Lucy Burdette writes the Key West food critic mystery series, featuring fiesty food critic Hayley Snow. Number 10, THE KEY LIME CRIME, is in stores and online everywhere. 

Key Lime Pie for The Key Lime Crime @LucyBurdette #giveaway

LUCY BURDETTE: Obviously, we cannot launch a book called THE KEY LIME CRIME without a recipe for Key lime pie. I got a little giggle from an early reviewer who said she hadn't thought she could enjoy a book based on key lime pie. However, not only did she love the book, she was now craving pie...in case this should happen to you next week, here's the recipe...

And do leave a comment about the best pie you've ever eaten to have your name added to the drawing for a CD audio copy of THE KEY LIME CRIME. (US only please.)

Ingredients for the crust

10 sheets of graham crackers, should measure 1 1/4 cups
5 tablespoons butter, melted
1/4 cup sugarWhir the graham crackers in a food processor until they make fine crumbs. Mix in the sugar and the butter. Press the mixture using the back of a spoon into your nine or 10 inch pie plate. Nine is probably better as my pie was a little low. Bake the crust at 350 for 10 minutes until it starts to brown. Remove it from the oven and reduce the heat to 325.

Ingredients for the filling

1/2 cup key lime or lime juice, freshly squeezed
Four egg yolks
1 14 ounce can sweetened condensed milk
2 teaspoons grated lime zest

Squeeze the limes until you have 1/2 cup of juice. (4-5 regular limes, more key limes.) Make sure to strain out the seeds. 

 


Whisk the egg yolks, then whisk in the sweetened condensed milk, lime juice, and lime zest.  







 

Add the filling to the pie crust and bake for six minutes. Remove from the oven and set this aside while you make your meringue.

 


Ingredients for the meringue

Four egg whites
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
1/2 cup sugar
One half teaspoon vanilla

Using a clean bowl and mixer, beat the egg whites and cream of tartar until they hold soft peaks. Gradually beat in the sugar until the egg whites hold stiff peaks and appear shiny but not dry. Beat in the vanilla. 


 
Attach the meringue to the hot pie, beginning by adding globs all around the edge of the crust and smoothing them into a circle. (That's the  technical culinary term--add globs.) 

Then add remaining meringue to the center and smooth or shape into peaks as desired. Bake the pie for another 20 minutes. Cool on a rack. Refrigerate until serving.

And now serve yourself a nice piece of pie and start reading...

Lucy Burdette writes the Key West food critic mystery series, featuring fiesty food critic Hayley Snow. Number 10, THE KEY LIME CRIME, is in stores and online everywhere on August 11. 

Until August 9 (three days left,) ebook versions of DEATH ON THE MENU and A DEADLY FEAST are on sale for two weeks now--to help celebrate the upcoming THE KEY LIME CRIME! ($1.99 and 2.99)

RELEASE DAY NEWS: A Deadly Feast by Lucy Burdette

Congratulations to our own... 

LUCY BURDETTE

On the release of her new
Key West Food Critic Mystery

A DEADLY FEAST 

National bestselling author Lucy Burdette’s intrepid food critic Hayley Snow must sniff out a killer in the ninth Key West Food Critic mystery.

Key West food critic Hayley Snow scents-es something fishy when a customer falls stone-crab cold dead on a seafood tasting tour.

Thanksgiving is nearly here, and Key West food critic Hayley Snow has just one more assignment to put to bed for Key Zest magazine before she gets to celebrate with her family and her police officer fiancé, Nathan Bransford. Then, just days later, wedding bells will ring—if death doesn’t toll first.

The sweet potatoes and stuffing will have to wait when Hayley picks up a distraught phone call from her friend, Analise Smith. On the last stop of a seafood tasting tour run by Analise, one of the customers collapsed—dead. With the police on the verge of shutting down the tour—and ruining Analise’s business—Hayley can hardly refuse her friend’s entreaties to investigate.

As if wedding jitters and family strife weren’t enough for Hayley to worry about, there’s crusty pastry chef Martha Hubbard, whose key lime pie may have been the murder weapon—but did she poison her own pie or was she framed? As the hours to Turkey Day tick away, the pressure cooker is on for Hayley to serve up the culprit on a silver platter in A Deadly Feast, national bestselling author Lucy Burdette’s taste-tempting ninth Key West Food Critic mystery.

To learn more or buy,

CLICK HERE

📖

Click to see more of our
upcoming releases.

👓

RELEASE DAY NEWS: Death on the Menu (New Paperback Edition) by Lucy Burdette

Congratulations to our own... 

LUCY BURDETTE

On the release of the
*New Paperback Edition*
of her Key West Food Critic Mystery

DEATH ON THE MENU 

When a killer strikes just before flan time, beloved food critic Hayley Snow is forced to sniff out the killer before someone else bites the dust.

Hayley Snow, fiery food critic for Key Zest magazine, has just landed a ticket to one of the most prestigious events in Key West: a high-brow three-day conference at the Harry Truman Little White House. Even though she’ll be working the event helping her mother’s fledgling catering business, there’s plenty of spicy gossip to go around. But just before her mother’s decadent flan is put to the test, Key West’s most prized possession, Hemingway’s Nobel prize gold medal for The Old Man and the Sea, is discovered stolen from its case.

Unsavory suspicions point to Gabriel, a family friend and one of the new busboys working the event, who mysteriously goes missing moments later. Anxious to clear his name, Gabriel’s family enlists Hayley to help find him, but right as they begin their search, his body is found stabbed to death in the storeroom.

Hayley has no shortage of suspects to interrogate and very little time before the killer adds another victim to the menu in national bestselling author Lucy Burdette’s delectable eighth Key West Food Critic mystery, Death on the Menu.

To learn more or buy,

CLICK HERE

📖

Click to see more of our
upcoming releases.

👓

Pumpkin Snickerdoodle Cookies for #Halloween #recipe @Lucyburdette

LUCY BURDETTE: I love Halloween, especially in Key West, which is rife with costumes and parades during this season. (KILLER TAKEOUT was set during the Halloween week--so much fun!) And I love snickerdoodles...hmmm. Could I combine the two? I set myself a challenge--revising my snickerdoodle recipe so it suited Halloween. I think I nailed it--but make a batch and see what you think...

Ingredients

Two sticks unsalted butter, softened
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 and 1/2 cups sugar
2 and 1/2 tsp low-sodium baking powder
2 and 3/4 cups flour
2 eggs, room temperature

2 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup canned pumpkin (not pumpkin pie mix)

For the topping:

2-3 Tbsp granulated sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

½ tsp ground ginger

¼ tsp nutmeg

Preheat the oven to 375. Sift the dry ingredients (salt, sugar, flour, and low-sodium baking powder) together and set aside. Using either a beater or a Kitchenaid mixer, beat the butter until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs one at a time, about 1 to 2 minutes after each addition. Add the pumpkin and the vanilla and beat lightly until combined.

Slowly mix in the dry ingredients--don't beat too long or the cookies will be tough. Divide the dough into two parts and roll them into logs, wrapped with parchment paper. Refrigerate for two hours or freeze for one. (As you can see from my photo, this isn't a beauty contest, as you'll be rolling the cookies too.)

Mix the spices and sugar on a plate. Cut the logs into one-inch pieces and form them into balls. Roll the balls in the cinnamon mixture and place them on 2 parchment-covered baking sheets. You should end up with about 2 dozen. Big ones!

Bake at 375 for 8-10 minutes, removing them as soon as the first cracks appear.

Lucy and her husband, ready for the zombie bike ride

King and Queen of Key West fantasy fest

Lucy Burdette writes the Key West food critic mysteries--find them wherever books are sold! Find her on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest--Instagram too...

Baked Bananas with a Cuban Flair @LucyBurdette

a market in Havana

LUCY BURDETTE: You all are going to be reading a lot of Cuban recipes in the next year. I'll tell you why: The eighth Key West food critic mystery (coming out next summer with Crooked Lane Books,) takes place at a Havana/Key West conference. Hayley Snow's mother, Janet, has been awarded the catering contract and Hayley herself has been pressed into service for the weekend. I've just sent this off to the publisher--whoo hoo--and thought I would celebrate with this easy, sort-of-Cuban side dish.

Often in Cuba and in Cuban restaurants, fried plantains are found on the side of meat and rice dishes. But I discovered a version of this banana recipe in the Nantucket Open-House Cookbook by Sarah Leah Chase and loved it.(Confession: I don't love plantains.) And, it's a lot easier than frying individual slices of plantain, important if you are working on a lot of other dishes.

Ingredients

5 to 6 Bananas
Half a stick of butter
1 tablespoon fresh lime juice, or squeeze a half
1/3 cup brown sugar
2 tablespoons rum
Cinnamon sprinkle if desired

Heat the butter and other ingredients in a small saucepan. Pour over the bananas, that you will have laid out in a 11 x 13 pan. Bake at 375 for 12 to 15 minutes until the butter is bubbling and the bananas are just beginning to brown. That's it!

These were delicious with the pork roast that I'd made but I could see them going with a lot of other main dishes. They look like you've gone to a lot of trouble when they're really easy as pie. (Not piecrust, as Sheila would attest.)

Lucy Burdette writes the Key West food critic mysteries--find them wherever books are sold! Find her on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest--Instagram too...