It's
Cozy Food Friday!
That means it's time to share a recipe from
another great cozy mystery!
Today I'm featuring a recipe from
TEA WITH THE COZY CHICKS
by
The Cozy Chicks
Ellery Adams, Lorraine Bartlett, Duffy Brown, Kate Collins, Mary Kennedy,
Mary Jane Maffini, Maggie Sefton, and Leann Sweeney
The Cozy Chicks Kitchen Series Book 2
The Cozy Chicks realized that tea was such a perfect complement to cozy mysteries that we decided to write a book about it. Not only does Tea Time with the Cozy Chicks have delicious recipes, but it also includes themed tea menus, fascinating articles, fun facts, curious quotes, and helpful hints on how to host the most memorable tea parties ever! And for an extra treat, a few of us have included excerpts of our work as well! Read, cook, drink tea, savor, and most of all enjoy!
Available now in eBook
Coming soon in print
Dear
Friends and Cozy Mystery Readers,
Tea Time with The Cozy Chicks, is a fun book and an invitation
to pull up a chair and join some of our fictional characters for an afternoon
of sipping tea and sampling delicious treats.
As
readers of mystery novels, you already know what an important role food plays
in our books. Characters gather around the table to discuss cases. They drink a
staggering amount of caffeinated beverages and seem to be surrounded by an
endless array of mouth-watering sandwiches, cookies, pastries, and chocolate.
In short, these gals have a pretty good time, and we thought it would be fun to
spend a little time in their world.
The
result is Tea Time With The Cozy Chicks—filled
with the lore of tea in so many of its incarnations, and an assortment of tea parties
like how to have a Bon Voyage tea, bachelorette tea, proper Yorkshire Tea,
Chocolate Lovers tea etc all complete with menus and recipes included, and
hosted by our characters. You’ll find menu themes to cover life’s major celebrations
as well as those more intimate moments between close friends or romantic
partners.
If
you’re worried about setting the perfect tea table because you aren’t a
professional pastry chef, floral arranger, or decorator, never fear. Neither
are we. Hosting the perfect afternoon tea is about opening your home and your
heart. You take care of that part and we’ll help you with the rest. In fact
just in time for fall here is a mighty fine Southern recipe for…
Auntie KiKi’s Praline Pumpkin Pie
Yield:
Makes one 9-inch pie
Crust
1
unbaked 9” pie shell
1/3
cup ground pecans
1/3
cup brown sugar
2
tablespoons of butter, softened
Preheat the oven to 450°F (230°C, Gas Mark 8).
Combine the pecans, brown
sugar, and butter. Press into a pie shell. Bake for ten minutes.
Filling
3 eggs
beaten
1 cup
canned pumpkin
2/3
cup brown sugar, firmly packed
1
tablespoon of all-purpose flour
¼
teaspoon ground cloves
¼
teaspoon allspice
½
teaspoon salt
½
teaspoon ginger
½
teaspoon cinnamon
1 cup
evaporated milk
Mix all the filling ingredients together until
smooth and creamy.
Add the filling to the partially baked pie crust (you can
add a few of those pecans on top if you have a mind to) and bake at 325°F
(170°C, Gas Mark 3) for another 40 minutes.
And
you’ll find a ton of other recipes and an a list of tea themes like tea-paring,
tea stories, reading tea leaves and making your own tea blends. So are you a
tea person? Got a fav tea? Have you ever had a tea party…as an adult or kid…and
have you ever gone to high tea?
Share
some of you tea experiences and I’ll give away two adorable Brew Up A Mystery
With the Cozy Chicks teapot tape measures from the answers.
The Cozy Chicks…
Ellery Adams
Lorraine Bartlett
Duffy Brown
Kate Collins
Mary Kennedy
Mary Jane Maffini
Maggie Sefton
Leann Sweeney
I absolutely adore this book!
I've yet to do an official review of
TEA TIME WITH THE COZY CHICKS
(been sick for a bit), but I can tell you it is wonderful and you need to add it to your book list of must haves!
Remember to leave your comments for a chance to win one of the adorable tape measures!
Please keep reading and check out my
installments of
Book Beginnings on Fridays
and
The Friday 56
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
My Book Beginnings and Friday 56
for this week are also from
TEA TIME WITH THE COZY CHICKS
Share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading
My Book Beginnings...
“Tea to the English is really a picnic indoors.”
—Alice Walker, American author and activist
A BRIEF HISTORY OF
AFTERNOON TEA
by Mary Kennedy
If you find your energy flagging in late afternoon and you yearn for a hot drink and a tasty snack, you’re in good company. Anna, the 7th Duchess of Bedford, complained of having “that sinking feeling” every day and used to retire to her room with a pot of tea and a pastry or sandwich. As time went on, she began to invite her friends to join her and the custom of “afternoon tea” caught on. After all, in the early nineteenth century, most people only ate two meals a day, breakfast and dinner, so no wonder they had hunger
pangs in mid-afternoon. Hot tea and a selection of pastries and sandwiches provided a nice pick-me-up and would carry them over until dinner, which was usually served at 8pm.
Soon London hostesses followed her lead and drawing rooms were filled in late afternoon with women enjoying tea and sandwiches before heading out to Hyde Park fora promenade. It was the perfect opportunity to enjoy a quick snack with friends and catchup on the latest gossip before the traditional afternoon “walk.”
Queen Victoria took the tea ritual to a new level when she began offering “tea
receptions” to her guests. At these gatherings, usually held between 4 and 7 pm, as many as two hundred people would enjoy a delightful selection of finger sandwiches, scones, cakes and pastries. It was similar to our “open house” parties and guests were free to drop in as
they pleased during those hours.
Nowadays, afternoon tea is still served in hotels and restaurants in England and is popular with tourists and Brits alike.
Rules: *Grab a book, any book. *Turn to page 56 or 56% in your eReader (If you have to improvise, that's okay.) *Find any sentence, (or few, just don't spoil it) that grab you. *Post it.
My Friday 56...
Page 56 is in the middle of a recipe.
But there was this fun little item to share...
Shot Glass Appetizers
Ingredients
Ranch salad dressing
Celery sticks
Carrot sticks
Green olives
Cherry or grape tomatoes
Place the dressing in the bottom of a shot glass. Add a few celery and carrot sticks, and
one or two skewered olives, and cherry tomatoes on a colorful toothpick.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Ellery Adams is
the author of three New York Times bestselling series, including the
Book Retreat mysteries, the Books by
the Bay Mysteries, and the Charmed Pie Shoppe Mysteries. In addition to these, she also writes
three ebook series. These include The Supper Club mysteries, The Hope Street
mysteries, and the Molly Appleby Antiques and Collectibles mysteries. For more killer reads,
please visit
The
immensely popular Booktown Mystery series is what put Lorraine Bartlett's pen name Lorna Barrett on the New York Times
Bestseller list, but it's her talent—whether writing as Lorna, or L.L. Bartlett, or Lorraine
Bartlett—that keeps her in the hearts of her readers. This multi-published, Agatha-nominated
author pens the exciting Jeff Resnick Mysteries as
well as the acclaimed Victoria Square and Lotus Bay mystery series, and the
Tales of Telenia adventure-fantasy
series, and has many short stories and novellas to her
name(s). Visit her website:
While others
girls dreamed of dating guys like Brad Pitt, Duffy Brown longed to take
Sherlock Holmes to the prom. Today
she is a National Bestselling author and conjures up
who-done-it stories for Berkley
Prime Crime. She has two series, the Consignment Shop
Mysteries set in Savannah, and the
Cycle Path Mysteries on Mackinac Island. Visit her
website at
Kate Collins is
the New York Times bestselling author of the long-running Flower Shop
Mystery series. After publishing a
series of children’s stories, she sold her first historical
romantic suspense novel in 1995.
Seven romance novels later, she switched to her true
love, mysteries. Kate is very proud
that The Flower Shop Mystery series was named The
Best Continuing Cozy Mystery Series
for 2013 by popular online review site Escape with
Dollycas. When not growing roots at
her computer, Kate loves to garden. Other passions
include yoga, travel, decorating,
reading, spending time with family and friends, sampling great wines and fine dark chocolate,
and enjoying every moment of life. She lives in Northwest Indiana and Key West,
Florida. Read about Kate’s mysteries, historical romances, and children’s anthologies
at
Mary Kennedy is
a practicing psychologist and author of the Dream Club and Talk Radio
Mysteries, as well as the Hollywood
Nights young adult stories. She lives on the East
Coast with her husband and seven
neurotic cats. Both husband and cats have resisted her
attempts to psychoanalyze them, but
she remains optimistic. Visit her website at
Lapsed
librarian and former mystery bookstore owner, Mary Jane Maffini is the author of
thirteen mysteries in three series:
The Camilla MacPhee books, The Fiona Silk Capers and the Charlotte Adams mysteries. She’s won a
number of awards, including an Agatha, for short stories and the fifth Charlotte Adams
book, The Busy Woman’s Guide to Murder,
won the Romantic Times award for best amateur sleuth. As that shadowy figure
known as Victoria Abbott, she writes
the book collector mysteries with her daughter, the
artist and photographer, Victoria
Maffini. Find out more at
and
Maggie Sefton is
the author of the New York Times bestselling Knitting Mysteries. She
was born and raised in northern
Virginia and has worked in several careers over the
years, from a CPA to a real estate
broker in the Rocky Mountain West. However, none of
those endeavors could compare with
the satisfaction and challenge of creating worlds on
paper. She is the mother of four
grown daughters, currently scattered around the globe,
and resides in the Rocky Mountains
of Colorado. Visit her website at
Leann Sweeney is
the author of the Yellow Rose Mysteries, that feature Abby Rose and
Yellow Rose Investigations hoping to
reunite adoptees with their birth parents in Texas.
She also writes the Cats in Trouble
Mysteries, featuring quilt maker and cat-rescue sleuth
Jillian Hart, set in South Carolina.
She lives on a lake in South Carolina with her husband, her dog and two cats. To learn more
about Leann and her books, visit her website:
