Chocolate Raspberry Cheese Pie from @MysteryMacRae

This pie is easy, festive, decadent, and delicious. What more can you ask for in a holiday dessert? We only make it for Thanksgiving or Christmas, never both in one year, and not every year – it’s really that rich. I should make a note to myself, though, to make the pie this summer when raspberries are fresh, and then decorate the top with extra berries. And the next time I make it for Christmas, why not decorate it with crystalized ginger and a bit of candied orange peel? Now visions of even more decadence are dancing in my head!

 

Chocolate Raspberry Cheese Pie

(adapted from Fast, Fabulous, Foolproof Holiday Desserts – a free recipe booklet from the Borden Foods Corporation, 1997)

Ingredients for the pie:

6 ounces cream cheese, softened

1 14 ounce can sweetened condensed milk

1 egg

3 tablespoons lemon juice

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup fresh or frozen raspberries

1 ready-made chocolate pie crust

Ingredients for the glaze:

2 ounces semisweet chocolate

¼ cup whipping cream

 

Directions for pie:

Heat oven to 350℉. With mixer, beat softened cream cheese until fluffy. Gradually beat in sweetened condensed milk until smooth. Add egg, lemon juice, and vanilla; mix well.

Arrange raspberries on bottom of crust. Slowly pour cheese mixture over fruit.

Bake 30 to 35 minutes or until center is almost set. Cool.

Directions for glaze:

When pie is cooled, melt chocolate in cream over low heat. Cook and stir until thickened and smooth. Remove from heat and pour over pie, spreading glaze to meet rim of crust. Garnish however you like (or just eat it up).

 

Something poisonous is coming March 1, 2022!

About Argyles and Arsenic – book 5 in the Highland Bookshop Mysteries:

After 93 well-lived years, Violet MacAskill is ready to simplify her life. Her eccentric solution? She’ll throw a decanting and decluttering party at her family home—a Scottish Baronial manor near the seaside town of Inversgail, Scotland. Violet sets aside everything she wants or needs, then she invites her many friends in to sip sherry and help themselves to whatever they want from all that’s left.

But a murder during Violet’s party leads to a poisonous game of cat and mouse – with the women of Yon Bonnie Books playing to win!

Available for pre-order in hardback and e-book from your locally owned independent bookstore, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon. Or ask your public library to consider ordering it.

 

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 since 1990 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.

 

Flourless Chocolate Cake

Mystery Lovers' Kitchen is delighted to welcome Edith Maxwell, whose latest book Farmed and Dangerous has just been released, as our guest today. Edith is a very busy writer these days (four series!), but she still finds time to come up with great recipes.

I’m tickled pink to be back, or maybe I should say I’m tickled chocolate-colored. My latest Local Foods mystery, Farmed and Dangerous, takes place in deep winter in Massachusetts. And boy, did we have a winter this year! Even though it’s now sunny and green outside, when a blizzard rages a person’s thoughts turn to soups, stews, and baking (right, Sheila?). And chocolate.

While this cake isn’t described in the book, it certainly something Cam could have enjoyed baking. It doesn’t really involve locally grown produce, but she’s much less of an avid locavore than her customers are. Not that she minds getting paid for supplying them, though.

I made this cake for Easter brunch this year (it was STILL cold out at Easter) because I had a gluten- and dairy-free guest coming, and this cake fits the bill. It’s not a bit short on flavor, though.

Flourless Chocolate Cake

12 servings (depending…)

Ingredients:

Oil

1-1/4 cup roasted almonds

3/4 cup plus 4 T sugar

6 oz good quality semisweet chocolate chips

10 cardamom pods

1/4 tsp cinnamon

1/2 cup cocoa powder

Juice and zest of one large orange

6 eggs, separated

Kosher salt

1 pint fresh raspberries, divided in half

Cointreau

Directions:

Heat oven to 350 degrees.

Pour some Cointreau in a glass and sip.

Rub oil inside nine-inch spring form pan and set on a baking sheet.

Use a hammer or a mortar and pestle to pound the pods until the husks open. Remove and discard the husks. In a food processor, combine cardamom seeds, almonds, and 1/4 cup sugar. Process until well chopped.

Add chocolate and process until well ground. Move mixture to a bowl. Whisk in cinnamon, cocoa powder, orange juice, and zest until smooth.

In a medium bowl, whisk the egg yolks with 1/2 cup sugar until significantly thickened. 

Stir in the other mixture.

Whisk the egg whites and a pinch of salt with an electric mixer until soft peaks form. Gradually add 2 T of sugar and continue whisking until stiff peaks form.

Working in three batches, fold whites into yolk mixture.

Pour batter into spring form pan, then place pan on baking sheet in the middle of the oven. Bake for 40 to 50 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean from the center.

Cool to room temperature, then run a knife around the perimeter of the pan and release the sides.

Lightly mash half the raspberries in a small saucepan, add 2 T sugar, and gently heat until sugar is dissolved. Remove from heat and stir in 1/4 cup Cointreau (or more, depending…).

Use a chopstick to gently poke holes into the top of the cake.

Array rest of fresh raspberries hole down on the cake, then spoon cooked mixture over top.

Enjoy!

Edith will be delighted to offer a copy of Farmed and Dangerous to someone who comments here (please include your email so she can reach you). The selection will be made by a random drawing. Read about the book below!

Organic farmer Cam Flaherty is struggling to provide the promised amount of food to her customers in her first winter in Westbury, Massachusetts, and her new greenhouse might just collapse from the weight of the snow. Supplying fresh ingredients for a dinner at the local assisted living facility seems like the least of her worries—until a cantankerous resident with a lot of enemies dies after eating the meal.

But while the motives in this case may be plentiful, the trail of poisoned produce leads straight back to Cam. Not even her budding romance with police detective Pete Pappas will keep him from investigating her.

As the suspects gather, a blizzard buries the scene of the crime under a blanket of snow, leaving Cam stranded in the dark with a killer who gives new meaning to the phrase “dead of winter.”

Agatha-nominated and Amazon-bestselling author Edith Maxwell writes four murder mystery series, most with recipes, as well as award-winning short stories.

Farmed and Dangerous is the latest in Maxwell's Local Foods Mysteries series (Kensington Publishing). The latest book in the Lauren Rousseau mysteries, under the pseudonym Tace Baker (Barking Rain Press), is Bluffing is Murder. Maxwell’s Country Store Mysteries, written as Maddie Day (also from Kensington), will debut with Flipped for Murder in November, 2015. Her Quaker Midwife Mysteries series features Quaker midwife Rose Carroll solving mysteries in 1888 Amesbury with John Greenleaf Whittier’s help, and will debut in March, 2016 with Delivering the Truth.

A fourth-generation Californian, Maxwell lives in an antique house north of Boston with her beau and three cats. She blogs every weekday with the other Wicked Cozy Authors (http://wickedcozyauthors.com), and you can find her at www.edithmaxwell.com, @edithmaxwell, on Pinterest and Instagram, and at www.facebook.com/EdithMaxwellAuthor.

Celebrate Raspberry Cake Day with @LucyBurdette #recipe

LUCY BURDETTE: Imagine my surprise and pleasure when I learned that July 31 is Raspberry Cake Day! (At least it isn't Moldy Cheese Day--I kid you not, that's on the calendar for October 9. Who thinks these things up?)

Of course you know what came next...I had to make a raspberry cake to share with you. As it turns out we were getting together with friends and I was able to wrestle the dessert assignment away from the other cooks. This recipe turned out so well that I will certainly be using it in the next food critic mystery--I'm thinking Hayley Snow will make it for the man she hopes will become her Valentine. (She's putting a lot of pressure on the cake, but more about that to come later.)

I borrowed this unusual order for putting the cake together from the BACK IN THE DAY BAKERY COOKBOOK, one of my newest acquisitions. The same method is recommended in one of my old favorites, JOY OF COOKING, one of my first cookbooks. If I say so myself, it turned out to be amazing!

Ingredients for the cake

1 and 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 and 3/4 cup cake flour
1 Tbsp baking powder
2 cups sugar
3/4 tsp salt
2 sticks unsalted butter, softened but still cool
1 cup milk 
4 eggs, room temperature
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp almond extract 

3-4 Tbsp good quality raspberry jam

Ingredients for the icing

1 8 oz block cream cheese
1 stick unsalted butter
1 tsp vanilla
confectioner's sugar

2 boxes of fresh raspberries--about 30 for the icing, and 40ish for decoration

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Prepare two 9-inch cake pans by buttering them well, lining with parchment, and then buttering the parchment too.
       Mix all the dry cake ingredients in bowl of electric mixer at slow speed. Add cool cubes of butter, a few at a time, and continue beating on low for about 1-2 minutes. Beat the eggs in one at a time, mixing well but minimally after each.

 Mix the milk with the extracts.

    Add 1/2 cup of milk mixture to flour mixture and beat until combined. Add remaining 1/2 cup of milk mixture and beat for about 1 minute.

    Pour batter evenly into the two prepared cake pans.

    Bake until toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean and cake springs back when touched, in the neighborhood of 25 minutes. (Watch this because you don't want to overcook...)

    Cool the pans  for ten minutes, then remove the cakes, one to a plate and the other to waxed paper, and allow them to cool to room temperature.

Meanwhile, prepare the frosting by beating together the cream cheese and butter, then add vanilla and confectioner's sugar to your taste. (I used about a cup.) Now gradually beat in the raspberries until your desired pink color is achieved.




Spread one of the cooled cakes with a layer of frosting, and then a layer of jam.

Layer on the other cake. Frost top and sides and decorate with remaining berries.








Prepare for your guests to swoon! (SHOULD there be any left over, refrigerate until you are ready to eat it.)

MURDER WITH GANACHE, the fourth Key West mystery, is in stores now. DEATH WITH ALL THE TRIMMINGS will be out in December.

 Follow Lucy on Facebook

And Twitter

And Pinterest.

Celebration Cheesecake!

by Sheila Connolly

Wow, time flies when you’re having fun! And clearly we here at Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen think cooking and sharing the results are fun, because we’ve been doing it for five years now.

To celebrate this milestone, this week and next we’re holding a contest: you can win one of five great MLK tote bags filled with copies of each of our books. All you need to do is to take a picture of one of our books in a fun setting—and there are five categories to choose from, and you can enter one photo in each! To enter, click HERE or go to our FaceBook page

But wait! There’s more! All this week each of us will be giving away one of our own books, and next week we’ll be giving away books from our blog alumnae. Just leave a comment on our post and tell us how you shared our contest or our anniversary news. You can enter each day, for each new post—that’s a total of twelve chances to win! Don’t forget to include your email address in your comment so we can find you.

I’m happy to offer a signed copy of the NYT bestselling Golden Malicious, the most recent Orchard Mystery (which just happens to take place during a hot summer).  Better read it soon: the next one in the series, Picked to Die, comes out this October! (If you already have this one, you can choose something else.)

So, readers, please spread the word about our MLK celebration, enter our contests, and continue to visit the blog and comment on our recipes.

Oh, right: I’m supposed to give you a new recipe today!

As you may have noticed this week, “celebrate” usually means dessert to us—and what a wonderful range we’ve found! Something for everyone—either seasonal fruit or chocolate. Or both, as in this recipe, which I shamelessly borrowed from a long-time friend (who also likes desserts!).

Raspberry Cheesecake

Crust:

1-1/2 cups finely crushed Oreos

1/4 cup melted butter

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Grease the bottom of a 9” spring-form pan.

Mix the two ingredients and press into the bottom of the pan.

Bake for seven minutes. Remove the pan from the oven and reduce the heat to 300 degrees.

Berry filling and topping:

1-1/4 cup sugar

3 Tblsp cornstarch

1-1/2 cups ripe raspberries (you may use frozen, 

   and you may combine berries or add cranberries)

¾ cup cran-raspberry juice

In a saucepan, mix the sugar and the cornstarch. Add the berries and juice and bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce the heat to medium and cook for 7-8 minutes, stirring frequently, until the mixture thickens. Put through a blender or food processor and blend until smooth. Strain through a sieve or colander to remove any skins and seeds.

Cheesecake filling:

4 8-oz. packages of cream cheese (room temperature)

1 cup sugar (taste your berry mixture first—you can

   cut down the sugar if the berries are sweet)

4 eggs

½ cup heavy cream

Beat the cream cheese and sugar on medium speed until light and fluffy.  Beat in the eggs, one at a time, until just blended. Stir in the heavy cream.

Pour half of the filling mixture on top of the baked crust. Carefully spoon half of the sauce over the filling. CAREFULLY spoon the rest of the filling over the fruit mixture in the pan (oh, all right, if it gets mixed up, it’ll still taste good!).  Set aside the rest of the berry mixture.

Place a shallow pan half full of hot water on the lower oven rack (this is to humidify your oven). Put the cheesecake pan on a rack above this.

Bake for 1-1/4 to 1-1/2 hours, until the edge of the cheesecake is set at least two inches from the edge of the pan. The center should still be jiggly.

Run a small metal spatula around the top edge of the pan to loosen the cheesecake and put it back in the oven. Turn the oven off and open the oven door a few inches. Let the cheesecake cool gradually in the oven, about half an hour (this should keep it from cracking).

Remove the pan from the oven and cool on a rack for another 30 minutes. Then place the cheesecake in the fridge and cool for at least six hours before serving (overnight is fine).

When you’re ready to serve, remove the outer ring of the spring-form pan, place the cheesecake on a serving plate, and spoon the remaining berry mixture over the top.

This week we’re also touching base with our alumnae, to see how they’ve kept busy since they “graduated”. Jennifer Stanley has more mystery series to her credit than I can count on one hand: the Hope Street Church Mysteries (under her own name), The Collectibles Mysteries (as J. B. Stanley), the Supper Club Mysteries (also as J. B. Stanley); and as Ellery Adams, the Books by the Bay Mysteries, the Charmed Pie Shoppe Mysteries, and the new Book Retreat Mysteries—the first book, Murder in the Mystery Suite, is coming out next month!

Here’s what Jennifer Stanley says about it:

 

“Murder in the Mystery Suite is set at a resort for book lovers and will feature daily afternoon teas in the Agatha Christie Tea Room, decadent meals in the Madame Bovary Dining Room, and sandwiches in the Kipling Cafe. As usual, I'll be doing my best to come up with tempting food descriptions (as well as a few dead bodies).”

Jenn would be happy if you contacted her at jbstanleyauthor@verizon.net to

get her thoughts on MLK and tell her about your favorite recipe. Here’s hers:

“My favorite recipe is probably my charmed pecan chocolate bourbon pie because it's so easy to make and the recipe produces two pies, so there's one for you and one for a friend. The recipe reminds me of MLK because it's basically a group of friends sharing recipes with other friends.”

Please come celebrate with us and enter our contests! You can see the entries HERE at the bottom of the page.