Mystery author Molly MacRae, author of the award-winning Haunted Yarn Shop Mysteries, is debuting a new series--the Highland Bookshop Mysteries. Plaid
and Plagiarism, the first book in the series is now available for pre-order and will be released the end of November. Learn more about Molly and her books at her website. She also blogs at Killer Characters and Amy Alessio's blog.
Baking My
Way Through Books
I’ve been cooking for my family and cooking up stories
for a long time. These days I do both fairly well, but the chops haven’t always
been there (pun intended, although these days, chops are never there because I’ve
been cooking vegetarian for about a dozen years).
My first bake set, which I received before I could
read, came with a child-size rolling pin, little pie and cake tins and cookie
sheets, and small boxes with mixes for making tiny desserts (that didn’t go far
in a family of eight). This was pre-Easy Bake Oven days. My cakes, cookies, and
pies were baked in miniature splendor in the middle of my mother’s grown-up
oven.
When I learned to read and was given my first
cookbook, I thought I had it made. Except, when I decided to make sugar cookies
for a brother’s birthday, I discovered we had the wrong kind of flour in the
house. The cookbook called for Gold Medal and we had Pillsbury. My college-age
sister came to the rescue, explaining what brand names are. Applying that
knowledge, when the recipe called for confectioner’s sugar, I proudly guessed that
was another brand name and I could use granulated sugar. The resulting cookies
were awful little lumps, and discouraging, but not for long. I went right back
to my mixing bowl. And burned the next batch.
“Awful little lumps” might describe my early attempts
at stories, too, and some of them probably should have been burned. But we
learn by doing, don’t we? And by having relatives and friends who gamely taste
what we’ve baked, and who try to swallow the preposterous stories we concoct. The
good thing is that through all my experiments, I’ve only killed people in my
stories and no one at all with my cooking.
I love putting food in my stories. It gives me a
chance to trot out favorite recipes. Also, by showing how my characters
interact with food, I have another way of showing what they’re like without
giving a clothing, hairstyle, and personal philosophy tour of them. There’s
talk of food or kitchens or visits to favorite restaurants and cafés in most of
my stories and novels. (I’m very sorry that Mel’s on Main, in the Haunted Yarn
Shop Mysteries, doesn’t really exist, because I want to eat lunch there.)
But
now, for the first time, my main characters don’t just visit their favorite
establishment; they run it. In my new Highland Bookshop Mysteries, the titular
bookshop has an adjoining teashop and a B&B upstairs. This arrangement is
giving me a chance to think about and tinker with recipes for scones and
shortbread and the like. How’s that working out? So far, yum! Here’s a recipe
for Spicy Herb Cheese Bread for you to try. If you do, let me know what you
think.
Spicy Cheese Bread
Ingredients
1 cup unbleached,
all-purpose flour
3/4 cup
whole wheat flour
2-1/2 teaspoons
baking powder
3/4 teaspoon
salt
1/2 teaspoon
cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon
garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon
onion powder
heaping 1/2
teaspoon dried basil
heaping 1/2
teaspoon oregano
1-1/2 cups
shredded sharp Cheddar cheese
1 cup nonfat
dry milk (⅓ cup dry milk powder dissolved in 1 cup water)
1/4 cup
canola or olive oil
Preheat an
oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Lightly grease a 9x5 inch loaf pan and
set aside.
Mix flour,
baking powder, salt, cayenne pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, Italian
seasoning, and Cheddar cheese together in a large bowl. Whisk in half-and-half
cream, milk, and vegetable just until blended. Pour batter into the prepared
pan.
Bake in the
preheated oven until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, 35
to 40 minutes. Cool in the pans for 10 minutes before removing to cool completely
on a wire rack.
Plaid and Plagiarism
A murder in
a garden turns the four new owners of Yon Bonnie Books into amateur detectives,
in a captivating new cozy mystery novel from Molly MacRae.
Set in the
weeks before the annual Inversgail Literature Festival in Scotland, Plaid
and Plagiarism begins on a morning shortly after the four women take
possession of their bookshop in the Highlands. Unfortunately, the move to
Inversgail hasn’t gone as smoothly as they’d planned.
First, Janet
Marsh is told she’ll have to wait before moving into her new home. Then she
finds out the house has been vandalized. Again. The chief suspect? Una Graham,
an advice columnist for the local paper—who’s trying to make a name for herself
as an investigative reporter. When Janet and her business partners go looking
for clues at the house, they find a body—it’s Una, in the garden shed, with a
sickle in her neck. Janet never did like that garden shed.
Who wanted
Una dead? After discovering a cache of nasty letters, Janet and her friends are
beginning to wonder who didn’t, including Janet’s ex-husband. Surrounded
by a cast of characters with whom readers will fall in love, the new owners of
Yon Bonnie Books set out to solve Una’s murder so they can get back to
business.
A delightful and deadly new novel about recognizing one’s
strengths and weakness—while also trying to open a new book shop—Plaid and
Plagiarism is the start of an entertaining new Scottish mystery series.
Buy Links
3 comments:
Thanks, so much, foe having me here today, Anastasia!
Yummy! Thanks for the recipe.
You're welcome, Angela! It's easy, too, which is always a plus. Thanks for stopping by the blog.
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