Pain au Chocolat from @MaddieDayAuthor #giveaway

MADDIE DAY here. I'm so excited that Murder at the Rusty Anchor will be out on June 25, and I wanted to share a recipe from the book with you.

But first, some background. Anywhere in the French-speaking world, and now in many US and Canadian bakeries, a puff pastry wrapped around a piece of dark chocolate is always available. When I lived with my young sons and then-husband for a year each in Mali and Burkina Faso, both former French colonies in west Africa, picking up several pain au chocolat (literally, chocolate bread) when we went out was always a treat.

The pastry is like a croissant, puffy inside and crispy outside. The line of dark chocolate down the middle feels like dessert for breakfast. It's still hard to resist buying one if I stop into a bakery for something else. And why should I resist?

So I had to have baker Tim, Mac Almeida's husband in my Cozy Capers Book Group Mysteries, offer these treats in his Cape Cod bakery.

Also, my older son Allan has always loved pain au chocolat. I went to see him for his birthday Wednesday, so I made this batch specially for him. 

The two of us in the NICU with his preemie daughter (born three months early) six months ago. Ida Rose is now a fat, healthy, chortling baby! New dads deserve pastries, right?

Alas, the pastries came out smaller and less sweet than when I tested the recipe for the book. 

C'est la vie, as they say in Paris!

Pain au Chocolat 

Tim makes his own pastry for these chocolate-filled croissants, but I went the easy route and bought a box of puff pastry dough. (Next time I'll make my own, but that's a lot of work.)

 

Ingredients

Puff pastry

4 ounces good quality baking chocolate, cut into skinny pieces

1 egg

2 tablespoons whole milk

Powdered sugar, sifted.

 

Directions

Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

Remove the dough from the refrigerator. On a lightly floured counter, roll the dough out into an 8×20-inch rectangle. Use your fingers if you need to. The dough is very cold, so it will take a lot of arm muscle to roll. Keep working it with your hands and rolling pin until you have the correct size rectangle.

Using a pizza cutter or sharp knife, slice the dough in half vertically into skinny rectangles 4 inches wide. Cut 3 even slices horizontally, yielding 8 4×5-inch rectangles. Cut each rectangle in half lengthwise so you have 16 2×5-inch rectangles.

Work with one rectangle at a time. Using your fingers or a rolling pin, stretch it to be about 8 inches long. Do this gently as you do not want to flatten the layers. Place a few small pieces of chocolate in a single layer at one end and tightly roll the dough up around the chocolate. Make sure the end is on the bottom.

Repeat with remaining dough, placing the shaped croissants on the baking sheets, 8 per sheet. 

(Note: I ended up making only one sheet of the puff pastry and only one pan, since my croissants were so small.)

Loosely cover with plastic wrap or aluminum foil and allow to rest at room temperature for 1 hour, then place in the refrigerator to rest for 1 hour or up to 12 hours.

Preheat oven to 400°F (204°C).

Whisk the egg and milk together. 

Remove the croissants from the refrigerator. Brush each lightly with egg wash.

Bake until croissants are golden brown, about 20 minutes. Rotate the pans halfway through baking. If croissants show signs of darkening too quickly, reduce the oven to 375°F (190°C).

Remove pain au chocolat from the oven and place on a wire rack to cool for a few minutes before serving. They will slightly deflate as they cool. If desired, dust with confectioners’ sugar before serving.

Enjoy with coffee or an afternoon sherry!

Readers: What's your special bakery treat? I'll send one of you my special author aprons!

🍫🥮🍫

A Case for the Ladies is out and available wherever books are sold!

My most recent releases are Deep Fried Death, #12 in the Country Store Mysteries.

And Murder Uncorked, Cece Barton Mystery #1, which released in late October.

Check out all my writing:

We hope you'll visit Maddie and her Agatha Award-winning alter ego Edith Maxwell 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 Award-winning 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 and sweet cat Martin north of Boston, where she’s currently working on her next mystery when she isn’t cooking up something delectable in the kitchen.

Mini Fruit Tarts

Sometimes you kind of back into a recipe, yanno? I was contemplating my options before getting out of bed, and realized that I had both strawberries and raspberries that would spoil if I didn’t get around to using them, so I wanted to figure out what to do with them quickly. I didn’t want to make a pie (because I’m lousy at rolling out pie crusts), but I have a wealth of muffin tins in a range of sizes, so why not fruit tarts?

I first went to Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, but her recipes, lovely (and authentic) as they are, were a bit too complicated for my morning brain. She does have tart recipes, but luckily she allowed for different options for the crust—including one that she admits is more or less a cookie dough. "Aha!" said I. I have a wonderful shortbread cookie recipe (which I shared with you last Halloween) which would do just fine.

Basically you make the pastry, cut out round forms, press them into a muffin tin of whatever size you like, and bake them. Then make a crème patissière (a simple custard) and put a dollop in each tart shell. Put your strawberries (sliced if they’re large) or raspberries on top and voila! Your tarts are ready. I’ll bet they won’t last long.

As usual, I made a half recipe or I'd be eating the tarts for days!

Mini Fruit Tarts

Pastry shells (shortbread)

Ingredients:

2 sticks (1 cup) salted butter, softened

1 cup granulated sugar

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup cornstarch

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.

Cream together the butter and the sugar. Sift together the flour and cornstarch, then add the mixture to the butter-sugar mixture.

Dough ready to chill

Mix together the ingredients until they hold together (if they seem too dry, add a bit more soft butter). Form into a ball, wrap in plastic wrap (or use a plastic bag) and refrigerate for half an hour.

Spray or lightly grease the muffin tins.

Roll out the dough about 1/4 inch thick on a lightly floured surface and cut into shapes (I happen to have several decorative round cutters. Make sure that the cut piece fits neatly into whatever muffin tin you’re using, without slopping too far over the edges.) Yes, it will be small—the finished tart should give you two good bites!

Bake for 20 minutes. Do not allow to brown around the edges—they should be a pale gold. Let cool before filling them. 

Crème patissière

Ingredients:

1 cup sugar

5 egg yolks

2/3 cup all-purpose flour

2 cups boiling whole milk

1 Tblsp butter

1 Tblsp vanilla (you can substitute a bit of liqueur or even coffee)

Instructions:

Beat the sugar and egg yolks together. When they’re well mixed, continue beating for 2-3 minutes until the mixture lightens and begins to thicken.

Add the flour and beat in. Gradually add the boiling milk in a thin stream, beating steadily. (Add the hot milk too fast and the mixture will scramble!)

Pour the mixture into a saucepan and set over moderate heat. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Reduce the heat and continue to beat for another 2-3 minutes to cook the flour and eggs. (Be careful that the custard does not scorch on the bottom.)

Remove from the heat and beat in the butter and flavoring.

If you have any left over after filling the tart shells, you can keep it refrigerated for a week.

Assembling the tarts

Add a tablespoon of crème patissière (or more, according to the size of the pastry shell) to each tart shell. Arrange your fruit over the top. If you’re not serving immedately, you can refrigerate them, but not for too long--these should be eaten quickly!

From famine to feast! This past week my latest Relatively Dead mystery, Revealing the Dead, was released by Beyond the Page, along with the three-book set of the first three books in the series.

By the way, that's my actual front door,
although not my cat

And coming next month, the first in my new Victorian Village series, Murder at the Mansion.

Katherine Hamilton’s goal in high school was to escape from her dead-end hometown of Asheford, Maryland. Fifteen years later she’s got a degree in hospitality management and a great job at a high-end boutique hotel in Baltimore. Until, that is, the hotel is acquired by a chain, and she’s laid off. When Kate’s high school best friend calls with a mysterious invitation to come talk with the town leaders of Asheford, she agrees to make the trip, curious about where this new opportunity might lead.

Once Kate arrives, the town council members reveal that their town is on the verge of going bankrupt, and they’ve decided that Kate’s skills and knowledge make her the perfect person to cure all their ills. The town has used its last available funds to buy the huge Victorian mansion just outside of town, hoping to use it to attract some of the tourists who travel to visit the nearby Civil War battle sites. Kate has less-than-fond memories of the mansion, for personal reasons, but to make matters worse, the only person who has presented a possible alternate plan is Cordelia Walker―Kate’s high school nemesis.

But a few days later, while touring the mansion, Kate stumbles over a body―and it’s none other than Cordelia. Kate finds herself juggling the murder investigation and her growing fascination with the old house, which itself is full of long-hidden mysteries. 

You can pre-order it at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

www.sheilaconnolly.com

Baker Daughter Julia Williams

Another member of the next generation of writer-cooks debuts today on Mystery Lover's Kitchen!

Today we have a very special guest, my daughter Julia Williams (I hope it’s not nepotism). What is she doing on Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen? Because she works at a handful of different jobs in Chicago, and one of them is making croissants and other pastries for a chain of coffee shops there. Lots of flaky pastries! She’s been sending me pictures from work for a while, and I wanted to share them with you. (In case you’re worried, she’s quite svelte, although she will admit to eating some of the malformed pastries now and then. Baking can be hard work!)

So she, the baker with hands-on experience has explained to me how commercial croissants are made, with pictures. It’s unlikely you will ever be called on to produce croissants in numbers like these, so I won’t give you a recipe (“start with 50 pounds of butter and . . .”).

First you mix: combine the ingredients in a big mixer. The blade spins in place, and the bowl rotates around it.

Divide the dough into 3.5 kilo (just shy of 8 pounds) lumps, and put them in the proofer for an hour. [For those who don’t know what a proofer is, like me, it is an oven that controls temperature (at around 85 degrees F) and humidity (around 70%) so that your dough can rise quickly without drying out. In case you’re really curious, if a baker wants a slower rise, the dough is put in a “retarder” which is warmer than a refrigerator but cooler than a proofer.] The proofer that Julie’s bakery uses is about the size of a walk-in closet, and has a retard setting as well (goes from hot to cold in half an hour). (Aw, come on, mystery readers--don't start thinking of ways to leave a body in a proofer--which would lend itself to all sorts of good titles.)

Remove the (now-large) dough balls from the proofer. Shape them roughly, place on sheet pans, and freeze (yes, freeze). Later they will become “books,” which are sandwiched with sheets of butter, frozen again, defrosted, and then “laminated” with many folds (that is, you fold and roll again multiple times, which produces those lovely thin flaky layers in your croissant).

Once they are laminated, they are rolled out in a big sheet and cut into narrow triangles, which are rolled (pointy end out) to form the classic croissant (yes) crescent shape. Proof, egg wash, and bake.

Rolled and cut

Proofing

There are lots of different options. Ham and cheese croissants, for example. Chocolate croissants. Filled croissants. Or use the same dough for Danish or kouign amann (look it up).

How to make a lot of croissants!

You can make puff pastry at home, if you really, really want to. The Great British Baking Show offered one recipe (and we watched the contestants struggle with it), but the ingredients were basically flour and water for the dough (Julie says the recipe she uses includes yeast and powdered milk as well), although the rolling and layering with butter is the same. Out of curiosity I checked a Julia Child recipe for Easy Puff Pastry and found she avoided the layering altogether, instead choosing to break up the butter into small chunks and roll (multiple times) from there. I can’t say I’ve tried it, but surely it must give a different result than the layered approach?

And that takes time. Make dough. Chill. Roll out butter. Fold butter and dough into a packet. Chill. Roll. Repeat a number of times, chilling or freezing between each rolling. The end product is delightful, but do you really want to do all that work?

Here’s one suggestions: grab a plane to Paris, find a café with tables on the sidewalk, and order a croissant or two to go with your coffee. And enjoy, knowing that a baker has worked hard to give you that lovely flaky pastry.

Julia Williams graduated from Smith College with a degree in comparative literature, and worked in a large independent bookstore for five years. Currently she lives in Chicago, where she both writes plays and performs with local theater groups—when she’s not producing pastries!

I’ll ask if she can respond to questions about the baking process, but she has an odd schedule (she has to start the croissants at 4:30 a.m.

A few less than perfect examples that they
couldn't sell. Wonder who are them?

Gougere

by Sheila Connolly

I kind of backed into this recipe. You see, it’s fiddlehead season. If you’re not familiar with fiddleheads, they are the tender tips of emerging ferns, still tightly coiled. They’re available for a very short time each spring. They taste a bit like asparagus, with a nice crunch.

The thing is, there’s not much you can do with them, if you want to enjoy their delicacy and freshness: simply saute/steam them with a little butter.

So, while contemplating my pound of fresh fiddleheads, I tried to come up with a complementary recipe for something, and I landed on gougère. That’s a fancy word for a pastry made of pâte à choux. Not any clearer? Think cream puff dough. I was first introduced to gougère by Julia Child, many years ago. Most often they are made by the spoonful, which produces a hollow crispy pastry that you can fill with either a sweet or savory filling. The dough is easy and fun to make.

But I wanted a single dish, not a fiddly (ha, a pun) bunch of little things. So I had to go hunting, and found one that was kinda, sorta what I wanted, so I started fine-tuning it. And voila! Here is my companion dish to the fiddleheads!

Gougère with mushrooms and ham

Pâte à Choux:

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

 

1 cup flour

Pinch each of salt and pepper

1 cup water

1/2 cup butter

4 eggs

1/8 lb sharp Cheddar cheese, diced (about 1/4 inch cubes)

Mix the flour, salt and pepper together. Heat the water and butter in a large saucepan until the butter melts.

Bring the liquid to a boil. Add the flour mixture all at once and stir vigorously (most sources suggest a sturdy wooden spoon for this) until it comes together in an elastic ball. This should take about a minute.

Allow the mixture to cool for about 5 minutes. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well with that wooden spoon after each one.

Stir in the diced cheese.

  

Filling: (actually I made the filling first, because it can sit while you make the dough)

4 Tblsp butter

1 medium onion, chopped

1/2 lb mushrooms, sliced

1-1/2 Tblsp flour

1/2 tsp salt

Freshly grated pepper

1 cup chicken broth, heated

6 ounces cooked ham, chopped

1 Tblsp Cheddar cheese, shredded

Melt the butter in a large skillet. Saute the onion over low-medium heat until soft but not browned. Add the mushrooms and cook for another 2 minutes.

Sprinkle the flour, salt and pepper and cook for an additional 2 minutes. Add the chicken broth and mix well. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Remove the sauce from the heat and add the ham. Taste for seasoning.

Butter a 10- or 11-inch ovenproof skillet or shallow baking dish. Spoon the pâte à choux in a ring around the edge, leaving a hole in the center. 

Spoon the filling into the center. Sprinkle the shredded cheese over the whole thing.

Bake in the preheated oven for 40 minutes or until the gougère is crisp and puffy and the filling is bubbling.

Serve at once, cut into wedges (it kind of goes splat once you cut into it, but it tastes good!. Along with your fiddleheads!

At last! Privy to the Dead, available everywhere! You can finally find out what's in that hole in the basement of the Pennsylvania Antiquarian Society. (Don't worry, it won't turn your stomach.)

Find it at Amazon and Barnes and Noble and Indiebound