Happy Day of Thanks!

MADDIE DAY here. The turkey is spatchcocked and dry brined. My pies are made as well as my mother's bread stuffing. Mashed potatoes and whipped cream come later, along with guests bringing sides and wine and children and good cheer. Does it get any better?

From all of us at Mystery Lovers' Kitchen to all of you, we wish you a delicious Thanksgiving filled with love and warmth and a good book at the end. We are thankful for your comments, for your reading habits, and for being part of our mystery-foodie community.

Readers: What are your plans for the day?

Welcome Author Terry Ambrose with Mini Pumpkin Pies #Halloween Recipe + #BookGiveaway @terryawriterguy

Please join me in welcoming author Terry Ambrose to the Kitchen. Terry's sharing news about his new Beachtown Detective Agency mystery series along with a tasty fall recipe and book giveaway.

Welcome, Terry, take it away...

~ Cleo

Thanks for hosting me today here at Mystery Lovers Kitchen. Today I’ll be sharing a recipe for mini pumpkin pies for two. After all, who doesn’t love pumpkin pie at this time of year? I know that my protagonist in the new Beachtown Detective Agency series, Jade Cavendish, loves them when her mom makes a batch (Jade’s not much of a baker!) One thing she didn’t love was learning that her dad decided (thanks to a minor midlife crisis) to turn over the agency to her.

On her first day as an entrepreneur, Jade realizes she had never reconciled herself to this whole concept of being an adult. She’s also sure that unless she can find new clients on her own, she’ll sink the agency her father built. Fortunately for Jade, she gets that client, a wealthy young woman who’s sure her husband is stealing money from her. Jade soon learns the ultra-wealthy have some very dark secrets. Her case draws her into the hunt for a man known as the Amorous Assailant and a showdown with a killer.

“Ambrose’s mystery is thrilling and unpredictable…

An entertaining and suspenseful detective tale.” 

—Kirkus Reviews

As soon as the nights cool down, we start looking forward to making little pies. A few years ago, we found this recipe on Food Network. It can easily be adapted to fruit pies. And the best thing is that you aren’t making a whole pie, so if it’s just you and your sweetie, this is a great way to go!

🎃 Pumpkin Pie for Two  

Original recipe from Food Network

Cook Time: 20 min Serves: 2 servings

Ingredients: 

PIE CRUST:

2/3 cup all-purpose flour (we use Bob’s 1-1 Gluten Free)

3 tbsp unsalted butter, cut into small pieces, at room temperature

1 tbsp granulated sugar

1 tbsp confectioners' sugar

Pinch of salt 

PIE FILLING:

2 large eggs

1/4 cup heavy cream

2 tbsp packed dark brown sugar

1 tsp pure vanilla extract

1/4 tsp ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp ground allspice

3/4 cup pumpkin puree

🎃

Preparation Steps:

1. Put a small baking sheet on a rack in the center of the oven, and preheat to 375 degrees F. Process the flour, butter, granulated and confectioners' sugars and salt in a food processor until the mixture resembles wet crumbs and holds together when squeezed in your palm, about 2 minutes. Divide the mixture evenly between two 5-inch pie pans or ramekins. Firmly press the dough into the bottoms, any corners, and up the sides.

2. Place the tins on the hot baking sheet and bake the crusts until the bottom and sides are golden brown. About 12 minutes for pie tins, about 18 minutes for glass ramekins). Let cool completely on a cooling rack.

3. After the crusts have cooled, whisk together the eggs, cream, brown sugar, vanilla, cinnamon and allspice in a medium bowl. Stir in the pumpkin puree.

4. Mound the filling in the pie shells. Bake until puffed and the centers still look slightly wet but not loose, 25 to 30 minutes. Transfer to a cooling rack to cool completely before serving with whipped cream on top.

Note: If making fruit pies, there’s no need to cook the fruit, but the pies cook for 45 minutes.

 

TERRY AMBROSE has written fifteen published mysteries. His series include the McKenna Trouble in Paradise Mysteries, the Seaside Cove Bed & Breakfast Mysteries, the License to Lie thriller series, and the Beachtown Detective Agency mysteries.

Visit Terry's Website

Follow Terry on: INSTAGRAM 

 FACEBOOK

Novice PI Jade Cavendish isn’t one of them, though. After inheriting the Beachtown Detective Agency, she’s worried about landing a paying client. Any client. She’d even settle for a dognapping.

Gina Rose, a wealthy young heiress, has a problem. Her new husband, a man she thought was her perfect match, is bleeding her dry. When Gina hires Jade to prove her husband is defrauding her, Jade quickly learns he's a terrible businessman. His investment properties are oozing money like open wounds.

On the surface, it appears Gina simply has bad taste in men. But Jade refuses to give up on her client so easily. Her investigation pulls her into a world filled with greed, one where secrets are a way of life, events are not always what they seem, and lies conceal deadly realities—including the Amorous Assailant’s true motive.

To Purchase Click Here

Terry's 

Halloween Week

Giveaway!

This giveaway is now over... 

The prize is The Case of the Amorous Assailant
in either Kindle or print (for US residents.) 

And we have a winner!

Congratulations to...

Grandpalanu!

Pumpkins, pumpkins, pumpkins! Recipe and Book Giveaway from Barbara Fradkin #Halloween

Vicki here, and I’m delighted that my good friend the prominent Canadian author Barbara Fradkin is joining us today with the ultimate fall recipe!  Doesn't this pie looks scrumptious? Leave a comment below for chance to win her fabulous new book. 

 --------

 

Thanks, Vicki Delany. I’m delighted to be a guest on Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen. I have three different series, one with a police inspector and two with civilian sleuths, and I confess all of them are hopeless in the kitchen. They are more likely to be grabbing food to eat on the fly as they try to save the world, so food ideas are few and far between in my books.

But Hallowe’en is fast approaching, and there are pumpkins everywhere. On supermarket shelves, in market stalls, and on people’s front porches. The quintessential pumpkin food is pie. Its spicy/ sweet flavour and velvety texture are perfect for a chilly autumn day. So I delved into the realm of pumpkin pie recipes to find the best pie that pumpkin has to offer.

The first thing to note is that every recipe claims to be THE BEST. Secondly, there are many variations on spices and preparation, and many shortcuts if you hate rolling out pie dough or roasting pumpkins. Here’s my personal judgment on what is truly the best, but feel free to mix it up or simplify it by using pumpkin pie spice, canned pumpkin or ready-made pie shells.

Pumpkin Pie

Pie crust: makes a 9-inch pie

1 ¼ cups white flour

½ tsp salt

1 tbsp white sugar

¼ cup shortening and ¼ cup butter, both very chilled.

¼ cup ice water

 

Pumpkin filling

2 cups pumpkin

3 large eggs

1 cup heavy cream

¼ cup milk

¾ cup golden brown sugar, or slightly more to taste

½ tsp salt

2 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp ground ginger

¼ tsp nutmeg

¼ tsp cloves

 

Preparing pie crust:

You can do this by hand with pastry cutter or two knives, but the food processor is way easier! Of course, ready-made is even easier.

 Mix flour, sugar, and salt in food processor.

Chill butter and shortening thoroughly and cut into pieces.

Add butter, shortening, and ice-cold water to flour, and pulse until mixture resembles a coarse meal and just begins to stick together. Do not over-mix.

Turn it out on a flat surface, fold it in on itself a couple of times to bond, and form a thick disc like a hockey puck. Wrap in plastic and chill at least ½ an hour.

Roll out on a flat, floured surface to form a 12-inch round, and transfer to 9-inch pie plate. Press down into the bottom and pinch the edges.

 

Preparing the pumpkin filling:

Start by roasting a fresh sugar pumpkin (small, not the jack-o-lantern variety). Cut it in half, scoop out the seeds (you can roast these, but I feed them to the squirrels), invert halves on a cookie sheet and roast at 350 degrees F for one hour. The skin should peel off easily if it’s cooked. Cool, remove pulp, and puree 2 cups in food processor.

Mix salt and spices together with sugar. Add eggs, sugar mixture, milk, and whipping cream, blend until very smooth.

Pour into slightly greased pie plate (see note below). In oven preheated to 425 degrees, bake for 10-15 minutes, then reduce heat to 350. Continue baking for 45 - 55 minutes. Cover the edges of the crust with foil near the end if they become too brown. Pie should be firm at edges but slightly jiggly in the centre. A toothpick inserted in centre should be wet but relatively clean.

Note: there will be too much filling, don’t ask me why. The amount would be perfect for a 10-inch pie dish, which I don’t have, and which would require re-calculating the dough recipe. I just poured the rest into a baking dish. Baker’s reward!

Cool on wire rack for at least 2 hours before chilling. Can be decorated with whipped cream or eaten by itself.

 

 

I hope you enjoy this recipe, which would be far too difficult for either Amanda Doucette or Inspector Green to manage. 

Barbara Fradkin is a retired psychologist and multiple award-winning mystery author whose work with children and families provides much of the insight and inspiration for her stories. She has an affinity for the dark side and is best known for her gritty, psychological Inspector Green novels, which have been nominated four times for the Crime Writers of Canada Award of Excellence in the Best Novel category. She has won this award twice.

 More recently, she embarked on a mystery-thriller series featuring Amanda Doucette, an adventurous, passionate but struggling international aid worker who is looking for healing and new direction. There are currently four books in that series, set in different, iconic locations across Canada, with The Ancient Dead set in the starkly beautiful badlands of Alberta.

I will be doing a random draw for a copy of my brand-new Inspector Green mystery, THE DEVIL TO PAY. To enter, please answer this skill testing question in the comments.

What police service does Inspector Green work for?

 

Enjoy and Happy Hallowe’en!

Pumpkin Pie with a Swiss Accent -- Ellen Crosby -- giveaway

LESLIE:  Our guests are not just some of the best mystery writers working today; they are some of the most interesting people! I think you'll agree when you meet Ellen Crosby.

Ellen is giving away a copy of THE ANGELS' SHARE, her tenth Wine Country mystery. Leave a comment below for a chance to win. 

ELLEN: I lived overseas for nearly fifteen years, first as a student in Madrid and Bologna, later because my husband’s job as a journalist took us to Geneva, Moscow, and London. The experiences and memories of those years are some of the happiest of my life except for two days every year when I was always terribly homesick: the Fourth of July and Thanksgiving.

Especially Thanksgiving.

Not long after we moved to Geneva in the fall of 1984 and I was at loose ends after quitting my job on Capitol Hill, a friend got me involved in a British musical theater group. The Geneva Amateur Operatic Society, or GAOS, was rehearsing its Christmas show, a traditional English production called a pantomime, which is always based on a fairy tale. That year it was Sinbad the Sailor. Before long I was singing in the chorus, sewing costumes, and one-half of an octopus. (Don’t ask about the octopus.)

Our rehearsals fell on Tuesdays and Thursdays; by late November the cast and crew had moved from a borrowed church hall in the French village of Ferney-Voltaire where I lived, across the border to Geneva, into the theater where we would be performing. Since most of the group was British, we rehearsed on Thanksgiving. But the three Americans in the company—two other women and me—decided we still needed to celebrate our Thanksgiving. So we baked pumpkins pies and brought them to the theater, serving them at the end of rehearsal. I remember everyone eating pie while sitting in the last rows of the semi-dark theater. Invariably we ended up singing.

My favorite pumpkin pie was the one my good friend Carolyn Hornfeld brought, so I asked her for the recipe. l make it every year for Thanksgiving, but also because it reminds me of those rehearsals in Switzerland and some of our dearest friends. I hope you enjoy it! 

Pumpkin Pie  

*Unbaked 9-inch pie shell (See below for recipe for pie dough if you don’t want to use a prepared pie shell)

2 large or 3 small eggs

½ cup sugar

2 T molasses

½ t salt

1 t ginger

½  t cinnamon

¼ t cloves or allspice

2 cups cooked or canned pumpkin, strained

1 ½ cups milk, light cream or evaporated milk

1. Prepare the pie shell with a fluted standing rim. Brush lightly with egg white or shortening.

2. Preheat oven to 450 degrees F.

3. Beat the eggs with the sugar, molasses, salt and spices until well blended. Add the pumpkin and milk and mi well. Adjust the seasonings.

4. Turn the mixture into the prepared crust and bake on the lower shelf of the oven ten minutes. Lower the oven temperature to 400 degrees F. and bake until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean, or about thirty minutes longer.

*I used a 9-1/2 inch pie plate and my own dough because I don't want to risk overfilling the pie plate.  

Serves 6

_____________________________________________

Jacques

Pépin’s Pie Dough (or Pâte Brisée)

2 cups all-purpose flour

1/1/2 sticks (6 ounces) sweet butter, very cold and cut into ¼-inch

            cubes

¼ t salt

½ t sugar

1/3 cup cold water (approximately)

Jacques Pépin makes his dough by hand but I used a KitchenAid mixer, so I’m amending his recipe.

1. Place the flour, butter, salt, and sugar in the mixing bowl. Mix (or pulse) the ingredients well enough so that all the butter pieces are coated with flour. My dough (see photo) looked crumbly with the butter broken up more or less uniformly.

2. Add water SLOWLY as the crumbly dough gradually becomes a ball. Do not worry if there are little pieces of plain butter here and there. This will give flakiness to the dough, making it slightly similar to a puff paste. Remove from the mixing bowl and form into a ball taking care not to overwork the dough, which should be malleable and usable right away. N.B. My dough would have fallen apart if I used it right away so I let it rest in the refrigerator.

3. Place dough on a floured board and roll uniformly, turning it a quarter of a turn as you are rolling so that it forms a nice “wheel.” Be sure the board is well floured underneath. The dough should be approximately 1/8 inch thick, although many cooks like it thicker.

4. Roll the dough back on the rolling pin, lift and unroll onto the pie pan.

5. With the tips of your fingers push in the corners so that the dough does not get stretched, which would cause it to shrink during the baking.

6. Squeeze a lip around the inside of the pie plate working the dough between your thumb and forefinger.

7. Mark the edges with a dough crimper or the tines of a fork or by squeezing it between your fingers and it’s ready to be used.

The New York Times’ pumpkin pie recipe—via Carolyn Hornfeld

Pie crust from Jacques Pépin’s Complete Techniques  

Notes on How to Keep a Pumpkin Pie from Cracking via KingArthur Flour 

Check the King Arthur flour website if you have trouble with your pumpkin pie cracking. Two things I learned: Bake your pie on on a lower oven rack so the crust gets cooked but the filling isn’t overcooked. Second, take it out of the oven when it doesn’t look done because it’s going to continue cooking afterwards because of the eggs, which are what causes cracking as they shrink. The result, according to the website, is a creamier filling—which is how my pie turned out.

Quoting from the website:

"The fully baked pumpkin pie will look slightly domed and solid around the edges; and a bit sunken and soft in the center: not sloshing like liquid, but jiggling like Jell-O. And I don't mean just a nickel-sized area in the very center; I mean a good 4" center ring of what looks like not-quite-baked filling." 

Talk to us about pie, wine, the theater, living and working abroad, or anything else that Ellen's books and stories bring to mind! One lucky reader will win a copy of THE ANGELS' SHARE! (U.S. addresses only, please. Winner to be announced Tues, Dec. 10.)  

About THE ANGELS' SHARE:

When Lucie Montgomery attends a Thanksgiving weekend party for friends and neighbors at Hawthorne Castle, an honest-to-goodness castle owned by the Avery family, America's last great newspaper dynasty and owners of the Washington Tribune, she doesn't expect the festive occasion to end in death.

During the party, Prescott Avery, the 95-year old family patriarch, invites Lucie to his fabulous wine cellar where he offers to pay any price for a cache of 200-year-old Madeira that her great-great-uncle, a Prohibition bootlegger, discovered hidden in the US Capitol in the 1920s. Lucie knows nothing about the valuable wine, believing her late father, a notorious gambler and spendthrift, probably sold or drank it. By the end of the party Lucie and her fiancé, winemaker Quinn Santori, discover Prescott's body lying in his wine cellar. Is one of the guests a murderer?

As Lucie searches for the lost Madeira, which she believes links Prescott's death to a cryptic letter her father owned, she learns about Prescott's affiliation with the Freemasons. More investigating hints at a mysterious vault supposedly containing documents hidden by the Founding Fathers and a possible tie to William Shakespeare. If Lucie finds the long-lost documents, the explosive revelations could change history. But will she uncover a three hundred-year-old secret before a determined killer finds her?

ELLEN CROSBY is the author of the Virginia wine country mysteries, including THE ANGELS’ SHARE, featuring vineyard owner Lucie Montgomery, released by Minotaur Books on November 5, 2019. Her books have been nominated for the Mary Higgins Clark Award and the Library of Virginia People’s Choice Award; THE RIESLING RETRIBUTION won the 2009 Gourmand World Cookbook Award for Best US Wine Literature Book. Crosby has also written two mysteries featuring international photojournalist Sophie Medina and MOSCOW NIGHTS, a standalone mystery. Previously she worked as a freelance reporter for The Washington Post, Moscow correspondent for ABC Radio News, and as an economist at the U.S. Senate. Learn more at http://www.ellencrosby.com. 

#Thanksgiving Pumpkin Pie Cheesecake Bites by Ellie Alexander

Can you believe that Thanksgiving is almost upon us? I don’t know about you, but my favorite part of our annual Thanksgiving feast is dessert! The only problem is there are always way too many choice, and I’m usually stuffed from all that turkey. Hopefully today’s recipe will solve your Thanksgiving dessert woes. These pumpkin pie cheesecake bites are just that—bite sized! They’ll allow you to sample everything on the dessert table and maybe even say yes to seconds. Plus they are quick and easy to bake, which is always a good thing in my kitchen!

Do you have Thanksgiving dessert traditions? In addition to these pumpkin pie cheesecake bites, I’ll be making a mincemeat pie for my dad. It’s not Thanksgiving without a mince pie according to my dad, my kiddo and all of the cousins absolutely disagree! 

Pumpkin Pie Cheesecake Bites

Ingredients:

1 pre-made pie crust

4 ounces cream cheese (at room temperature)

½ cup pumpkin purée

1 teaspoon cinnamon

½ teaspoon nutmeg

¼ teaspoon cloves

¼ teaspoon ginger

¼ teaspoon rum extract

Whipping cream and cardamom for garnish

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Roll out pie dough and cut into two-inch circles. Press circles into a mini muffin tin. Bake at 350 degrees for 8-10 minutes or until pie crust is golden brown. Remove pie shells from muffin tin and allow to cool completely.

Whip cream cheese, pumpkin purée, spices, and rum extract on medium speed for 3-5 minutes until thick and creamy.

Scoop mixture into mini pie shells. Top with whipping cream and a dash of cardamom. Serve immediately. 

I’m so excited to have not one but two new books out in the world! A CUP OF HOLIDAY FEAR, the 10th book in the Bakeshop Mysteries and BEYOND A REASONABLE STOUT, the 3rd book in the Sloan Krause Mysteries.

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Lucy Burdette's Holiday Pumpkin Pie #recipe

LUCY BURDETTE: Christmas is different in Key West than it is in New England. Of course, I miss the snow (a little) and ice (not really) and a trip to see the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center (a lot!) But on the other hand, we have palm trees and lights! 

When thinking over holiday recipes, I wondered why pumpkin pie had to be confined to Thanksgiving. And I decided it didn't!

You would think pumpkin pie should be a slam-dunk recipe. But there are many questions out there. Pre-bake the crust? Don’t bake the crust? Evaporated milk? Sweetened condensed milk? Whipped cream? I studied four or five of them and chose what looked like the best options. I wanted a little maple flavor and also to jazz the pie up with my beloved chai spice.

For the Crust:

1 1/2 cups flour
Scant tablespoon sugar
Pinch of salt
6 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 tablespoons chilled cream cheese
3 tablespoons water

Mix the dry ingredients together in a food processor. Add the butter and cream cheese and pulse until you have small crumbles. Don’t overdo this. Add the water 1 tablespoon at a time until the crust barely holds together. (You will think you haven’t added enough, but you will!)

Dump the dough onto a piece of waxed paper or plastic wrap, and gather it together, then press into a disk. Refrigerate for an hour or more. (This is a good time to make the filling.) 

Roll the crust out between two sheets of waxed paper, trying not to overwork it. Peel off the top piece of paper and lower the crust into your 9 inch pan. Bake for about 40 minutes until the crust seems done, just browning around the edges and golden all over.

in the food processor

gather into a ball

roll and pinch the edges

bake with pie weights

ready for filling!

For the Pie filling:

One can organic pumpkin
1/2 cup good maple syrup
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon chai spice or plain cinnamon
2 tablespoons flour
Three eggs
1 1/4 cup evaporated milk

Whip the pumpkin with the two sweeteners, the milk, and the spice, and taste to see if it’s sweet enough for your crowd. Add a little more if needed. Then beat in the flour and the three eggs until the filling is smooth.

Carefully pour this mixture into the hot pie crust. (This is the hardest part of the recipe.) You should have the pie pan on a sheet pan in case of spills or drips. Bake at 350 for 30 minutes, then check to see if the crust is too brown. If it is, fold some thin strips of aluminum foil to cover the crust. Bake until set, that is, barely jiggly, probably 50-60 minutes.

Cool to room temperature and either serve as is or refrigerate overnight. Serve with freshly made whipped cream, I like a teaspoon of vanilla and a dash of whipped cream maple syrup in mine!

so pretty out of the oven

but of course it sinks a bit later

Merry Christmas and happy all holidays to our readers and friends!

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