Makes 15 macarons.
Baklava Macarons
Recipe for Basic Macaron Shells
(See previous recipe)
For the ganache/filling
Ingredients
3.5 ounces (100 grams) cream
8.8 ounces (250 grams) white chocolate
1.75 ounces (50 grams) honey
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
2 tablespoons finely ground pecans (optional)
Directions
In a small saucepan, heat the cream on a low setting. Add the white chocolate and mix until smooth. Add the honey and spices, mix, and refrigerate overnight.
Pipe some ganache on half of the cookies, and add a sprinkling of the ground pecans, if desired. Top with the remaining cookies. Place in the fridge to mature for 24 hours before serving.
Fills 15 macarons.
Crustless Spinach and Bacon Quiche
Ingredients
5 or 6 slices of bacon, cut into small pieces
1 small white onion, chopped
1 cup frozen chopped spinach, thawed and drained
5 eggs, beaten
1 cup cheddar cheese, shredded
1 cup mozzarella cheese, shredded
¼ teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper
Directions
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly grease a 9-inch pie pan.
In a large skillet over medium-high heat, cook the bacon until crisp. Drain the bacon on paper towels. Discard all but 1 tablespoon fat from the pan. Add the onion and sauté, stirring occasionally, until soft. Stir in the spinach and bacon and continue cooking until the excess moisture has evaporated.
In a large bowl, combine the eggs, cheeses, salt, and pepper. Add the spinach mixture and stir to blend. Scoop into the prepared pie pan.
Bake until the eggs have set, about 30 minutes. Let cool for 10 minutes before serving.
Makes 6 servings.
Tomato and Mozzarella Salad
Ingredients
1 pound cherry tomatoes
½ pound mozzarella cheese
½ cup chopped basil leaves
1 garlic clove, finely minced
3 tablespoons olive oil
4 teaspoons balsamic vinegar
Salt to taste
Directions
Cut the cherry tomatoes in half, and the mozzarella into cubes. Add the basil and garlic. Drizzle with olive oil and vinegar. Stir lightly. Sprinkle with a little salt. Chill at least one hour before serving. Store in refrigerator.
Makes 4–6 servings.
Sausage Egg Muffins
Ingredients
Vegetable oil spray
1 pound ground sausage
12 eggs
¼ teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 cup cheddar cheese, shredded
½ cup mozzarella cheese, shredded
Directions
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly spray a 12-cup muffin pan with the vegetable oil of your choice.
In a large pan, brown the crumbled sausage on medium heat setting. Drain the grease. Set aside.
In a large bowl, whisk the eggs with the salt and pepper. Add the cheeses and mix. Spoon the sausage evenly into the bottom of each muffin cup. Pour the egg mixture over the top, filling almost to the top of each cup.
Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, until the eggs are set. Remove, and serve while still warm.
Makes 12 servings.
Red Potato Salad
Ingredients
5 pounds medium red potatoes, halved
3 eggs, hardboiled and chopped
½ medium white onion, chopped finely
1 cup Miracle Whip
½ cup sour cream
2 teaspoons mustard
¼ cup sweet-pickle relish
2 tablespoons dried parsley flakes
1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
Directions
Place the potatoes in a large kettle; cover with water. Bring to a boil. Reduce the heat, cover, and cook for 15 to 20 minutes, or until tender. Drain, and allow to cool. Cut the potatoes into ¾-inch cubes.
In a large bowl, combine the potatoes, eggs, and onion. In a small bowl, combine the remaining ingredients. Pour over the potato mixture and stir gently to coat evenly. Cover and refrigerate for 6 hours or overnight.
Makes 12–15 servings.
Potato Soup
Ingredients
1 pound bacon, chopped
1 onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
8 Russet potatoes, peeled and cubed
4 cups chicken stock, or enough to cover the potatoes
3 tablespoons butter
¼ cup all-purpose flour
1 cup heavy cream
Salt and ground white pepper to taste
1 cup cheddar cheese, shredded
1 cup green onions, chopped
Directions
In a Dutch oven, cook the bacon over medium heat until crispy. Remove the bacon from the pot, and set aside. Drain off all but ¼ cup of the bacon fat.
In the bacon fat remaining in the pot, sauté the onion until it begins to turn translucent. Add the garlic, and continue cooking for 1 to 2 minutes. Add the potatoes and toss to coat. Sauté for 3 to 4 minutes. Return half of the bacon to the pan, and add enough chicken stock to just cover the potatoes. Cover, and simmer until the potatoes are tender.
In a separate pan, melt the butter over medium heat. Whisk in the flour. Cook, stirring constantly, for 1 to 2 minutes. Whisk in the cream. Bring the mixture to a boil and cook, stirring constantly, until thickened. Stir the cream mixture into the potato mixture. Using a potato masher, mash the ingredients 5 times. Taste, and add salt and pepper if needed. Most store-bought stock has a lot of salt, so you really need to taste before adding salt.
Spoon the soup into bowls and top each with the remaining bacon, the cheddar cheese, and the green onions.
Serves 8.
Hot Ham and Cheese Sliders
Ingredients
¼ cup melted butter
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1 clove garlic, minced
12 sweet dinner rolls
½ pound thinly sliced cooked deli ham
½ pound thinly sliced smoked provolone cheese
Directions
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a 9-by-13-inch baking dish.
In a bowl, mix together the butter, Dijon mustard, Worcestershire sauce, and garlic.
Separate the tops from bottoms of the rolls, and place the bottom pieces, insides facing up, in the prepared baking dish. Layer the ham onto the rolls. Arrange the cheese over the ham. Place the tops of the rolls onto the sandwiches. Pour the mustard mixture evenly over the rolls.
Bake until the rolls are lightly browned and the cheese has melted, about 20 minutes. Slice into individual rolls, through the ham and cheese layers, to serve.
Makes 12 sliders.
Baked Meatballs
Ingredients
2 pounds lean ground beef
1 cup Italian-style bread crumbs
½ cup milk
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon pepper
1 small onion, finely chopped (about ¼ cup)
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 eggs
Directions
Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Spray two 9-by-13-inch pans with cooking spray.
In a la
rge bowl, mix all the ingredients lightly; don’t overwork. Shape into 40 to 48 1½-inch meatballs. Place 1 inch apart on the pan. Bake, uncovered, for 18 to 22 minutes, or until no longer pink in the center.
Serve with your favorite sauce on pasta.
Serves 8 with pasta.
Grilled Chicken and Spinach Salad
Ingredients
4 (6-ounce) skinless, boneless grilled chicken breast halves, sliced
1 bag baby spinach, washed and dried
1/3 cup sweetened dried cranberries
¼ cup chopped pecans, toasted
3 green onions, thinly sliced
4 tablespoons olive oil
2 teaspoons fresh lime juice
1 teaspoon sugar
Directions
In a large bowl, toss the chicken, spinach, cranberries, pecans, and green onions.
In a small bowl, combine the olive oil, lime juice, and sugar; stir well. Add the oil mixture to the chicken mixture; toss to coat.
Serves 4.
Read on for an excerpt from another Fresh-Baked Mystery from Livia J. Washburn,
A Peach of a Murder
Available now from Obsidian
The smell of peaches filled the air, sweet but with a particular bite all its own. Warm sunshine flooded the orchard. Later, the sun would be hot, oppressively so, but now, in the early morning, basking in its glow was like luxuriating in a warm bath. The peach smell could have come from a scented candle, but was instead the real thing, which made it even better, Phyllis Newsom thought.
Balanced on a wooden ladder, wearing blue jeans and one of her late husband’s shirts, with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows, she reached up carefully into the tree and took hold of a particularly nice-looking peach. With just a little tug, the fruit came loose from its stem. Phyllis turned and handed it down to Mattie Harris, who was helping her fill the bushel basket that sat on the ground.
Mattie was a sight. Somewhere between eighty-five and ninety, which made her approximately twenty years older than Phyllis, Mattie was still as spry and nimble as a bird. She wore a dress covered with a bright flower print that was even more brilliant in the sunlight, and a straw hat with a huge brim that shaded her face. Like Phyllis, she wore gloves to protect her hands, which could get pretty scratched up from the tree branches while picking, not to mention itchy from the peach fuzz.
“I remember when this orchard was just a sorghum field,” Mattie said, tilting her head back so that she could look up at Phyllis on the ladder. “That was before Newt Bishop got the bright idea of growing peaches. Land’s sakes, everybody else in Parker County was doing it already, but Newt was always slow to catch on. I remember a time . . .”
Phyllis knew it was rude, but she tuned out Mattie’s reminiscences and searched the tree for the next peach she wanted to pick. Mattie remembered all about the Depression and World War II and working at the bomber plant over at Fort Worth. She had an endless supply of stories about those days. Phyllis had been born just before the war started, but she didn’t remember it, of course. She had been too young. As a history teacher—a retired history teacher now—she had a vested interest in the past, and most of the time she really enjoyed listening to Mattie’s stories. This morning, though, she was thinking about the upcoming Parker County Peach Festival and trying to come up with a recipe for the cooking contest.
Everybody knew that Parker County peaches were the best peaches in Texas—and, therefore, the best in the world—and every summer the peach festival was the biggest thing in the county seat, Weatherford. The State Fair in Dallas was bigger, of course, and the Stock Show rodeo in Fort Worth was bigger than the Sheriff’s Posse Rodeo, held in conjunction with the peach festival, but those events lacked the small-town charm of the celebration in Weatherford.
Half of the courthouse square in downtown was blocked off and surrounded by portable fences, as were some of the side streets off the square, and into that area were packed dozens of booths showing off the best arts and crafts and food that the county had to offer. Two stages were set up, for musical entertainment at various times during the day. Whenever a live band wasn’t playing, recorded music blared from large speakers. There was a kids’ area, filled with games and rides, puppet shows and face-painting booths. A little bit of something for everybody, and during the day of the festival, it was almost possible to forget that Weatherford was part of a much bigger, not-so-nice world. There was nothing like eating cotton candy and homemade ice cream, listening to a high school band, and strolling through a display of homemade quilts to make it seem as if time had stood still, as if Weatherford had indeed somehow gone back to a slower, gentler era.
The high point of the festival, at least for Phyllis, was the cooking contest. Everything revolved around peaches, of course. Peach cobbler, peach pie, peach ice cream, peach preserves . . . If there was any way to work peaches into a recipe, somebody was bound to try it. And at the climax of the festival, a winner would be named by a panel of judges. There was a blue ribbon, of course, just a little thing made by the local trophy shop that read BEST PEACH RECIPE—PARKER COUNTY PEACH FESTIVAL, with the year printed on it.
Phyllis wanted that ribbon. She told herself it wasn’t because Carolyn Wilbarger had won it the past two years while Phyllis’s recipes had finished fifth and second, respectively. She just wanted to be recognized for the good work she’d done.
But if that involved beating Carolyn, then so much the better.
Phyllis picked another peach and turned to hand it down to Mattie. As she did so, she saw a burly figure strolling toward them along the row of peach trees. Phyllis had often heard someone described as being “about as wide as he is tall,” but Newt Bishop came as close to actually fitting that description as anyone she had ever seen. Despite the fact that it was summer, Newt wore a greasy, stained pair of overalls and a long-sleeved white shirt. An old-fashioned fedora was on his head. Phyllis had never seen him in any other clothes. She knew he even wore them to church, when he went to church.
Newt stopped and turned his round, sunburned, jowly face up toward Phyllis. “You findin’ some good ones, Miz Newsom?” he asked in a thick, rumbling voice.
“Yes, thank you, Mr. Bishop. It looks like you have a good crop this year.”
“Ought to. Worked hard enough on it. You ladies need ’nother basket?”
Phyllis thought about it for a second. The peach festival was still a couple of weeks away, which meant she had time to experiment. She was thinking about trying a peach cobbler, but she wanted to give it some added spice. She wondered how it would taste with a little jalapeño pepper, but even if that worked out, it might take several tries before everything was just perfect. That might take all of one bushel, and it would be nice to freeze some this year. Store-bought frozen peaches were good, but home-prepared Parker County peaches were better.
“Yes, I believe I will get another bushel,” she told the farmer.
“I’ll have the boy bring a basket down from the barn.” Newt tugged on the brim of his fedora. “Ladies.”
He moved on, probably bound for the part of the orchard where Carolyn was picking her peaches with the help of Eve Turner. Newt was always trying to sell just a little bit more. He would probably tell Carolyn that Phyllis was buying a second bushel of peaches, in hopes that Carolyn would feel that she had to have another basketful, too.
He grew some really fine peaches, though.
Phyllis looked down at Mattie. “Didn’t you have Newt’s boy in your class once?”
“Darryl,” Mattie said with a nod. “Yes, he was a very sweet little boy. I never saw Newt at school, though, except at Open House. Parents didn’t have as much to do with the schools then as they do now, especially the fathers.”
“Yes, I know. I haven’t been retired all that long.”
“But you taught junior high,” Mattie pointed out. “When I substitute
in the elementary schools these days, there are sheets stuck up all over the classroom for the parents to sign up for this and sign up for that, to go on this field trip and provide refreshments for that class party, to volunteer for this and that. In my day, that classroom was my domain, you could say, and I’d just as soon the parents kept their noses out and let me get on about my job. From eight thirty in the morning to three thirty in the afternoon, those were my kids. They didn’t belong to the parents during that time.”
Phyllis was old enough to understand Mattie’s attitude, even though she knew perfectly well it wouldn’t fly in today’s modern classroom. She had come out here to pick peaches, not to discuss changing theories in education. She reached for another plump fruit hanging from the branch just above her head.
The slamming of a car door made her look toward the Bishop farmhouse and the barn, about three hundred yards away. She saw that a pickup had pulled up in front of the barn. A man stood next to it, talking to Newt Bishop, who had circled through the orchard and returned to the barn by now. Phyllis recognized Newt by his clothes and his barrel-like shape. She had no idea who the other man was, only that he was younger, taller, and leaner.
And perhaps angry, to judge by the way he waved his arms around as he talked to Newt. It was none of Phyllis’s business, of course.
A boy about ten years old came trotting through the orchard, carrying a couple of bushel baskets woven out of wicker. He stopped and set one on the ground next to Mattie’s feet. “My granddad said you ladies needed another basket,” he announced.
“That’s right,” Phyllis said from the ladder.
Mattie looked down at the boy. “Lord have mercy! Darryl?”
He grinned. “No, ma’am. Darryl’s my daddy. I’m Justin. I’m workin’ here this summer, helpin’ out my granddad.”
The Candy Cane Cupcake Killer Page 23
