Cinnamon Swirl Bread #Recipe Peg Cochran/Margaret Loudon #Thanksgiving

 

This is SO good!  It's from Sally's Baking Addiction.  Her recipes never disappoint.  I made this for Thanksgiving breakfast--I think it would be perfect.  I doubt it will last that long though and I suspect I'll be making another one.  It's easy to put together--no mixer needed!  It's also rather impressive to look at with the cinnamon swirl running through it.  The yogurt, milk and egg should all be at room temperature.

Cinnamon Swirl:

1/2 cup (100g) granulated sugar

1 Tablespoon ground cinnamon

Reserve 2 tablespoons for top of bread

Bread

2 cups flour 

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 large egg, at room temperature

3/4 cup granulated sugar

1/3 cup vegetable oil

1/3 cup sour cream (or plain yogurt/Greek yogurt)

2/3 whole milk

1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

 

Preheat oven to 350°F). Spray a 9x5 inch pan with nonstick spray.

Cinnamon Swirl:

Mix the 1/2 cup sugar and 1 Tablespoon of ground cinnamon together. (Reserve 2 tablespoons)

 

Bread:

Whisk the flour, baking soda and salt together.

In a separate bowl, whisk the egg and 3/4 cup sugar together until combined. 

Whisk in the oil, sour cream, milk, and vanilla extract. 

 

Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients, then whisk to completely combine. Avoid over-mixing.  

 

Spread half of the batter into prepared loaf pan. Sprinkle almost all of the cinnamon sugar evenly on top (reserve about 2 Tablespoons for topping). 

 

Spread remaining batter evenly on top. 

 

Sprinkle top with the rest of the cinnamon sugar. Using a knife, make a large swirl down the loaf pan.

 

Bake the bread for 50-65 minutes, covering loosely with foil about halfway through to prevent the top from over-browning. 

 

 

 A Berry Suspicious Death is now out!

 

    AMAZON

BARNES & NOBLE    

 

Weddings are murder in the new Cranberry Cove Mystery from USA Today bestselling author Peg Cochran!

The cranberry bogs at Sassamanash Farms have never looked more festive than when Monica’s half-brother celebrates his wedding there. It’s a genuinely joyous occasion, and even greeting a strange assortment of guests and witnessing a heated argument can’t spoil Monica’s mood. But that all changes when one of the guests is found murdered at the reception—and then one of Monica’s employees is accused of doing the deed to get his hands on the dead woman’s money.

It doesn’t take long for Monica to discover that the victim had amassed her fortune by marrying a very wealthy—and very ill—older man. What’s more, the old man’s daughters despised the scheming, gold-digging woman, and thought the inheritance money should have been theirs. That seems like motive enough for murder, but Monica suspects there’s more to this case than simple greed. With her employee in hot water and time running out, Monica will have to act fast to catch the killer, before a case that started with a family wedding ends with her own funeral . ..

AMAZON

                BARNES & NOBLE

 

 

Website

Facebook Page

 

Peg Cochran is the author of the Open Book Series (writing as Margaret Loudon), the Cranberry Cove Series, the Murder, She Repored series, the Farmer's Daughter Series, the Lucille series and the Sweet Nothings Lingerie Series (writing as Meg London.)

 

Roasted Pear Quick Bread #recipe from Molly MacRae

 

Ripe pears and autumn go together in my mind. Roasted pears and quick bread go really well together in this recipe any time of year. I wish I’d had red pears because they’re especially beautiful, but any kind of pear will do. Be patient and let the bread cool completely before cutting; it’ll slice better that way. If you can’t be patient, I won’t blame you at all.

 

Roasted Pear Quick Bread

(adapted from Erin Jeanne McDowell in the New York Times)

 

Ingredients for the roasted pears

2 ½ cups chopped pears (about 2 medium pears, cored and cut into ½-inch pieces)

2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

1 teaspoon vanilla

Pinch of fine sea salt (we had flakey sea salt so I ground it up with the mortar and pestle

 

Ingredients for the bread

2 ½ cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons cinnamon

1 teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon fine sea salt (see note on salt in pear ingredients above)

½ cup vegetable oil

2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

1 cup brown sugar

2 large eggs, at room temperature

½ teaspoon almond extract

¾ cup buttermilk

 

Directions

Heat oven to 400 degrees. On a large baking sheet, toss pears with melted butter, vanilla, and salt. Spread coated pears in an even layer. Roast until pears are tender and beginning to brown on their edges, about 15 minutes. Remove from oven and cool to room temperature. Lower oven temperature to 350 degrees.

Lightly grease a 9-by-5-inch loaf pan. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, cinnamon, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.

In a large bowl, beat oil, butter, and brown sugar until well combined, about 1 minute. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing well after adding each and scraping the bowl as necessary. Stir in almond extract.

Gently mix in half the flour mixture, stirring until incorporated. Add buttermilk slowly, mixing to combine, then add remainder of the flour mixture and mix until just incorporated. Add cooled pears, using a rubber spatula to gently fold them into the batter. Pour the batter into the prepared loaf pan and spread in an even layer.

Bake the bread until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, 55 to 65 minutes. Let cool for 20 minutes in the pan, then remove from pan onto a cooling rack to cool completely before slicing.

 

Cover reveal! 

Come Shell or High Water, book one in Molly’s new Haunted Shell Shop Mysteries, out next summer and available for pre-order now! 

When widowed folklorist Maureen Nash visits a legendary North Carolina barrier island shell shop, she discovers its resident ghost pirate and the mystery of a local’s untimely death . . .

Impatient for the new book? Molly has plenty of others for you to enjoy. 

The Boston Globe says Molly MacRae writes “murder with a dose of drollery.” She’s the author of the award-winning, national bestselling Haunted Yarn Shop Mysteries and the Highland Bookshop Mysteries. As Margaret Welch, she writes books for Annie’s Fiction. Her short stories have appeared in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine and she’s a winner of the Sherwood Anderson Award for Short Fiction. Visit Molly on Facebook and Pinterest and connect with her on Twitter  or Instagram.

 

Cranberry Sauce Bread #Thanksgiving #Christmas from @MaddieDayAuthor #giveaway

MADDIE DAY here. I know I'm not alone in having leftover cranberry sauce from Thanksgiving. I always make my own from whole berries, and in recent years it includes orange juice. But we never eat it all during the turkey feast. I don't eat jam on toast, and Hugh isn't particularly fond of cranberry sauce. 

What to do? I'm by heritage and by nature in the "Waste Not, Want Not" camp, and I was determined not to let the sauce languish until it molded and joined the compost heap. Then I thought about banana bread and applesauce bread. Why not cranberry sauce bread?

The bread turned out pink, tangy, and delicious, and could easily be a Christmas brunch offering. Read down for a holiday book giveaway.

I hope you love it. Don't be surprised if the recipe turns up in a Country Store mystery one of these days!

Cranberry Sauce Bread

Note: I didn't have any oranges on hand, so I used the juice of three clementines instead of OJ. I also like to make quick breads with whole wheat flour to counter the sugar, but of course you can use white flour.

 
Ingredients
½ cup butter, softened
¾ cup sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/3 cup orange (or clementine) juice
1 ¼ cup whole berry cranberry sauce
2 cups all-purpose flour (or whole wheat)
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon nutmeg
 
Directions

Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease a loaf pan or line with parchment paper.

Beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add egg and beat. Add vanilla, orange juice, and cranberry sauce.

Mix baking powder, salt, and spices into flour. 

Stir in flour mixture until barely blended. 

Fill loaf pan. Bake about 1 hour or until golden brown and toothpick comes out clean. Cool on a wire rack.

Option: to make it more like a cake, mix 1 cup powdered sugar with 1-2 tablespoons of orange juice and a pinch of orange zest, and glaze.

Slice and spread with cream cheese or butter, or enjoy plain with coffee or a glass of sherry.

Readers: What's your favorite quick bread? What do you do with leftover cranberry sauce? I'll send one commenter a signed copy of Murder in a Cape Cottage.

I hope you'll join me and a bunch of other foodie-mystery authors (half are Mystery Lovers' kitchen bloggers!) at a Delicious Mysteries holiday party on Facebook tomorrow afternoon. I'm on at 5:30 Eastern here.

My most recent release is Murder in a Cape Cottage, the fourth Cozy Capers Book Group Mystery, which came out in September.

"Scarfed Down," my Country Store novella in the collection Christmas Scarf Murder released the same day.

My next release is Four Leaf Cleaver, out in late January.

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.

Irish Soda Bread, Take One @LucyBurdette

 

LUCY BURDETTE:  For some reason I had decided I was not a fan of Irish soda bread. Maybe I had a bad loaf somewhere, sort of like a bad clam? I can't exactly remember. However, a few months ago I went into my favorite Connecticut bakery’s pop-up event and noticed that their soda bread looked delicious. I bought a loaf and we gobbled the whole thing. This is my attempt to recreate it, using the website Sally's Baking Addiction as a starting point.  Next time I make this (and there will be a next time,) I would add another tablespoon of sugar and also a tablespoon or more of zested orange peel. I will also try substituting my uncle’s dried Michigan cherries for the raisins.

Ingredients

1 and 3/4 cups buttermilk or milk with added 1 Tbsp lemon juice

1 large egg 

4 and 1/4 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for your hands and the counter

3 Tablespoons granulated sugar

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

5 Tablespoons cold unsalted butter

1 cup raisins

1 teaspoon caraway seeds

I've gotten in the habit of not buying buttermilk, because I usually end up throwing half of it out. And it is higher in sodium than regular milk. If you want to use buttermilk, have at it. If you would like a substitute, squeeze half a lemon into a two-cup measuring cup and fill to the one and 3/4 cup mark with whole milk. Set that aside to come to room temperature. Whisk it together along with one egg.

Mix the dry ingredients together in a big bowl, the flour, the sugar, the baking soda, the salt, and the caraway seeds. Stir in the raisins.

Cut 5 tablespoons of very cold butter into the dry ingredients. The colder the butter, the lighter the batter. 

When the butter is pea sized, carefully fold in the egg and milk mixture. 

Move the batter to a floured surface (I used parchment paper with a little flour sprinkled on it.) Flour your hands and knead the dough briefly into a round. Again, shorter is better, even 30 seconds. 

Move the batter to a prepared greased pan. (This can be a pie plate, a cake pan, or cast iron skillet.) Those round pans help the bread keep its shape. Once in the pan, make a cross in the batter with a sharp knife.

Bake in a 400-degree oven for about 25 minutes. You can check the bread halfway through to see if the top is getting too brown. If so, cover with foil for the second half of the baking.

Let the loaf cool for ten minutes or more before you slice it. Serve warm with more butter and possibly raspberry jam, or for breakfast, maybe with peanut butter?

In addition to Lucy's Key West food critic mysteries, she's written a thriller called Unsafe Haven! Hardcover and audio will be out this week.

About Unsafe Haven: A chance meeting on the New York subway leads to the destinies of two very different women becoming intertwined with terrifying consequences in this nerve-jangling thriller.

Sixteen-year-old Addison is on the run. She's leaving her life on New York's streets behind for a new one with Rafe, armed with just his phone number on a scrap of paper. She's taking the subway to meet him in New Jersey. He'll take care of her. Or so she thinks . . .

Elizabeth Brown's world has fallen apart and she's thinking about her newly ex-fiancé. Until she locks eyes with a teenage girl while waiting for the train doors to open, and a bundle is thrust into her arms as she leaves the subway. A baby, wrapped in a dirty coat.

Elizabeth phones the number she finds in the coat pocket. Then wishes she hadn't. Someone wants Addison and the baby. And they'll do whatever it takes to get them . . .

In a major departure from her lighthearted Key West mysteries, Burdette invites readers into the world of a chilling thriller. (Unsafe Haven is) a page-turner highlighting the problem of exploited runaways.

—Kirkus Reviews

If you'd like a nibble before you buy, read the first chapter here. And if you'd like to read more about the genesis of the book, read this post from Jungle Red Writers.

Ways to buy your copy of UNSAFE HAVEN:

Book depository 

Indiebound 

Barnes and Noble 

Amazon 

Severn House 

And if this is not in your budget (which I totally get,) you can invite your local library to order a copy!