Must Read Mysteries: Analysis is a Skill Well-Learned by Dane McCaslin

Must Read Mysteries: Analysis is a Skill Well-Learned by Dane McCaslin

Amazing Truffles- Just Three Ingredients to Happiness

I love truffles. They are elegant to serve, beautiful to look at...and incredibly easy to make! Here is another installment in the virtual cookie exchange with Ellie Ashe:

3-Ingredient Candy Cane Truffles

Quick, simple, and elegant, these truffles can be prepped in the microwave and made in minutes!

Makes: ~ 12 truffles
Ingredients:
1 cup high-quality dark or milk chocolate chips
¼ cup heavy cream
½ cup crushed candy canes
Directions:1. In a large microwave-safe bowl, heat chocolate chips and cream together, cooking in 30-second bursts until the chips melt. Stir until smooth.
2. Place in fridge until the mixture firms, about 15-30 minutes.
3. Scoop tablespoon-sized mounds of the chocolate using a mini ice cream scoop, then roll into balls.
4. Roll balls in crushed candy canes.
5. Store in fridge until ready to eat. Best when eaten within 12 hours.

Additional Topping Ideas: Make different varieties of truffles by rolling yours in unique toppings. Here are a few of my favorites: rainbow sprinkles, chocolate sprinkles, cacao nibs, chopped nuts (almonds, hazelnuts, or pistachios), mini rainbow chips, and holiday sprinkles.

Enjoy, and Happy Holidays to all.

Put Some Pep (or Peppermint) in Your Holidays!

I love peppermint in any form: Flavored coffee, candy, cakes, and cookies. Because of that, I want to share one of all-time favorite recipes for Peppermint Bark Cookies, straight from the Betty Crocker cookbook.  Here it is! Make double and share it with a friend:

•  1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 1/2 cup vegetable shortening
• 3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
• 1/2 cup white sugar

• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 3/4 teaspoon peppermint extract
• 1/2 teaspoon red food coloring
• 2 cups white chocolate chips
• 6 peppermint candy canes, crushed - or more to taste

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
2. Whisk flour, baking soda, and salt in a bowl. Beat butter, vegetable shortening, light brown sugar, and white sugar in a separate large bowl until creamy. Beat eggs, vanilla and peppermint extracts, and red food coloring into butter mixture until smooth. Gradually beat dry ingredients into wet ingredients until dough is smooth. Fold white chocolate chips and crushed candy canes into dough.
3. Pinch off 1-tablespoon-sized pieces of dough, roll into balls, and place on ungreased baking sheets. Lightly flatten cookies with the bottom of a drinking glass.
4. Bake in the preheated oven until cookies are set but not browned, 9 to 10 minutes. Let cool on baking sheets for 2 minutes before removing to finish cooling on wire racks.

Kitchen-Friendly View

Footnotes

• Cook's Note:
• For the more-adventurous baker, when cookies are cooled, melt 1 1/2 to 2 cups white chocolate morsels by placing in a bowl over a small pot of simmering water and stirring until all the morsels are melted. Add 1/2 teaspoon of peppermint extract, mixing well, before dipping half of each cookie in the melted chocolate. Place on waxed paper and sprinkle with more crushed candy cane. Let white chocolate harden. This gives them the more festive look.

Merry Christmas!

The BEST Recipe for Busy Folks!

I love to bake - really - but I never seem to have the time to do a proper job.  Baking is an activity that requires me to slow down, wait for timers, and wait for cookies to cool so that they can be packed into those cute little baggies so that I can impress my friends with my domesticity.  I simply do not have that much time right now: It's finals week at my high school, it's the week of my youngest son's trip back home, and I'm tired from all of the rushing about.  My solution? A 'no-bake- cookie recipe, of course!  Here's one of the best, contributed by Helen Ostrosky:

Ingredients

2 cups sugar
4 tablespoons cocoa
1 stick butter
1/2 cup milk
1 cup peanut butter
1 tablespoon vanilla
3 cups oatmeal
Waxed paper


Directions

In a heavy saucepan bring to a boil, the sugar, cocoa, butter and milk. Let boil for 1 minute then add peanut butter, vanilla and oatmeal. On a sheet of waxed paper, drop mixture by the teaspoonfuls, until cooled and hardened.

Easy, tasty, and ready for giving before you know it!  Be sure to visit my blog again tomorrow for a few links to more fabulous cookie recipes.

Happy Holidays!

She's Baaack!

After a hiatus of nearly four months, I'm back and blogging!  Of course, the impetus was a chance to be a part of a virtual cookie blog with fellow writers, so I decided to put pen to paper - or fingers to keyboard - and reintroduce myself.

Since I last blogged, I've acquired a lovely American agent/publisher:  The great Gemma Halliday!  (Check out her website at www.gemmahalliday.com.)  She is a best-selling author in her own right and a lovely person as well.  Give her some love!

Back to cookies:  I've been thinking about different recipes that I relate to this wonderful time of the year.  I've come up with a few, including the infallible Tollhouse chocolate chip cookies, peppermint sugar cookies, and almond biscotti.  I'll need to do some thinking before I'm 'tagged' tomorrow.  Check back and see who I'll tag next:  It might just be one of your favorite authors!

Keep writing.

Delibrio Animosus

Latin is a wonderful language - dead, to be sure - so rich in nuance that I wish it were more accessible.  Take, for instance, this phrase:  Delibrio Animosus.  "Live with purpose" is one loose translation.  Be deliberate.  Have purpose.  Make choices that are well-thought out and that allow for growth in life.

Because I am a writer - and a teacher - I tend to do things deliberately because my time is at a premium.  Lately, deadlines and first drafts and workshops and life have been piling up and I've had to choose to let some things go.  This blog will be the among first; I love sharing my thoughts but I seriously am lacking the time to do it justice.  Therefore, this is farewell, at least for the time being.

Remember:  Keep reading, keep writing, and 'delibrio animosus'.

Sometimes Life Imitates Art

After my most recent foray into Ray Bradbury's 'Fahrenheit 451', I've decided the man was a prophet, pure and simple.  Even the densest reader can make the connection between Guy Montag's futuristic society and our own:  With ear buds (Bradbury called them 'sea shells' for the ears) and flat screened televisions (he called them 'parlor walls'), the man knew a dangerous trend when he saw one.  His message?  Don't abandon personal relationships for technology.

We took some of the grands to the local zoo not too long ago and witnessed a very disturbing sight: Two little boys, unhappily trailing their parents, both of whom were glued to the screens of cell phones.  I felt so badly for those boys.  Who will model interpersonal conversational skills for them?  Not their parents, that's for certain!

Before you shake your head and tell me that's just the way of today's society, I invite you to get comfy and read.  May I suggest 'Fahrenheit 451'?  Let's talk when you've finished it.