Ghost Cookies @MaddieDayAuthor #Halloween #giveaway

MADDIE DAY, bringing you some yummy sugar cookies disguised as ghosts for Halloween!

Caveat: I'm rather stressed at the moment, with a big book release this week and a brand-new, barely cooked very premature grandchild - my first! So I didn't get very creative with my contribution to the Kitchen's two weeks of Halloween recipes.

Okay, the cookies look creative, but I confess I have used the recipe many times, including here. You see, it's my grandmother Dorothy's recipe for English Butter Cookies, which I bake every year at Christmas.

So, hang onto the recipe, grab some red and green sugars, and use it in six weeks for your own holiday cookie plate!

Maddie's Ghost Cookies

Ingredients

1 cup softened salted butter (never margarine)

1/2 cup sugar, plus more for sprinkling

1 egg

1 tablespoon vanilla

3 cups unbleached white flour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

Semisweet chocolate bits (not shown in photo)

 

Directions

Preheat oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit.

Cream butter and sugar in mixer until smooth. Beat in egg and vanilla. Mix flour and baking powder, then stir in until blended. Divide the dough in half, shape into disks, wrap, and chill for at least half an hour.

Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper. Dust a clean surface with flour and roll out first disk to a 1/4 inch thickness. Cut with a gingerbread woman cookie cutter and place on cookie sheet at least a half inch apart. 

Have fun distorting the the figures so they look more ghoulish. When the sheet is full, sprinkle with white sugar and then add chocolate chip facial features.

Bake for 5-7 minutes, watching for browning. 

Cool on the parchment paper. Repeat for the other disk and the scraps until all dough has been baked. 

Remember you can reuse the recipe for Christmas using other cookie cutters and colored sugars.

Enjoy any time of year with a cup of coffee or tea, or a spot of sherry.

I can't wait to make these again in a couple of years for my granddaughter

Readers: What's your favorite cookie, holiday or otherwise? I'll send one of you a signed copy of my new book! The cover looks kind of Halloweeny, doesn't it?

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Murder Uncorked featuring wine bar manager Cece Barton came out Tuesday!

My next book to release is Deep Fried Death, #12 in the Country Store Mysteries.

It releases the day after Christmas this year.

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.

My Grandmother's Cookies by Christine Falcone #borrowedtrouble

LUCY BURDETTE: I’m delighted to bring my writing pal Christine Falcone to the blog today. I’m especially thrilled because she will have book 2 in her Melanie Bass mystery series out next month, and, because she brings us cookies! Don’t forget to leave a comment to be entered in the drawing for a copy of Ex’d Out. Welcome Chris!

CHRISTINE FALCONE: Thank you Lucy for inviting me here today on Mystery Lovers Kitchen. It isn’t as if the main character in my mystery series, visiting nurse Melanie Bass, can’t cook. As a matter of fact, she feels she is a good cook. However, since her divorce a few years previously, after work she tends to grab quick meals rather than doing a lot of cooking and baking. This is beginning to change, however, as in the latest book, BORROWED TROUBLE, she now has a boyfriend to impress. One of the things I think she might make for her new sweetheart is sugar cookies, especially since her involvement in solving crimes is often a sour note in their relationship.

I have a recipe for sugar cookies I inherited from my Irish grandmother—as well as a couple of her original metal cookie cutters! These cookies are a favorite of my children and grandchildren alike. The other day my grandson who is in college called me to ask for the recipe. He needs it for a globalization class he is taking where they discuss ancestry and tradition. The cookies are usually a tradition at Christmas at our house – all my children would help cut out and decorate them when they were younger, and then my grandson took over that task. These cookies are great whatever the season, however, depending on the cookie cutters you use.

Ingredients for the cookies:

½ cup Irish butter, softened          

½ tsp vanilla

            1 cup sugar                                   

½ tsp salt 

1 egg                                            

1 tsp baking powder

1 Tbsp milk                                  

1 ½ cup flour – plus ¼ cup (or as needed) to roll out

Colored granulated sugar for decorating

Mix the butter and sugar, then add egg, milk, and vanilla, and mix that in.

Sift together dry ingredients in another bowl.

Add dry ingredients to butter mixture and mix well. 

Roll out and cut. (I usually refrigerate dough for about 1 hour or even overnight to make easier to handle)

After cutting out cookies decorate with colored granulated sugar and place them on a greased cookie sheet.

Bake at 400 for seven to ten minutes. 

The recipe says it makes 18 cookies, but I have found it depends on the size of your cookie cutters. (And I usually double the recipe!)

Leave a comment about your family’s favorite cookie recipe to be entered in the drawing for Ex’d Out!

About BORROWED TROUBLE: After the murder of her ex-husband is solved, visiting nurse Melanie Bass is confident she will never again cross paths with Detective Sunny Cody. She is shocked when the detective suddenly shows up on her doorstep to ask Melanie for a favor. What starts out as an assignment Detective Cody assures her is quick and simple, instead soon puts Melanie, her dog Bruno, and Detective Cody herself in serious jeopardy. Melanie quickly becomes increasingly enmeshed in an investigation involving drugs, lies, and danger.

To make things worse, Melanie’s good friend Lynn Duncan is being stalked by an unknown man, and Melanie’s love life is threatened by her commitment to helping Detective Cody. While compelled by what she feels is a moral and personal obligation to be involved with Detective Cody’s investigation, Melanie must also find a balance in her personal life and avoid putting her life in further jeopardy.

About the author: Christine Falcone’s short stories have appeared in publications such as Imagine, Larcom Review, and Deadfall: Crime Stories by New England writers. After working for nearly forty years as an RN in a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, Christine is delighted that retirement coincided with the publication of her first full length mystery, EX’D OUT,  published in October 2022. The second in the series, BORROWED TROUBLE will be out in October 2023. She is a member of Sisters in Crime and Mystery Writers of America.

She lives on the Connecticut Shoreline with her family and a dog who is not nearly as well behaved as Bruno, the beloved canine in her novel. Read more on Facebook and Christine’s website.

Buy the book on Amazon

Or bookshop 

Crosby's Sugar Cookies @vmburns #recipe #giveaway

Vmburns: When the first book in my Baker Street Mystery series, TWO PARTS SUGAR, ONE PART MURDER, was being released, my publisher's social media team asked, "how do you feel about making videos?"  As an author, I wanted to say, "I love it. I'll do anything to help promote my books." The reality is that I was screaming in my head. "I feel horrible about it. Bad idea. I'm too old. Too fat. Too boring for videos." Inside my head can be a really cruel place. Instead, I took a deep breath and said, "I have an adorable great niece and great nephew. How about them?" Thankfully, the team loved the idea. So, I found two really simple recipes and enlisted my sister to help. She made chef aprons and filmed Marcie making peanut butter cookies. Marcella (aka Marcie) was four and wanted her own YouTube Channel. My nephew helped Crosby make sugar cookies while his wife filmed them. 

I've already included the recipe for Marcie's Peanut Butter Cookies. Here's a sample clip from Marcie's video. I'm totally biased, but I think she's adorable.

Crosby got bored making cookies so his dad had to take over. But, he looked stylish in his chef's apron on top of his pajamas.

Crosby's Sugar Cookies

INGREDIENTS

1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature

2 Cups + 1 Tablespoon flour

2/3 cup + 3 Tablespoons sugar

1 Teaspoon vanilla

Rainbow sprinkles (optional)

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.
2. Beat butter and 2/3 cup sugar until combined.
   
3. Add in flour and blend well. Then blend in the vanilla.
   
4. Roll the dough into 1-inch balls.
   
   
   
5. Roll the balls in the remaining sugar until lightly coated and place 2 inches apart on the baking sheet.
6. Flatten the balls with the bottom of a glass.
7. Add sprinkles and flatten with the glass.
8. Bake until edges are slightly golden (approx 15 minutes)
9. Allow to cool 10-15 minutes.

READERS: What's your favorite cookie? - Let me know in the comments for a chance to win a copy of the first book in my Baker Street Mystery series, TWO PARTS SUGAR, ONE PART MURDER (US Only). Please remember to include your email address if you want to be included in the giveaway. 

When Maddy Montgomery’s groom is a no-show to their livestream wedding, it’s a disaster that no amount of filtering can fix. But a surprise inheritance offers a chance to regroup and rebrand—as long as Maddy is willing to live in her late, great-aunt Octavia’s house in New Bison, Michigan, for a year, running her bakery and caring for a 250-pound English mastiff named Baby.

 
Maddy doesn’t bake, and her Louboutins aren’t made for walking giant dogs around Lake Michigan, but the locals are friendly and the scenery is beautiful. With help from her aunt’s loyal friends, aka the Baker Street Irregulars, Maddy feels ready to tackle any challenge, including Octavia’s award-winning cake recipes. That is, until New Bison’s mayor is fatally stabbed, and Maddy’s fingerprints are found on the knife . . .
 
Something strange is going on in New Bison. It seems Aunt Octavia had her suspicions, too. But Maddy’s going to need a whole lot more than a trending hashtag to save her reputation—and her life.

Sparkly Christmas Cookies #Recipe @PegCochran #Christmas

 

What are the holidays without cookies, right?  Lots and lots of cookies.These were easy to make--no rolling the dough.  The cream cheese added to the butter gave them even more richness than an ordinary sugar cookie.  You can roll them in the sanding sugar colors of your choice or go with sprinkles...or both!  The cookies can be frozen if you want to make them in advance.  I put mine in the freezer hoping they would last until Christmas but hubby is eating them frozen!  This recipe comes from Sally's Baking Addiction--a favorite site of mine for good recipes!

 

3 cups flour  

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup unsalted butter,

2 ounces block cream cheese, softened to room temperature

1 cup granulated sugar

1 large egg, at room temperature

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

1/2 teaspoon almond extract (optional)

3/4 cup sanding sugar or sprinkles

 

Instructions

Combine flour, baking powder, and salt together.  

 

Beat the butter and cream cheese on high speed until relatively smooth, about 2 minutes. 

 

Add sugar and beat until combined and creamy. 

 

Add the egg, vanilla extract and almond extract and beat on high speed until combined, about 1 minute.  

 

Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix on low speed until combined. 

 

 

Cover dough with aluminum foil or plastic wrap and chill for at least 1 hour.

 

 

 

Preheat oven to 350°F. Line two large baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats.  

 

Pour sanding sugar or sprinkles in bowls.

 

 

 

Roll approximately 1 tablespoon of cookie dough into a ball then roll ball in sanding sugar or sprinkles if desired. 

 

 

 

Place 2 inches apart on the baking sheets. Using the back of a measuring cup or drinking glass, gently press down on each dough ball to slightly flatten. 

 

 

 

Bake the cookies for 12-13 minutes or until very lightly browned on the edges.

 

Remove from the oven and allow to cool on the baking sheets for 5 minutes before transferring the cookies to a wire rack to cool completely.

 

 

Happy Holidays to All!

 

Treat yourself to some armchair travel to England with my 

Open Book Series!

 

 

Cranberry Cove #7 is finally here! 

 

Monica's stepmother wakes up next to a dead man!  Did she do it?

 

Amazon 

Barnes & Noble

 

 

Around the Kitchen Table: Holiday Cookies! + 6-Book #Giveaway

 

LUCY BURDETTE: As I was wondering about the best topic for around the kitchen table this holiday month, Leslie B reminded me that today is international cookie day. So how could we talk about anything but cookies? What are your favorites? What are the ones your family can’t do without? What will never ever appear on your table? Any new holiday cookies on the horizon?

For me, Christmas is all about the sugar cookies. Preferably decorated with colored icing and sprinkles. Here’s the recipe for my sugar cookies Key West style.

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LESLIE BUDEWITZ: My late mother was known all through the neighborhood for her plates of Christmas cookies: spritz, date pinwheels, bourbon balls,  Berlinkranzer---I could go on, but you get the idea! When I wrote As the Christmas Cookie Crumbles, the 5th Food Lovers' Village Mystery, which features a cookie exchange, I gave her recipe for Russian teacakes, aka Mexican Wedding Cakes and Snowballs, to the murder victim, with the "state of the cookie" a clue to the time of death and the killer. (Shared here from a previous National Cookie Day.) And in Peppermint Barked, the 6th Spice Shop Mystery, Pepper and the crew have a friendly "bark off," and the staff's least experienced cook and baker brings in Candy Cane Cookies worthy of my mother. (Mine tend to look like pipe cleaners with a hangover. Of course, they looked beautiful when our blogger-writer pal Kim Davis made them, from my mother's recipe.) The favorite in our household? Probably these Christmas Crinkle Cookies, with a touch of espresso powder giving an extra richness to the chocolate. And a penguin plate for an extra dose of cute!  

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MADDIE DAY: Ah, cookies, how I love you. My mom always made five or six kinds of cookies for the holiday, the recipes for which I've included in several of my books. Like Leslie, every year I make what we call Mexican Bridecakes (hint: they're the easiest because no rolling and cutting is involved). My version of that recipe was in Christmas Cocoa and a Corpse. I shared the holly cookies from Candy Slain Murder here, which is just my mom's English Butter Cookies recipe cut into holly shapes and sprinkled with green sugars. (No frosting, please!) And my most recent holiday recipe was included in "Scarfed Down" in Christmas Scarf Murder.

Photograph by Kim Davis

The talented Kim Davis made up the recipe for turtle cookies (which copy turtle candies, with chocolate, nuts, and caramel) and, as usual, she takes great food pictures!

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MOLLY MacRAE: Such fond memories of baking Christmas cookies with my mother and brothers! What a mess we must have made decorating spritz and cut out sugar cookies! We sprinkled colored sugar and nonpareils with abandon. Our favorites, though, were the silver dragees. Apparently the FDA considers them unsafe to eat. Who knew? Ah well. We made dozens and dozens of cookies (so we could eat them) and so we could carry plates to the neighbors. My boys and I had fun carrying on the tradition, adding new cookies and other treats each year. One year we made the beurre & sel jammers you see below. They were stunning and delicious and we haven't made them since. I wonder why? No matter. I'll make them sometime in the next week or two and post the recipe here in the kitchen on December 10th.

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VICKI DELANY: I'm a big cookie maker. I love making cookies, but these days, because my children are all adults, I don't make them nearly as much as I'd like to - I mean, I can eat them all, but should I? So Christmas is when I come into my own. I've even been known to take containers to my neighbours. I shared this recipe a number of years ago with MLK and here's the link again. This is a family favourite; cookies my mom used to make every year. She's still with us, but not baking so I've taken them on. The dough is a lot like shortbread, with red and green cherries added for holiday colour.

 

Mystery Lovers' Kitchen: stained glass cookie recipe
(mysteryloverskitchen.com)

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TINA KASHIAN: I love cookies, but I’m not a baker. I’m a cook. But I do love a good cookie! Every holiday, I’m invited to a cookie exchange for a group of mothers. I always stress about this until I found a recipe for chocolate crinkle cookies. With help from my youngest teenage daughter, we made these chocolate cookie crinkles and they were delicious. I will be baking them again this year. I shared the recipe at MLK here: Happy Holidays!

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PEG COCHRAN/MARGARET LOUDON: My mother-in-law was the queen of cookies at Christmas time. She made cookie nests, vanilla kifle (small balls of butter, flour, sugar and finely ground nuts rolled in confectioners sugar,) Layered Pita (yeasty dough with sugar mixed with ground walnuts and apricot jam between the many layers and cut into diamond shapes) and more. I don't make a lot of cookies but I do make sugar cookies with my granddaughter. And this year I might make Shrewsbury biscuits, a cookie found in English tea shops like the one in my Open Book Series. 

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MAYA CORRIGAN: Baking cookies was one of our holiday traditions as long as I can remember. The staples on our cookie tray were Mexican wedding cakes, hazelnut crescents, and angel slices (a layered bar cookie from a recipe in Joy of Cooking). Though we had our favorites, each year I tried making at least one new cookie, and if everyone liked it, it showed up every year after that. I shared a recipe for caramel almond cookies, which joined the list of must-have treats for the holidays a few years ago. With only five ingredients, they're easy to make.

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LESLIE KARST: In our house when I was growing up, "Christmas cookies" meant my grandmother's sugar cookies in the shape of the myriad cookie cutters my mother had. Mom would make several batches each year, then all us kids (and Mom) would sit around the table and decorate them with different colors of sugar icing, as well as sprinkles and silver balls. As we got older, us kids got more "creative" with the cookie cutter shapes, transforming the angels and reindeer into things such as Martians and zebras.

I recently made a batch of Christmas cookies--after a hiatus of many years--using a set of cookie cutters I purchased in Anchorage, Alaska, of a dog sled team and musher. I guess I'm getting old and nostalgic, because I stuck with the actual shapes. They were simply too adorable to mess with! (Okay, so maybe I did make my mushers into Santa Claus....)

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CLEO COYLE: I LOVE Christmas Cookies! When I was a little girl, I couldn't wait to help my Aunt Mary make them in our kitchen every December. (She was born in Italy and lived with our family, making her more of a grandmother, really.) Aunt Mary is gone now, but I still have her crinkle dough cutter she brought with her from Italy. She did not live to see the publication of my first culinary mystery, but I know she would have been tickled. And it's largely because of those influential years, acting as her little helper in the kitchen, that I've enjoyed sharing so many recipes with my ☕ Coffeehouse Mystery readers (and all of you here at Mystery Lovers' Kitchen), including my version of Aunt Mary's GLAZED ITALIAN LEMON COOKIES (aka "Anginetti," pictured below) and her ITALIAN BOW TIE COOKIES (aka Angel Wings)....

Click the photo for Cleo's recipe.

My husband (and partner in crime writing) and I love to cook (and eat!), which is why we enjoy experimenting with classic recipes, too, creating tasty twists for our readers. One of our favorite classic Christmas cookies served as the inspiration for the next recipe, which we published in our 14th Coffeehouse Mystery, Once Upon a Grind. Click the photo below for our "Coffeehouse" version of Christmas Gingerbread...

Click the photo for Cleo's recipe.

These ICED GINGERBREAD COOKIE STICKS are a fun and elegant way to serve gingerbread on dessert trays or after dinner with coffee, tea, or cocoa since they also double as drink stirrers. Click the photo (above) for the recipe, and Happy Holidays, everyone! ☕ 

GIVEAWAY!

To be entered in this week's drawing

for the 6 terrific mysteries below,

join us in the comments.

What are your favorite
holiday cookies?

Join the conversation!

Include your email address,

so we can contact the winner!

> Death with all the Trimmings

by Lucy Burdette

> Bake Offed by Maya Corrigan

> Brewed Awakening by Cleo Coyle

> As the Christmas Cookie Crumbles

by Leslie Budewitz 

> Christmas Scarf Murder by Maddie Day

(with Carlene O'Connor and Peggy Erhart)

> Argyles and Arsenic by Molly MacRae 

Comments open through

Wednesday, December 7th

Don't forget to include
your email address.

🎄