Berry Key Lime Pie #Recipe by Maya Corrigan

Happy Juneteenth holiday! Today is the national holiday commemorating the emancipation of enslaved African Americans. That, plus the start of summer tomorrow and the the Fourth of July just around the corner, gives us much to celebrate. Abundant fresh fruit can make a simple pie, cake, or cupcake festive looking. Today I'm sharing a recipe for my favorite pie, Key lime, garnished with berries. 

To make an easy no-bake Key lime pie, use a prepared pie crust. Instead of a graham cracker crust, which is classic for Key lime pie, I chose a pecan crust. Either type works well and, of course, you can bake your own crust. Make sure the crust has cooled down before putting in the filling. 

Prepare this pie at least several hours or even the day before you serve it.

Ingredients

1 prepared pie crust
1 8-ounce package cream cheese at room temperature
1 14-ounce can of sweetened condensed milk
1/3 – 1/2 cup Key lime juice or other lime juice

Garnish: strawberries and blueberries
Optional: whipped cream topping

Combine the softened cream cheese with the sweetened condensed milk, using an electric mixer. Start on a low speed and increase the speed, to blend the filling until it is smooth.

Reduce the mixer speed to the lowest setting and add the lime juice slowly. Taste the mixture periodically and adjust the amount of lime juice to suit your preferences. Adding a half cup of bottled Key lime juice results in a tart-sweet pie. You will need to adjust the amount of lime juice if you prefer a sweeter filling. Pour the lime mixture into the shell.

 

Refrigerate the pie for a minimum of 4 hours or overnight. Add the berries so that the pie has a red, white, and blue design. Before serving, add a dollop of whipped cream if desired.

Store any leftover pie in the refrigerator.

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Maya Corrigan writes the Five-Ingredient Mysteries featuring café manger Val and her live-wire grandfather solving murders in a Chesapeake Bay town. Maya lives in a Virginia suburb of Washington, D.C. Before writing crime fiction, she taught American literature, writing, and detective fiction at Northern Virginia Community College and Georgetown University. When not reading and writing, she enjoys theater, travel, trivia, cooking, and crosswords.

Visit my website for easy recipes, mystery history and trivia, and a free culinary mystery story.

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Do you have a favorite summer dessert?

Chocolate Biscuit Cake

You’d think that by now I’d know everything there was to know about food, or at least about desserts. After all, I’ve been seeking them out and tasting them for decades now.

But I found a new dessert in Ireland, in the very popular café that’s attached to the Field’s SuperValu market in the heart of Skibbereen. The café faces the main street, and it’s a great place to sit and watch people go by, over a nice cup of tea and a pastry. The food is good and it’s also inexpensive. Did I mention I now have a frequent shopper card for Field’s? I’m there a lot.

This recipe takes a little explaining. I first saw it in the display case at the café when I stopped in for that cup of tea and something sweet. It called out my name, so of course I tried it. It’s a cake only because it’s cake-shaped (or more accurately, loaf-shaped). In fact, it’s made up of nice gooey chocolate and biscuits, er, cookies. Yes, commercial packaged cookies. Put them all together and chill them (no baking!), and you have a very sweet, multi-textured dessert that quickly becomes addictive (you didn’t think I’d stop at one, did you?).

I went looking for recipes, but I quickly found there are two schools of thought about this: the golden syrup faction and the condensed milk faction. I can’t swear to it, but I’m guessing what I sampled came from the golden syrup side of the fence, given the slightly gooey texture (which contrasts nicely to the crunchy cookies).

The basic recipe is simple, but some people add things along the way, like candied cherries (never one of my favorites) or other dried fruits, mini-marshmallows, or nuts. One thing all the recipes agree upon is that you must use a good quality chocolate (the recipes actually say that in caps: “Good Quality Chocolate.” No, it’s not a brand name.) And real butter.

And Maltesers. Which I had to go hunting for. I guess they’re basically malted milk balls dipped in chocolate. It’s an English thing. You would not believe the variety of candies available there—and the absurdity of some of their names. (My quick survey indicates that the Irish have a serious sweet tooth, and that Irish dentists much be very happy.)

And this is only some of them!

The recommended biscuits (cookies) are: Digestive Biscuits and Rich Tea Biscuits. These are different, one from the other. Don’t ask me how. The first one is supposed to be good for you, or that’s what the maker thought when they named it. Google them if you’re really curious. But you need to include both kinds.

Yes, I brought all the ingredients home with me. Oh, except for the Golden Syrup, which I have used in the past. But even the small tin is heavy, and my suitcase was pushing the limits already. However, there are substitutes, so I used one here.

I will apologize in advance: many foreign recipes call for ingredients by weight. Usually I translate those to terms most American cooks will recognize, but it’s a little hard to measure the volume of a bunch of crumbled cookies. If you look at the picture of the cookie packages, I used about 2/3 of a package of each kind. The chocolate bar weighed seven ounces. But don’t worry too much—it’s a forgiving recipe and exact measurements don’t matter.


Chocolate Biscuit Cake

Ingredients:

275 g good quality chocolate, broken into chunks
200 g Digestive Biscuits, roughly broken (do not make the pieces too small)
200 g Rich Tea Biscuits (ditto)
1 packet Maltesers
150 ml Golden Syrup (if you don’t have any, you can combine 2 parts light corn syrup with one part molasses—I used treacle, which is more authentic. The mixture should be thick.)
110 g butter (about one stick)

One package Maltesers

Instructions:

Generously line a loaf tin with cling film (for us, that’s plastic wrap). Two layers are good, and leave plenty hanging over the edges (to cover the top of the cake later).

Place the butter, chocolate and golden syrup (or substitute) in the top of a double boiler whose bottom is filled with simmering water and stir until melted.

Biscuits, whole (no, I can't tell them apart)

Same biscuits, crumbled

Crumble your biscuits. When the chocolate mixture has melted, place it in a large bowl and add the biscuits and Maltesers and mix well (without mashing the biscuits any more than necessary).

Pour the mixture into the lined tin and press it gently into place. Cover the top with the excess cling film. Place the tin in the refrigerator and let it set (at least three hours, but you can keep it for a couple of weeks if you want)—it should be firm enough so that you can cut it.

To serve: lift it out of the tin (that’s when all that cling film comes in handy!) and peel off the cling film. With a long sharp knife, make slices about one-half to three-quarters of an inch thick. 

And enjoy it, with a nice cup of tea!

By the way, I'm editing the next County Cork mystery now. It may be called Winters Past, and it doesn't have a cover yet. But it takes place in a blizzard, and Rose is cooking comfort food on an antique stove and toasting bread over the fire in the pub, for a bunch of hungry people who are stranded at Sullivan's.

Super Fabulous Summer No-Bake Cheesecake!

Today I'm sharing a truly fabulous recipe here on the blog, but first, let me congratulate my blog-sister Cleo Coyle on the release of ROAST MORTEM.

Today is release day, which is always cause for celebration!

And we here at Mystery Lovers' Kitchen do love to celebrate!

Roast Mortem is out right now. You can find it in bookstores everywhere!

Now... Cheesecake...

You won't believe how great this cheesecake is. Seriously.

I hear you: You're protesting, insisting that, no-bake cheesecakes aren't bad, but never as satisfying as the kind you get at a restaurant. I won't lie and tell you that I don't crave a classic cheesecake (Junior's, Cheesecake Factory, Eli's, etc.) from time to time, but I will tell you that baking one in the middle of

summer is not on my agenda. I'll bet it's not on yours either.

I was invited to dinner at a friend's house this past Saturday, with the only request that I bring dessert.

I put this cheesecake together that afternoon and pulled it out of the freezer just as we left the house. Nicely defrosted by dessert time, and best of all? It was delicious!

Six adults all sampled this and everyone raved. I brought home the meager leftovers and my kids went nuts for it. Creamy, rich, easy, and no-bake!

You ready? You're gonna love it!

No Bake Cheesecake a la Julie

1 cup graham cracker crumbs

2 cups pecan cookie crumbs (I pulverized the store-brand equivalent of Pecan Sandies in my food processor until finely ground)

10 Tbsp butter (1 stick plus 2 T), melted

3 Tbsp sugar for the crust

3 - 8 oz pkgs cream cheese - room temperature

1/2 cup sugar for the filling

1 Tbsp lemon juice

1 cup whipping cream

Fruit topping

Combine graham cracker and cookie crumbs with sugar. Add melted butter and stir until the mixture sticks together. Press into the bottom and sides of a 9-inch springform pan. Cover with aluminum foil and place in the refrigerator.

Combine the 3 packages of room-temperature cream cheese with the lemon juice and 1/2 cup of sugar. Using a hand mixer, beat until creamy.

In a separate bowl (I used a chilled metal bowl) whip the cream until soft peaks hold. Fold this cream into the cream cheese mixture. Mix well by hand. Don't use the mixer.

Spread into the prepared springform pan. Cover with fruit topping (I used raspberry preserves slightly warmed in the microwave for easier spreading). Once the topping is in place, cover with aluminum foil and freeze for at least an hour or two.

About an hour before serving, remove the springform side and move the cheesecake to the refrigerator. Should be just right by dessert time. Truly, truly, a fabulous dessert. Easy enough to make at home, pretty enough for company.

And... speaking of Cleo... can't you picture her strawberry or blueberry toppings here? Ooh.. I can!!

Have fun with this! Enjoy!

Julie

Author of GRACE UNDER PRESSURE, first in the Manor House Mystery series. At your favorite bookstore today!

No-Bake Chocolate Orange Cheesecake

Today I'm sharing a recipe I received years ago from a good friend of the family -- so close she's practically a relative. She's elderly now, but at the time she was probably upper middle-age, and always came up with the best desserts for holidays, birthdays, or just let's-get-together days.

I was pretty young when I fell in love with one of her cheesecakes (that recipe will come another time) and when I asked her for it, she misunderstood, and gave me this one instead. My good luck because this one is fabulous too! My family loves cheesecake of all kinds -- what's not to love, though? Cheesecake is creamy and sweet, but not overly so. It has substance and a great "mouth feel." Add in chocolate, and seriously? How much better can you get?

This one is very easy. No bake. Really. I made it for Mother's Day and took it over to my m-i-l's house. It had been years since I made this one (my youngest daughter didn't remember ever having it) and so it qualified as a "Julie's Surprise." I'm lucky that they're used to me... and keep sampling my "surprises" even though some of them don't exactly work out as planned. This one, however, worked out just fine!

I have to also add that it was this cheesecake that got me to love the combination of orange and chocolate. Up to that point, I really preferred to keep those flavors separate. But this worked for me. The orange flavor is subtle, but there's a decided citrusy tang. If you prefer, you can probably leave the orange juice out of the recipe, but if you do, you may want to increase the amount of chocolate you add.

Interesting tidbit: You can tell this recipe has been around for a while. It calls for a 6 oz can of frozen orange juice. I could not find orange juice in 6 oz containers anywhere. I could only find 12 oz. Now, maybe that's just a local thing... but I remember those smaller cans. Now that I think of it, I haven't seen them in a long time. For this recipe, I melted all 12 oz, then made juice with the leftover concentrate.

Here goes:

No-bake Chocolate Orange Cheesecake

8 oz pkg cream cheese, softened

1 can (14 oz) condensed milk

4 oz melted chocolate (I used semi-sweet)

1 cup evaporated milk

6 oz frozen orange juice concentrate - allowed to melt to a liquid consistency

9-inch ready prepared graham cracker crust

Beat the cream cheese with the condensed milk until combined. Add the melted chocolate, then the evaporated milk, and mix well. Add the melted orange juice concentrate, and mix until blended. Pour into the prepared pie crust, cover, and freeze for at least 2 hours.

That's it. Honest.

Because it had been a long time since I'd made this, I pulled it out of the freezer when we were halfway through dinner thinking it would need the time to thaw. Mistake. It was still good, but it really did not need to be pulled out early. I should have kept it in the freezer until we were ready to serve. The consistency was just a little bit too gooey. So, word to the wise - keep it frozen until just before you're ready to serve.

Enjoy!

Julie

Author of Grace Under Pressure - first in the new Manor of Murder Mystery series.

www.juliehyzy.com

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And now a bit of Contest News...

Congratulations to Stacy from Louisville!
You've won Riley's Williams-Sonoma’s Ultimate
Grilling Rub Collection!!! Way to go!!!!!!

AND

Here's your chance to enter
Julie Hyzy's May Contest!


Julie’s first book in the Manor of Murder Mystery series, Grace Under Pressure, debuts June 1st! To help launch the book and to celebrate its release, she's running a very special contest: Pre-order Grace Under Pressure any time before May 31, 2010, and you're eligible to win a $25 gift certificate from Mystery Lovers Bookshop! (and if you've already pre-ordered, you just need to let Julie know!) No receipts required. Just email Julie at JulieHyzy@gmail.com with the date that you pre-ordered and the name of the bookstore you ordered it from, and your name goes in! (Please put "CONTEST" in the subject header. Thanks!)

Here are a few helpful links to get you started:

Independent Bookstore List: here

- Mystery Lovers Bookshop (free shipping on book orders over $10!) - Centuries & Sleuths (Julie's local mystery bookstore) - Barnes & Noble - Amazon.com

And while we're here...

Avery is offering FREE BOOKMARKS on her website. Click this FREE BOOKMARK link to send her your information.

She also has a "fan club" contest (separate from Julie's) that is running until this FRIDAY. Click this CONTEST link to see how to enter. Hint: the instructions are in the last paragraph of the newsletter.

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