Pineapple Angel Food Cake aka Exploding Cake #Recipe Peg Cochran/Margaret Loudon

 

This recipe is all over the internet and I gather has been around for ages.  It couldn't be easier with the correct baking pan.  I first tried a recipe that was to be baked in a 9x13 inch glass baking dish.  I whipped out my trusty Pyrex dish (I have no idea how old that thing is) but didn't measure it.  It looked to be about 9x13 inches.  But it wasn't.  About ten minutes after putting the cake in the oven, I smelled burning.  Was something burnt on the bottom of the oven?  After a few minutes, I decided I'd better check.  The cake had overflowed the baking dish and was all over the racks and the bottom of the oven.  Panic! I had to take a dessert to a potluck that evening.  I had to wait for the oven to cool down enough to clean up the mess and the clock was ticking.  I found a box of white cake mix in the cupboard, doctored it up with some fresh lemon juice and coconut flakes and then topped it with a lemon glaze.  Phew!  Everyone loved it. Not to be undone by a mere cake, I decided to try the pineapple angel food cake again but this time I used my tube pan.  It turned out perfectly--very moist and perfect for spring. Next time I might add some coconut for something of a piña colada effect.

 

 

1 box angel food cake mix that only requires water

20 ounce can crushed pineapple in juice

 

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.

Combine angel food cake mix and pineapple (including juice) in the bowl of a mixer.  Mix on low speed for 30 seconds, then medium speed for one minute.

 

 

Pour batter into an ungreased 10-inch tube pan.

 

Bake for 40 to 45 minutes until golden brown.

Invert cake onto a bottle and let cool upside down for two hours.

Run knife around the edges and turn out onto a plate. 

 

 

 

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Spring Vegetable Pasta from @MysteryMacRae

 

This is a version of pasta primavera made with zucchini that’s overcooked just enough to turn it into a lovely sauce all on its own. Zucchinis and tiny tomatoes aren’t really spring vegetables, but they’re easy enough to find and help make the dish memorable. What also makes it memorable is how quickly it comes together.

 

Spring Vegetable Pasta

Adapted from The Complete Plant-based Cookbook from America’s Test Kitchen

 

Ignore the green onions. They snuck into the picture but not the dish.
They'd be a nice addition next time, though!

Ingredients

6 ounces cherry tomatoes, halved

6 tablespoons olive oil, divided

5 cloves garlic (1 minced, 4 sliced thin)

¾ teaspoon salt, divided, plus salt for cooking pasta

¼ teaspoon black pepper

1 zucchini, halved lengthwise and sliced ¼ inch thick

⅛ teaspoon red pepper flakes

1 pound asparagus, trimmed and cut on bias into 1-inch lengths

1 cup frozen peas, thawed

¼ cup fresh chives

1 tablespoon lemon juice

12 ounces pasta (your choice)

Freshly grated Parmesan or Pecorino Romano cheese to taste

2 tablespoons torn fresh mint leaves

 

Directions

Toss tomatoes with 1 tablespoon olive oil, minced garlic, ¼ teaspoon salt, and pepper together in a small bowl. Set aside.

Bring 4 quarts salted water to boil. Add pasta and cook until al dente. Drain pasta and return to pot.

While pasta is cooking, heat remaining 3 tablespoons olive oil in a 12-inch skillet over medium-low heat until shimmering. Add zucchini, red pepper flakes, sliced garlic, and remaining ½ teaspoon salt and cook, covered, until zucchini softens and breaks down, 10 to 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add asparagus, peas, and ¾ cup water and bring to a simmer over medium-high heat. Cover and cook until asparagus is crisp-tender, about 2 minutes.

Add vegetable mixture, chives, lemon juice, and remaining 2 tablespoons olive oil to pasta and toss to combine. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Transfer to serving bowl, sprinkle with grated cheese. Spoon tomatoes and their juices over the top and sprinkle with the mint leaves.

Happy spring!

 

 

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.

 

AROUND THE KITCHEN TABLE - Have Your Thoughts Turned to Spring? + 5-Book #Giveaway!

MOLLY MACRAE:

Dill as high as a mystery writer's eye

It’s okay to start thinking about spring, isn’t it? After all, Daylight Saving Time starts next Sunday. But yes, even if some of us can still expect weeks and weeks of cold and snow, it really is okay to start thinking about gardening. Decades ago, when we were first married, seed catalogs arrived in our mail in January and February. We’d pore over them, while the blizzards howled around us, dreaming of all the tasty and pretty things we’d grow. We’ve had big gardens, small gardens, fruit and nut trees, berries, flowers, root crops, you name it. These days we have marauding squirrels and too much shade. But there’s always dill! Those pesky critters don’t like it and we do. Do you grow flowers or vegetables or fruit? When does your mind turn to thoughts of green and growing things?  

🌿☔🥗

MADDIE DAY: Ah, dreams of spring and seeds and sprouts! The days are noticeably lengthening. Birds are back, singing and looking for food and mates. Nothing is actually growing yet, but the signs are there.

In my past as New England farmer, by now I would be getting ready to start seeds in March, and already had leek seedlings up and growing. The ground is still cold and bare, with the last snow having melted, but we're getting another dump of white stuff Friday. Still, I know my garlic is underground and already wanting to push up. The early crocus and forsythia will follow. In May I can plant lettuce and greens, including spinach, in my high raised box and watch the asparagus push up through the ground.

This recipe for a Spinach-Pepper Egg Bake would be one way to use up fresh spinach, which tends to be ready all at the same time! I'm giving away Murder Most Fowl, book four in my Local Foods Mysteries (written as Edith Maxwell), which takes place in the spring.

🌿☔🥗

LUCY BURDETTE: We have a very small deck garden in Key West, and a real garden in Connecticut. This year the deck produce has been disappointing so I am looking forward to asparagus in the spring and lots of tomatoes and peppers and okra when summer comes. We've not yet tried growing garlic, as Edith does, and forgot about how good the fresh onions can be. So those are on this year's wish list!

🌿☔🥗

PEG COCHRAN/MARGARET LOUDON:  We don't even dare whisper the word spring here in Michigan for fear it will arouse winter's wrath and provoke it to last longer! We still have snow on the ground and I'm sure more is on the way.  We can't even begin thinking about planting flowers until close to Memorial Day.  I'm probably the odd man out but I've never been a gardener.  One year we did have success with tomato plants and I foolishly planted mint and lemon balm, which nearly took over the entire yard, but now we live in a condo where we could plant a few flowers to augment the garden but not much else.  And I'm perfectly fine with that. I'll add some pots of flowers to the deck and be totally satisfied.

🌿☔🥗

TINA KASHIAN: I’m a spring and summer lover, and I count the days until warmer weather. We wait until Mother’s Day to plant our garden to be sure there is no chance of frost to ruin our plants. It’s a tradition for my two girls to help with the planting that weekend. Jersey tomatoes are especially delicious, and we grow beefsteak tomatoes, grape tomatoes, cherry tomatoes and Roma tomatoes. I love them along with my younger daughter. But my husband and older daughter won’t touch a tomato. We joke that there is more for us. We also plant cucumbers, zucchini, green and red peppers, lettuce, basil and parsley. We have learned to plant the parsley in a separate garden because it is so aggressive it takes over. Even with our own garden we still visit farm stands throughout the summer for other fruits and vegetables. New Jersey is the Garden State.

 

🌿☔🥗

LESLIE BUDEWITZ: Spring? What is this thing, spring? Here in Northwest Montana, we could see a hard frost well into May, though as everywhere, patterns have become much less predictable. We have a pair of apple trees, rhubarb, and a great strawberry patch, along with garlic and perennial herbs---chives, thyme, oregano, and a pair of unruly mints, and I plant snap peas, green beans, and zucchini and crookneck squash in a raised bed. No greens---a patient of Mr. Right's grows the best greens in the world so we trade her for them! Basil, parsley, and tarragon go in pots on the back porch, along with tomatoes, although a neighbor gets tarragon to behave like a perennial, so I might try that this year. It's great with chicken in the classic Julia Child style and in these Green Beans with Tarragon Vinaigrette.

My big garden task, begun late last summer, is reclaiming several beautiful flower beds around the house that I created over the years. They've suffered from more neglect than I ought to admit, so I built up some good muscle by digging and pulling grasses, pruning, and layering in my body weight in compost. That job will continue this spring and summer, but I am determined -- and already planning to reward myself with a white peony in a vacant spot. Gardeners, like writers, are optimists, always looking ahead.

  🌿 ☔ 🥗 

LESLIE KARST: Robin and I will be returning to Santa Cruz from Hilo in a couple weeks time, so it's going to feel much more like winter than spring to me, coming back from the tropics to chilly Northern California. (Yes, I do hear all the mocking that is now being sent my way from all of you in the Midwest and East.) But I'll keep warm by weeding my vegetable garden, getting ready to plant in late April when I return home from Malice Domestic: likely my usual suspects of heirloom tomatoes, zucchini, peppers, French beans, and an array of herbs.

 

the weeding begins

Can't wait for those caprese salads and that grilled zucchini basted with olive oil and balsamic vinegar! Here's one of my favorite green bean recipes: Fagiolini al Burro.

🌻 🌿 🍋

MAYA CORRIGAN: We usually plant cool-weather crops in mid-March, but last week we took a chance and planted lettuce and spinach seeds. We'll plant those and other greens every two weeks until early May. Because it can get really hot here in June, the lettuce will bolt, but we'll plant again in late summer for a fall crop. Usually, we're still harvesting lettuce around Thanksgiving. Our plot in an organic community garden is more of a salad garden than a vegetable garden. We don't grow zucchini because our neighboring gardeners kindly share their excess with anyone who'll taken them. We're in it for the tomatoes. Though we visit our local farmers' market in the summer, we've never found any tomatoes there that come close to the ones from our garden.

🌻  🍅 🌿

MIA P. MANANSALA: I'm not a gardener or plant person, though I really want to be! Throughout the years, I've tried to take care of indoor plants and windowsill herbs to little avail. You'd think I'd give up, but just this past weekend I picked up a succulent and set of three cacti from IKEA and I swear, this will be the time that my plants last for longer than a year! I 3D printed the adorable Bulbasaur (a Pokemon) planter at my day job, and it makes the perfect home for my succulent. Looking at the greenery on my desk cheers me up, so fingers crossed these plants make it!

 🌵 ☔ 🥗 

☕ CLEO COYLE: Marc and I don’t have green thumbs, which is why we greatly admire people who do. To wit: If you’ve read our latest Coffeehouse Mystery, HONEY ROASTED, then you’ve met Bea, retired owner of a national florist franchise, who built an elaborate greenhouse on the roof of her Manhattan high-rise, an amazing glass palace where she farms award-winning mono-floral honeys via her precious beehives. For us, creating Bea’s fantastic greenhouse was wish fulfillment fun.

Far from Manhattan wealth, we live more like our amateur sleuth (coffeehouse manager Clare Cosi) with a small plot of yard in the back of our two-story rowhouse. Modest to be sure, but big enough for cozy cookouts, bird watching, and sipping coffee or wine on spring and summer nights. While we’re perpetually busy on deadlines and have no planned garden this year, Marc and I are supremely grateful to God’s green thumb and the wild violets that (through absolutely no skill of our own) blanket our yard every spring in vibrant purple blossoms. A few years ago, I made a “bottomless cup” video-loop in their honor, which I’m happy to share today as we all look forward to coming buds and new beginnings…

"Bottomless Cup" in our yard of
spring violets by Cleo Coyle ☕

🌻🌷🌼

GIVEAWAY!

To be entered in this week's drawing

for the 5 terrific mysteries below,

join us in the comments.

Do you grow flowers or vegetables or fruit? 

When does your mind turn to 

thoughts of green and growing things?

Join the

conversation!

Include your email address,

so we can contact the winner!

> ARGYLES AND ARSENIC by Molly MacRae

> PERIL ON THE PAGE by Margaret Loudon

(aka Peg Cochran)

> BREWED AWAKENING by Cleo Coyle

> DEATH ON THE MENU (paperback)

by Lucy Burdette

> MURDER MOST FOWL by Edith Maxwell

(aka Maddie Day)

Comments Open through

Wednesday, March 9

Don't forget to include

your email address.

📚

Three-Ingredient Asparagus Tart #recipe @LeslieBudewitz

LESLIE: Is there a vegetable that screams “SPRING” quite like asparagus? Both Mr. Right and I love it. My childhood neighborhood was a truck farm before its development in the late 1950s, and our yard was the asparagus field. For years after we moved in, remnant stalks would sometimes push up through the grass and become dinner.

Yummm.

I saw a recipe for an asparagus tart using packaged puff pastry, another fave, and the ricotta-egg mixture sounded yummy, but I decided to search out for a simpler recipe. This one came from the Pioneer Woman blog, and it almost seemed too simple to work. It works.

When it comes to asparagus, you can trust me. (Just don’t leave your plate untended.) And don’t think twice about not cooking it in advance—not needed. Do use young, tender spears.

With only three ingredients, I didn’t change much! Actually, we only made half, using one puff pastry sheet, but we made it twice, once with fontina and once with gruyere. Thumbs up for both, although fontina is a bit soft for grating; next time, I might try tossing it in the freezer for an hour first.

But of course, I played with the instructions because I always do. The original recipe didn’t mention rolling or scoring the pastry like a picture frame; I ignored my instinct to score it anyway the first time we made the tart, but corrected my mistake the next time. (You'll see what I mean in the pics below.) We skipped the optional balsamic glaze—it seemed like gilding the lily, and way too messy. 

Here’s to spring!

Three-Ingredient Asparagus Tart

2 sheets (one package) puff pastry, thawed on a work surface
8 ounces freshly grated fontina or gruyere
1 pound asparagus, with the woody ends snapped off

Heat oven to 425 degrees.

Use your rolling pin to flatten and smooth the puff pastry. With a table knife or paring knife, lightly score a line about 3/4 inch inside the outside edge, as if drawing a frame. Transfer each pastry to a baking sheet.

Lay the cheese on the pastry, inside your score line. Line up the asparagus spears like pickets in a fence, but alternate heads and tails. Bake 25 minutes, until golden brown and puffy. (Don’t freak out if it gets a little TOO puffy; it will calm down as it cools.

Cut each sheet into quarters or sixths. Serve with a green salad and a glass of a sprightly white wine.

What happens when you don't score the edges!

What it looks like when you DO score the edges!

 

À la printemps – to spring!

From the cover of AS THE CHRISTMAS COOKIE CRUMBLES, Food Lovers' Village Mystery #5 (Midnight Ink, June 2018, available for pre-order now):  

In Jewel Bay---Montana's Christmas Village---all is merry and bright. At Murphy’s Mercantile, AKA the Merc, manager Erin Murphy is ringing in the holiday season with food, drink, and a new friend: Merrily Thornton. A local girl gone wrong, Merrily’s turned her life around. But her parents have publicly shunned her, and they nurse a bitterness that chills Erin.


When Merrily goes missing and her boss discovers he’s been robbed, fingers point to Merrily—until she’s found dead, a string of lights around her neck. The clues and danger snowball from there. Can Erin nab the killer—and keep herself in one piece—in time for a special Christmas Eve?

Leslie Budewitz is the author of the Food Lovers’ Village Mysteries and the Spice Shop Mysteries—and the first author to win Agatha Awards for both fiction and nonfiction. A past president of Sisters in Crime, she lives in northwest Montana with her husband, a musician and doctor of natural medicine, and their cat, an avid bird-watcher.

Swing by my website and join the mailing list for my seasonal newsletter. And join me on Facebook where I announce lots of giveaways from my cozy writer friends.