#COOKING WITH CLORIS--GUEST AUTHOR KATHY KREVAT

Kathy Krevat is the author of the Gourmet Cat Mystery series and the nationally bestselling Chocolate Covered Mystery series under the name Kathy Aarons. Learn more about Kathy and her books at her website.

Easy Quiche for Holiday Visitors

The holiday season in Southern California means that we can usually entice some friends and relatives to visit and enjoy the sunshine.

Even without visitors, the holidays mean lots of get-togethers. One of my favorite recipes for low key dinners and potlucks is the easy quiche recipe below. We’ll be serving them at our annual New Year’s Day Brunch. We make it more of an open house, so that people can stop in once they’ve recovered from their New Year’s Eve parties.

This recipe can be modified for more or less vegetables, additions of sausage or other meats, low calorie cheese, and even low carb. The one in the photo is crustless!

For this New Year’s Day, I’m going to make this recipe – some with and some without crusts – and one with imitation crab meat and grated Swiss cheese instead of the broccoli and cheddar. It goes very well with mimosas!

And as a side benefit, leftover quiche tastes even better the next day!

Ingredients:

Frozen deep-dish pie crust

4 eggs

1 c. milk

1 T. flour

½ lb. turkey bacon

½ med. onion, chopped

½ lb. cheddar (or other) cheese

½ cup broccoli

Preheat oven to 350^oF. 

Thaw pie shell, prick bottom with fork and cook at 350 degrees until slightly golden brown, approximately 7 minutes. 

Cook bacon until crisp and break into little pieces. 

Sauté onion in margarine or butter until soft. 

Steam broccoli as desired. 

Mix eggs, milk and flour well. 

Place onions, bacon and vegetables in bottom of pie shell. Add half the cheese. Pour in egg mixture until almost full. Place remaining cheese on top. 

Cook on a cookie sheet for 35 minutes. Check to see if done by inserting fork in center. If it comes out dry, the quiche is done. If not, keep checking every 15 minutes until done.

The Trouble With Murder

Single mom and gourmet cat food entrepreneur Colbie Summers thought she’d escaped her tiny California hometown forever. But when her father needs her, she packs up her adolescent son, their finicky feline, Trouble, and her budding business. She knows change is tough—but she doesn’t expect it to be murder . . .

Between dealing with her newly rural life, her grumpy, sports-obsessed father, and preparing to showcase her products in the local Sunnyside Power Mom’s trade show, Colbie has more on her plate than she bargained for. Luckily, she has her official taste-tester, Trouble, by her side to vet her 

Meowio Batali Gourmet Cat Food line. Things look promising—until one of the Power Moms is found dead—with an engraved Meowio specialty knife buried in her chest. 

As the prime suspect, Colbie needs paws on the ground to smoke out who had means, motive, and opportunity among the networking mothers—including a husband-stealing Sofia Vergara lookalike. And the cat’s still not out of the bag when a second violent death rocks the bucolic community. Trouble may have nine lives, but Colbie’s only got one to clear her name and stop a killer from pulling off the purr-fect crime . . .

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#COOKING WITH CLORIS--GUEST AUTHOR KATHY AARONS AND IRISH CREAM #GANACHE

Kathy Aarons is the author of the nationally bestselling Chocolate Covered Mystery series. Research for the series was such a hardship: sampling chocolate, making chocolate, sampling more chocolate, and hanging out in bookstores. Learn more about Kathy and her books at her website. 

Being a Chocolatier is Not for Wimps

When I started writing the Chocolate Covered Mystery series, I had no idea how to make chocolates. Luckily for me (and the readers), I didn’t have to create the recipes myself. I was able to use my local chocolatier’s recipes. Isabella Knack, owner of Dallmann’s Fine Chocolates, was a wonderful resource not just for recipes but also for insight into the life of a chocolatier.

All of what she taught me went into the character of Michelle Serrano. The long hours of creating products and running a small business with all the complications of suppliers, employees and customers. The crafting of new recipes and taste-testing on (what had to be) enthusiastic volunteers. The balance of work, family and life. The challenge and joy of matching customers to their favorite truffles.

Of course, I had to test all of Isabella’s recipes (a nice perk!) to ensure that they worked.

Over the course of three books, I’ve become a little better at making truffles, even though they’ll never be the pieces of art that Isabella creates. It’s easy to understand why someone would make this a career – just the scent of melting chocolate alone is worth all of the work.

And how fun it must be to give other people so much happiness in one little bite!

The following recipe is in Behind Chocolate Bars, the third book in the Chocolate Covered Mystery series. It was one of the most delicious recipes I’ve ever tried – simpler than it looks and totally amazing to taste.

(I visited Isabella in her kitchen and the attached photo is the finished product of this recipe, although she didn’t use premade molds. Those fancy truffles are the result of air-brushed melted chocolate.)

Irish Cream Ganache (yields 100 pieces)

Ingredients:

3/4 cup Heavy cream

1/4 cup Glucose syrup

1-3/4 cups Dark chocolate

4 tsp. Butter

2 T Irish Cream

Premade chocolate molds – available at candy shops and online

Combine the heavy cream and glucose syrup in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Pour the hot cream mixture over the chocolate and let sit for 2 minutes.

Using a spatula, stir the mixture in small circles of the bowl until it emulsifies.

Stir the soft butter into the ganache until it’s incorporated. Add the liqueur, stirring until the mixture is homogeneous.

Pipe into premade chocolate molds. Chill

Behind Chocolate Bars

Double, Double-boil, and Trouble…

Best friends and business partners Michelle and Erica have a monstrous to-do list as they prepare for the annual West Riverdale Halloween Festival. Their shop, Chocolates and Chapters, will have a booth at the event, where Michelle will serve spooky delights while Erica displays an assortment of spine-chilling books. Thank goodness the teenagers from Erica’s comic-book club are chipping in to help. But one of their volunteers winds up in trouble after a woman’s body is found in an abandoned house—with the teen’s superhero key ring close by.

The teen swears he didn’t do it, but he’s obviously hiding something—leaving Michelle and Erica with a witch’s cauldron of questions. Soon they discover that the dead woman was tricking a whole bunch of people out of more than just treats. Now these two friends must go door-to-door if they hope to unmask a killer…

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#COOKING WITH CLORIS--GUEST AUTHOR KATHY AARONS

Cozy mystery author Kathy Aarons writes the Chocolate Covered Mystery series. She claims research for the series is hardship: all that sampling of chocolate, making chocolate, sampling more chocolate, and hanging out in bookstores. What a tough life! Learn more about Kathy and her books at her website.

One of my favorite parts of writing is the research. For Death is Like a Box of Chocolates, I learned how to make truffles, what is involved in running a chocolate shop and bookstore, and the special qualities of a small town in western Maryland.

The plot of Truffled to Death was inspired by a chocolate history exhibit in the San Diego Museum of Man where I saw a centuries-old bowl that the Maya had used to hold chocolate. I envisioned the main character, Michelle Serrano, being entranced by the bowl and the plot developed from there. I had a wonderful time exploring not just Maya art and history, but also international art trafficking. Could international art traffickers actually be in sweet little West Riverdale, Maryland? Only if there was something worth stealing. And possibly murdering for.

In addition to buying too many reference books, I had a wonderful resource in Dr. Joe Ball, Professor-Emeritus, San Diego State University. He enthusiastically answered my questions, always getting back to me the same day with pages of information. I could even email him plot questions, and with his knowledge of the international art trafficking world, academics and the museum business, he would suggest ways to make it all happen.

In fact, I’m still amazed (and grateful!) at how much people want to help writers find the right information! Besides my chocolate and bookseller buddies, I have my go-to friends who provided information on medicine, law, psychiatry, marriage and family counseling, special event planning, theater management, academia, and more.

Of course, once the research was done, I had to figure out the most interesting parts to put on the page!

Bananas Foster

Recipe by Isabella Knack, owner of Dallmann Fine Chocolates, San Diego, CA

(yields about 40 pieces)

Ingredients:

4 tablespoons butter

¼ cup brown sugar

1 tablespoon rum (optional, can substitute vanilla extract or rum flavoring)

½ teaspoon cinnamon

Dash nutmeg

1 ripe banana

¾ cup heavy cream

8 ounce semisweet chocolate, chopped

½ cup cocoa powder, for dusting

Place the chopped chocolate in a medium bowl and set aside for now. Melt 2 tablespoons of the butter in a 7-inch skillet over medium heat. Once melted, add the brown sugar and stir it until the brown sugar melts as well.

Add the rum, cinnamon and nutmeg, and stir until the mixture is bubbling and fragrant.

Place the banana slices in the middle of the sugar, and cook them for one minute on each side—no longer, or they will overcook and become mushy.

Once cooked on both sides, remove the banana slices from the saucepan. Add the heavy cream to the saucepan—the cream will first cause the sugar to seize and you might have bits of hardened sugar floating in your cream.

Whisk the cream and sugar together over the heat until the sugar dissolves, the mixture is smooth and the cream is almost boiling.

Pour the hot cream over the chopped chocolate in the bowl and let it sit and soften the chocolate for 1 minute. Once softened, whisk the cream and chocolate together until it is smooth and no bits of chocolate remain.

Add the remaining 2 tablespoons of butter and whisk it into the chocolate.

Chop the cooked banana slices into small pieces and stir them into the melted chocolate as well.

Let firm up overnight.

Place the cocoa powder in a bowl and dust your palms with cocoa. Use a candy scoop or a small teaspoon to form 1-inch balls of ganache. Roll them between your hands to get them round. If they start sticking, dust the balls with a little cocoa powder. Repeat until all of the truffles have been formed.

Truffled to Death

Hoping to sweeten sales for their shop, Chocolates and Chapters, Michelle and Erica host a reception highlighting a new museum display of ancient Mayan pottery curated by Erica’s former mentor, Professor Addison Moody. The evening has a few hiccups, but the ladies soon smooth things over with ample servings of wine and chocolate.

Yet with the sweet comes the bitter. The very next day, the antiquities from the reception are discovered missing. The professor accuses Erica of having sticky fingers, claiming she wants revenge on him. And she’s only in more trouble after he’s found stabbed to death with one of the artifacts. Now Michelle must help Erica track down the real killer before someone else finds themselves in less than mint condition…

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BOOK CLUB FRIDAY--GUEST AUTHOR KATHY AARONS

Cozy mystery author Kathy Aarons admits research for her Chocolate Covered Mystery series was a hardship: sampling chocolate, making chocolate, sampling more chocolate, and hanging out in bookstores. Today she takes time out from all that research to sit down for an interview. Learn more about Kathy and her books at her website. 

When did you realize you wanted to write novels?

When my youngest was in preschool five mornings a week. She’s now off to college!

How long did it take you to realize your dream of publication?

Since I was writing as a hobby, it took quite a while. Once my oldest went off to college, I decided to take getting published more seriously, and I signed with an agent in under a year. A few months later, I was offered a contract for the Chocolate Covered mystery series.

Are you traditionally published, indie published, or a hybrid author?

Traditionally

Where do you write?

Through the years, I wrote using paper, an Alphasmart and a laptop outside a lot of theater rehearsals as well as swim, soccer and basketball practices. Now I have a very messy office of my own.

Is silence golden, or do you need music to write by? What kind?

I use a mixture, but find my writing “flow” works better with instrumental music, usually movie soundtracks, that fit what I’m working on. For example, when I’m writing “funny”, I always have the soundtrack from Benny and Joon in the background. When I need energy, I listen to Broadway soundtracks. Right now, I’m addicted to Once: A New Musical.

Real settings or fictional towns?

Fictional – I like the ability to create a setting that best fits the story.

What’s the quirkiest quirk one of your characters has?

There are too many to choose from! Henna is a widow who creates large butterflies made of wood, wire and sheer material. She paints them with elaborate designs using colors not found in nature.

What’s your quirkiest quirk?

 You’ll have to ask my husband that one. J

If you could have written any book (one that someone else has already written,) which one would it be? Why?

I’d love to say Harry Potter, but I’ll go with my favorite book of all time, Belong to Me by Marisa de los Thomas. I love her characters and her elegant but accessible prose.

What’s your biggest pet peeve?

Slow drivers in the fast lane. I live in southern California, which explains a lot.

Ocean or mountains?

Ocean! I love walking on the beach a few times a week.

City girl/guy or country girl/guy?

Suburbs for me. I’m too old for city life but the country is too empty – if you were in trouble, no one could hear you scream!

What’s on the horizon for you?

Besides adjusting to an empty nest, I’ll be getting back the edits for Truffled to Death, the second book in the series, soon and I’m already writing the third. I’m also working on another series idea.

Anything else you’d like to tell us about yourself and/or your books?

I am passionate about expanding creative writing education for youth and believe that the arts are an important part of life at every age.  I volunteer for the Canyon Crest Academy Writing Conference, the only free high school writing conference in the country. One of the speakers noted that because of the inspirational and educational workshops it provides, San Diego is going to have more than its fair share of accomplished authors and writing professionals in the future. I also recently joined the board for Playwrights Project http://playwrightsproject.org/ which expands playwriting education and opportunities for youth and adults.

Death is Like a Box of Chocolates

Whether it’s to satisfy a craving for chocolate or pick up the hottest new bestseller, the locals in charming West Riverdale, Maryland, are heading to Chocolates and Chapters, where everything sold is to die for…

Best friends Michelle Serrano and Erica Russell are celebrating the sweet rewards of their combined bookstore and chocolate shop by hosting the Great Fudge Cook-off during the town’s Memorial Day weekend Arts Festival. But success turns bittersweet when Main Street’s portrait photographer is found dead in their store, poisoned by Michelle’s signature truffles.

As suspicion mounts against Michelle, her sales begin to crumble and her career seems whipped. With Erica by her side, Michelle must pick through an assortment of suspects before the future of their dream store melts away…

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