A few things to make you think or smile.
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Image by Molly
MacRae |
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Image by
artsybee from Pixabay |
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Image by Molly
MacRae |
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Image by
NoName_13 from Pixabay |
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Image by
congerdesign from Pixabay |
Molly MacRae writes the Haunted Shell Shop
Mysteries, the Highland Bookshop Mysteries, and the award-winning, national
bestselling Haunted Yarn Shop Mysteries. Visit Molly on Facebook and Pinterest, connect with her on Instagram, Threads, and Bluesky.
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| Image by Molly MacRae |
What do you know about the word “meme?” I didn’t know anything until I looked it up. But I had to look it up in the online version of Meriam-Webster because the word doesn’t appear in either of the dictionaries I’ve been depending on (for more than fifty years).
British Scientist Richard Dawkins coined “meme” in 1976. He defined the word as “a unit of cultural transmission.” Cool. These days “meme” most often refers to the captioned graphics we see all over the internet. They run the gamut from hitting your funny bone to immediately hitting your trash can.
Fifteen or more years ago, I paired a few dozen photographs and drawings with quotations from some of my favorite writers and a few of my own thoughts. Here are six of them. Are they memes? I think maybe so. If they appeal to you, you're welcome to share them with proper credit.
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| Image by Mike Thompson |
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| Image by Molly MacRae |
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| Image by Molly MacRae |
Molly MacRae writes the Haunted Shell Shop
Mysteries, the Highland Bookshop Mysteries, and the award-winning, national
bestselling Haunted Yarn Shop Mysteries. Visit Molly on Facebook and Pinterest, connect with her on Instagram, Threads, and Bluesky.
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| Photo by Trevor 205 from Pixabay |
My husband
and I were introduced to Firecrackers at a 4th of July picnic in Abilene,
Texas. Abilene is hot and dry, and if you have cats they bring lizards and
horned toads in the house. Snakes, too, if they can wrestle them through the
door. The wind blows so much red dust you can taste it in the air—in your
living room. It’s the kind of place where you can really enjoy a drink like a
Firecracker.
We lived in
Abilene for four years and I’ve only made Firecrackers once since then. Without
the wind and the snakes and the dust they seem frivolous. Try them yourself,
though, because your mileage may vary.
The series is
about Maureen Nash, a shell scientist, who finds a new life running a shell
shop in Ocracoke. She also finds herself solving murders with the help of the
octogenarian Weaver siblings, Glady and Burt, and Emrys Lloyd, the ghost of a
Welsh pirate. In the new book, all shell breaks loose when the island’s
eccentric doctor claims he’s bought a haunted sword. It takes Maureen, Emrys,
Glady, Burt, a bulldog named Ben, and the ghost from the haunted sword
to set things right.
So here’s my
recipe for a spot of post-holiday relaxation. Stir up a pitcher of Firecrackers
and sit back with a copy of All Shell Breaks Loose. It’s available in
print, e-book, and audio editions and also at your local library.
Firecrackers
Ingredients
1 small can
frozen orange juice
1 small can
frozen lemonade
32 once jar
cranberry juice
4 shots rum
(more or less, depending on how piratical you’re feeling)
7-Up
(chilled)
Directions
Mix all the
ingredients, except the 7-Up together and freeze in plastic container you can
scoop from. The mixture will freeze into a slush.
For individual
drinks or a pitcher, mix equal parts slush and chilled 7-Up.
Molly MacRae writes the
Haunted Shell Shop Mysteries, the Highland Bookshop Mysteries, and the
award-winning, national bestselling Haunted Yarn Shop Mysteries. Visit Molly
on Facebook and Pinterest,
connect with her on Instagram, Threads,
and Bluesky.
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| Lake Sara in Effingham, Illinois |
We spent last week with our grandchildren (11, 9, and 3) at a lake. The week was full of sandcastles, canoeing, kayaking, fishing, reading, and playing games. Watching their amazing minds blossom as they soak up the world around them is a joy. It’s also a neat way to pick up tips for life in general and for writing. Here are a few I learned last week.
Weigh the ramifications: When you and the 3-year-old find a mouse in your canoe, just as you’re about to get in it, you have choices. One is to agree with the three-year-old that Mousie is sooooo cute and wants a canoe ride, too. Another is to help Mousie out of the canoe (without Mousie running up your arm) so she can go home to her cute, cute family in the woods.
Writers make choices affecting their characters’ lives every day. Choose wisely.
Reversals: When a child is clearing their place after a meal, happy and excited to get back outside, will the not-quite-empty milk cup in one hand stay upright or will it suddenly reverse, with the next three hops?
Reversals are good for ramping up tension in a story. Reversals in real
life are good for ramping up tension, too, but the issues they cause can sometimes be resolved with a paper towel
and a yell of “oopsie daisies!”
Persevere: If you don't catch a fish the first day, don’t give up. The next day you and your brother might catch fifteen each!
Success isn’t guaranteed for writers or for anyone attempting anything. If you
give up, though, success will be a whole lot harder.
Be
well-rounded: Realistic,
memorable characters need to be as well-rounded as ballerina bulldozer drivers.
Don’t panic: Until this week I have never, ever had a tick. Seen them on others? Sure. Dealt with them calmly? Yep. But when I woke up Thursday morning and found one on the back of my upper left arm—gah! Ick, ick, ick. But it was okay. I knew what to do: Find the helper. In this case the helper was my husband. He knows all about ticks.
If you’re going to be
out there with ticks, someone is bound to get one. Just remember, there are
people who can help you through fraught situations from ticks to computer
viruses.
Twists: Do you know any little kids who like to play with stick-on flowers, jewels, bugs, and butterflies? I do. How on earth did one of the glittery stick-on jewels from the kids’ art kit end up stuck to the back of my upper left arm?
A good twist ending is a jewel in a story and in life. Especially when it makes everyone laugh.
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| Not a tick |
My biggest
take away from our time at the lake is this: If you slip, trip, or let go of
the sandwich you’ve been waving like a flag and it sails off into the lake, dust
yourself off, keep going, and yell “oopsie daisies!”
Molly MacRae writes the Haunted Shell Shop
Mysteries, the Highland Bookshop Mysteries, and the award-winning, national
bestselling Haunted Yarn Shop Mysteries. Visit Molly on Facebook and Pinterest, connect with her on Instagram, Threads, and Bluesky.
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| Image by Janja from Pixabay |
You’re bound
to read more and better reports on this year’s Malice Domestic conference, but
here are some of my highlights. First, it was a big weekend for Writers Who
Kill. With twelve members in attendance, the blog was well-represented. With
three members as finalists for Agatha Awards, we were exceptionally
well-represented. I’m proud to be associated with Marilyn Levinson, a finalist for
Rufus and the Dark Side of Magic (Best Children’s/YA Mystery), Connie Berry
for Grave Deception (Best Contemporary Mystery), and Annette Dashofy for
Devil Comes Calling (Best Contemporary Mystery).
Best of all,
Annette was the Malice Domestic Guest of Honor. That is incredibly cool and
well-deserved. Hank Phillippi Ryan interviewed Annette in front of a packed
auditorium, and I enjoyed getting to know more about her. Well done, Annette!
Hank also
interviewed Lifetime Achievement Award winner Jaqueline Winspear. Winspear told
us about the “moment of creative grace” that gave her the inspiration for her long-running
Maisy Dobbs series. She’s a lovely, talented storyteller and author.
Malice-Go-Round,
a yearly event subtitled “speed dating with authors,” is a marathon of trying
to tell a table of eight readers about your latest book(s) in an interesting,
concise, cogent, entertaining way in two minutes or less—twenty times in a row
while nineteen other authors at nineteen other tables in the room are doing the
same thing. Hoo boy. But! You get to go around with a partner and breathe while
they do their two minutes before you both move on to the next table. The person
to team up with for this crazy dash is Writers Who Kill member Sarah E. Burr. Sarah
has enough bright energy to power both of you through to the finish. Thank you
for carrying me along, Sarah.
There are so
many moments that make Malice worthwhile to attend. I’ll leave you with one
more. Ellen Byron, the weekend’s Toastmaster, opened the conference with the
story of the warm welcome she received at her first Malice. She’d arrived
knowing no one, feeling like an interloper and an imposter, and she left
knowing she’d found friends. At the end of her story, Ellen asked first-time
attendees to raise their hands. Then she asked if any of them had come alone and
knew no one. One of those people sat directly in front of me. I quickly
consulted with my conference buddies and then invited the newcomer to have
dinner with us. She accepted with delight. We had a wonderful evening and in
one of those odd Malice quirks we kept running into each other for the rest of
the weekend. On Sunday we said goodbye knowing we’d found a new friend. For me,
that’s a lot of what Malice is about.
Here’s the
recipe for Flaming Bananas Foster that one of my sisters gave my husband and me
as a wedding present 48 years ago (along with other recipes for more sedate and
nutritious dishes). Why is this recipe appropriate for a post-Malice post? Because
after a full and exciting Malice weekend, some people might feel bananas, some
might need the rum and crème de banana liqueur, and some are on fire to get back
to the keyboard and write. Which kind of Malice attendee are you?
Bananas
Foster
Combine over
medium low heat, stirring:
1/4 cup margarine (or butter)
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 bananas, sliced
Cook until
bubbly
Raise
temperature to medium high and add:
1 tablespoon rum
1 tablespoon crème de banana liqueur
Have ready
two bowls of vanilla ice cream (Or chocolate? That’s worth trying!)
When mixture gets hot enough it will burst into flame. Keep stirring until the flames stop, then pour the mixture over the ice cream and enjoy!
Molly MacRae writes the Haunted Shell Shop
Mysteries, the Highland Bookshop Mysteries, and the award-winning, national
bestselling Haunted Yarn Shop Mysteries. Visit Molly on Facebook and Pinterest, connect with her on Instagram, Threads, and Bluesky.
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| photo by Joan Jo Castello from Pixabay |
“What piece of useless but fascinating research have you uncovered in the writing of a book?” That’s the question Connie Berry asked at the end of her entertaining piece, The Siren Song of Research, a couple of weeks ago on Writers Who Kill. It’s a great question, Connie. It immediately tipped me down a hole where I spent way too much time re-reading notes I’ve taken while stumbling around after rabbits in so many other holes.
One hole, delving
into the early 1500s, captivated me in particular. It’s probably a coincidence
that Connie’s hole also dated back to the early 1500s. But, considering the
Scottish setting of her A Dream of Death and my Highland Bookshop
Mysteries, it’s not surprising that both holes are in Scotland. Connie’s hole, with
that fraudulent adventurer John Damien, might have left Damien’s contemporaries
tempted to swear. Mine, with Archbishop of Glasgow Gavin Dunbar, is all about
swearing. British author George MacDonald Fraser admired the archbishop and
counted him “among the great cursers of all time.”
What drove His
Grace to swear? Border reivers. These mounted and heavily armed raiders terrorized
the Anglo-Scottish border from the 13th through the early 17th
century. Dunbar, in 1525, was fed up. The lawlessness had reached an
unprecedented state, and he felt called upon to issue a “Monition of Cursing”
against the rievers. He ordered it to be read from every pulpit and circulated
throughout the length and breadth of the borders.
Here, in the
original Scots, is a short sample (a mere 208 words) of Dunbar’s curse. The
entire invective goes on for 1,476 words.
“I CURSE thair heid and all the haris of thair heid; I CURSE thair face, thair ene, thair mouth, thair neise, thair toung, thair teith, thair crag, thair schulderis, thair breast, thait hert, thair stomok, thair bak, thair wame, thair armes, thair leggis, thair handis, thair feit, and everilk part of thair body, frae the top of thair heid to the soill of thair feit, befoir and behind, within and without. I CURSE thaim gangand, and I CURSE thaim rydand; I CURSE thaim standand, and I CURSE thaim sittand; I CURSE thaim etand, I CURSE thaim drinkand; I CURSE thaim walkand, I CURSE thaim sleepand; I CURSE thaim rysand, I CURSE thaim lyand; I CURSE thaim at hame, I CURSE thaim fra hame; I CURSE thaim within the house, I CURSE thaim without the house; I CURSE thair wiffis, thair banris, and thair servandis participand with thaim in thair deides.
I WARY thair
cornys, thair catales, thair woll, thair scheip, thair horse, thair swine,
thair geise, thair hennys, and all thair quyk gude. I WARY thair hallis, thair
chalmeris, thair kechingis, thair stabillis, thair barnys, thair biris, thair bernyardis,
thair cailyardis, thair plewis, thair harrowis, and the guids and houses that
is necessair for thair sustenatioun and weilfair.” [wary is another word for curse]
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| photo by Bernhard Stärk from Pixabay |
Sadly, I haven’t
found a place for this awesome growl of a curse in any of my stories yet,
though I live in hope. But I think I do finally have a spot for the
story of William Buckland (Oxford University’s first ‘professor’ of geology, 1784-1856),
his crocodile, and his wife’s pie crust. It should fit nicely into a book I’ll
be working on two books from now, and I can hardly wait.
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| picture by Bianca Van Dijk from Pixabay |
In this edition of Diet Killers: Recipes for Readers we’re celebrating Galit (G.P.) Gottlieb’s Whipped & Sipped Mysteries. Specifically, we’re celebrating the re-release of this tasty culinary series with all-new, eye-catching cover art.
To make this
happen, Galit places the café mere blocks from the lakeview building where
Alene lives with her three children and her father. Alene grew up in the
building, as did many of the other residents. They drop in on each other, drop
in at other local businesses, share secrets, spread rumors, and a few of them
apparently solve their problems with a spot of murder. It’s everything you
expect from a community where everyone knows everyone else’s business—or think
they do.
The books, in order, are: Battered, Smothered, and Charred. Each one includes delicious, healthy recipes and you’ll find even more recipes on Galit’s website. The latest Whipped & Sipped rumor is that she’s busy concocting book 4 in the series. For a fun window into Galit’s writing life, read a guest blog she wrote for Writers Who Kill in November 2025.
Galit puts a refreshing spin on the small-town culinary cozy. Her books look great with their fresh new covers. Now here’s her recipe for a classic cookie—refreshed and healthy!
Galit’s Tahini
Chocolate Chip Cookies – vegan and gluten-free
Ingredients
3 cups
old-fashioned gluten-free oats (While oats are naturally gluten free, did you
know that the package of oats in your cupboard might not be? Unless the oats
are certified to be gluten-free they might be cross-contaminated with gluten
from other grains processed in the same facility.)
2 tablespoons
flax meal
1 teaspoon
baking powder
1 teaspoon
ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon fine
sea salt
1/2 cup
packed brown sugar (light or dark)
1/2 cup olive
oil
1/4 cup plain
tahini
1/4 cup water
1 teaspoon
pure vanilla extract
1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
Directions
Preheat oven
to 350 F (180 C). Spray two cookie sheets or line them with parchment paper. In
a food processor, blend the oats, flax meal, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt
until uniform.
Add the brown
sugar, oil, tahini, water, and vanilla. Blend just until the mixture is smooth,
no more.
Transfer the
mixture to a bowl, stir in the chocolate chips, and refrigerate for about 15
minutes.
With wet
hands, form 24 balls. Place 12 balls on each cookie sheet. Bake each sheet until
cookies are beginning to turn golden, 13 to 15 minutes. Cool cookies on the
sheets for at least 10 minutes. From Galit: If you try to nab one before it’s
cool, it will fall apart!
Molly MacRae writes the Haunted Shell Shop
Mysteries, the Highland Bookshop Mysteries, and the award-winning, national
bestselling Haunted Yarn Shop Mysteries. Visit Molly on Facebook and Pinterest, connect with her on Instagram, Threads, and Bluesky.
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Welcome back to Diet Killers. This month is a special edition because it’s more about writing than reading. But without writers, there can’t be readers, so maybe I have everyone covered. My subject is something I like to do while writing and cooking—rustle around in my kitchen or computer files to see what I have on hand, shop for any of the essentials I don’t have, and along the way add a bit of this, a dab of that, and maybe a touch of something unexpected. In other words, I tinker.
The second
ingredient from my writing cupboard is information about mudlarking gleaned
from several sources over a number of years. Here’s an article on mudlarking from the London Museum. According to the
article: “In the 18th and 19th centuries, poor Londoners sold scraps they found
on the foreshore to earn any money they could. They became known as mudlarks.”
Today mudlarking is a hobby, one I could see enjoying. When we were kids, my
brothers and I found cool stuff washed up along our shore on Washington Island
in Lake Michigan. Each piece of flotsam and jetsam told its own story—or gave
us the chance to make up our own. Mudlarking appears like a dash of nutmeg in All
Shell Breaks Loose.
The third
ingredient in the cupboard is a snippet of conversation with a friend that I
wrote down ten or twelve years ago. My friend hadn’t been able to get her
doctor to take her hip pain seriously. Her husband told her that was because
she didn’t tell the doctor the right story well enough. She went back to the
doctor and told him, in graphic detail, how that hip felt and how that pain
affected and diminished every part of her life. Telling the right story well
enough is an important ingredient for solving the crime in All Shell Breaks
Loose. (I won’t leave you in suspense over the outcome of my friend’s revised
hip story—the doctor ordered an MRI, saw that her hip joint was in the process
of disintegrating, she got the replacement, and today she walks, hikes, and plays
with her grandchildren like a champ.)
While writing
All Shell Breaks Loose, I picked up a few more ingredients about the
history of Ocracoke Island where the book takes place. These tidbits add bright
notes and depth to the story. There’s Loop Shack Hill, a relic from World War
Two. There are also the Navy Beach Jumpers memorial and the Beach Jumpers’ motto:
“Turbo Vestri Hostilis.” Translated from the
Latin, the motto reads “a whirlwind to your enemy” and it's an excellent
example of serendipity. It fits into the story perfectly.
Chocolate chips and crystalized ginger fit into this month’s recipe perfectly, too. Bread pudding is a dish made for tinkering. If you don’t like chocolate, add raisins or another dried fruit. Toss in some nuts. Add a bit of pumpkin to the milk mixture. Make a boozy bourbon sauce to pour over your pudding. Or leave out the extras and stick to a great, tried-and-true comfort food dessert.
Bread
Pudding with Chocolate and Ginger
Ingredients:
1/2 cup
chocolate chips (semisweet or darker)
1/4 cup crystallized
ginger, chopped
4-6 slices
old bread or leftover rolls or buns. If using rolls or buns, slice them horizontally
into pieces 1/2 inch thick. You want enough bread to make 2 layers in an 8” x
8” x 2” baking dish. White bread is fine, whole wheat is great, rye a little
strange. If you don’t have old bread, lightly toast fresh bread.
2 cups milk
(dry nonfat, 2%, whole, or half-and-half – however indulgent you feel)
1/2 cup brown
sugar
1 teaspoon
vanilla extract
2 eggs
Butter –
enough to spread on one side of each piece of bread
Directions:
Preheat oven
to 350 F.
Butter one
side of each piece of bread. Put half the bread, buttered side up, in a greased
8” x 8” x 2” baking dish. Sprinkle half the chocolate chips over the bread. Top
with the rest of the bread, buttered side up. Sprinkle with the remaining
chocolate chips and the chopped ginger.
Heat the milk
and sugar until just steaming. Stir in the vanilla.
In a medium
bowl, beat the eggs, then gradually whisk them into the milk. Pour this mixture
over the bread.
Bake,
uncovered 30-40 minutes, or until the top is beginning to brown and a knife
inserted near the center comes out clean.
Serve warm,
cold, or reheated.
Molly MacRae writes the Haunted Shell Shop
Mysteries, the Highland Bookshop Mysteries, and the award-winning, national
bestselling Haunted Yarn Shop Mysteries. Visit Molly on Facebook and Pinterest, connect with her on Instagram, Threads, and Bluesky.
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| Three birds wishing you good writing luck in the new year. |
I touched on hope
in my November
post—my hope that I’d bounce back into writing shape from the doldrums I’d
sunk into after finishing the manuscript for All Shell Breaks Loose,
book three in my Haunted Shell Shop Mystery series. What helped was finally
realizing that, for heaven’s sake, I’d just spent months pulling a book out of
my head and putting it on paper and it was okay to feel flattened. Also, that I
didn’t need to feel guilty about spending time doing other things until I did
bounce back. (My late sister and I used to laugh at our apparent need to feel
guilty; that if we didn’t have an immediate source of guilt at hand, by golly we’d
go find one.)
What I spent
time on involves my affinity for flat rectangular things. Books are among them,
as well as paper and the painting, printing, and marbling one can do with
paper. I learned new skills over several months, and I recognized it as a good
sign when I started making notes for the next book in the Shell Shop series and
notes for a possible new series.
While jotting notes, and getting ready for the holidays, I turned some of my flat prints, and the paper I’d painted and marbled, into three-dimensional things.
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| Little bags and boxes made from paper I painted, printed, or marbled. |
Most are
still rectangular but some, through artful folding, gained curves. (The birds in the picture, up top, are each made from a strip of paper tied in a knot so they're slightly 3-D.) Then, one snowy
afternoon, my son and I took simple ingredients from the cupboard (almond
flour, almonds, dried apricots, dates, crystalized ginger, honey, sugar, and
food coloring) and made sugar plums. Sparkly, round sugar plums. They’re less
complicated to make than many Christmas cookies, absolutely delicious, and
magically impressive.
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| Sugar plums |
Stories and novels
are magically impressive, too, don’t you think? We take words—simple ingredients—and
manipulate them into tales. Tales about sympathetic, complicated characters.
Characters who inhabit believable settings that we create from the rocks,
rivers, roads, towns, etc., in our memories and imaginations. And if we’re
skillful in our writing, if we do what we should, then readers who open our flat,
rectangular books fall into completely three-dimensional experiences. What an
amazing phenomenon.
Now it’s time
for me to knuckle down, outline the new book, and start research for the hoped-for new series. What writing goals are you working on this year?
Molly MacRae writes the Haunted Shell Shop
Mysteries, the Highland Bookshop Mysteries, and the award-winning, national
bestselling Haunted Yarn Shop Mysteries. Visit Molly on Facebook and Pinterest, connect with her on Instagram, Threads, and Bluesky.
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| Nudibranch (otherwise known as a sea slug) photo by Arhnue Tan from Pixabay |
In February 2021, in my first post as a new member of Writers Who Kill, I wrote about the trouble I have when I start a new writing (or knitting) project. You can read that post, “Writing and Knitting: A Comparison from Psychedelic Batwing Sea Slugs to Pointed Sticks,” here. Now that I’ve been part of the blog for almost five years, it seems like a good time to give a progress report.
Have I overcome
the page paralysis problem in my writing? How about the knit-one, purl-two
paralysis of knitting? The simple answers are nope and nope. The page paralysis
is particularly bad after I finish a project, especially if that project is a
novel. I’m left feeling flattened and deflated and have trouble even imagining how
to start again.
It doesn’t
help to remind myself that my track record is good, that I can and will pick
myself back up. I’ve had eight books published since that 2021 post and another
is with the publisher and coming out in 2026. But, until I pick myself back up,
I’m flattened and feel even flatter because I feel flattened, and I end
up moping around and fussing at myself for slacking.
That is, I did
mope and fuss. Then I wised-up. Last year I started giving myself permission to
feel okay about being flattened—as long as I used that flat time to do other things.
Other things. So exciting!
What other things have I done? Well, as I said in that 2021 post, I’m good at creating flat rectangular things. Books are flat and rectangular and so are most of the few things I’ve ever knit. Working within that skill set, I’ve spread my creative wings and made the following flat rectangular things:
Paper!
Felt fabric!
Monotypes (one-of-a-kind prints)!
Molly MacRae writes the Haunted Shell Shop
Mysteries, the Highland Bookshop Mysteries, and the award-winning, national
bestselling Haunted Yarn Shop Mysteries. Visit Molly on Facebook and Pinterest, connect with her on Instagram, Threads, and Bluesky.
Welcome back to Diet Killers: Recipes for Readers. In this month’s
edition we’re straying a bit. Rather than talk about one or several mystery
writers, we’ll celebrate acclaimed narrator Barbara Rosenblat, a woman whom
AudioFile named a Golden Voice.
Rosenblat, also a stage and screen actor, has narrated more than 400 books in a wide range of genres, from classics such as Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, to the popular Stink series for children by Megan McDonald, to short story collections by Kurt Vonnegut and Eudora Welty.
Even better for mystery lovers, Rosenblat is known for her narrations of well-loved mystery series such as the Mrs. Pollifax books by Dorothy Gilman, Nevada Barr’s Anna Pigeon books, Elizabeth Peters‘s Amelia Peabody series, Vicky Bliss series, and Jacqueline Kirby series, and books by Lisa Scottoline, Linda Fairstein, Carol O’Connell, Diane Mott Davidson, and Amanda Quick, among others.
Using a virtuosic range of accents. Rosenblat voices believable females
and males from small children to crotchety,
aged seniors. Without being over-the-top, her characters are charming, smarmy, snide,
sniveling, pompous, calming, threatening, naïve, and everything between. Her voice
is warm, engaging and always welcome. I’d happily sit back with a piece of
Date, Walnut, Chocolate Chip Cake and listen to her read a dictionary. Or two
pieces if she chooses an unabridged dictionary.
Writers Who Kill member Grace Topping introduced me to Barbara Roseblat. Thank you, Grace. This cake, also rich, warm, and always welcome, is for Barbara and you.
Date, Walnut, Chocolate Chip Cake
A moist cake with plenty of dates and
a topping of chocolate chips, walnuts, and lots of crunchy white sugar—one
of the best pieces of cake you’ll ever have.
Ingredients for the cake
1 ¼ teaspoons baking soda (divided)
1 ½ cups boiling water
½ pound chopped pitted dates
¾ cup unsalted butter at room temperature
¾ cup plus 2 tablespoons granulated white
sugar
2 eggs
¾ teaspoon salt
1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
Ingredients for the topping
¼ cup plus 2
tablespoons granulated white sugar
¼ teaspoon
salt
¾ cup chopped
walnuts
8 ounces chocolate chips
Directions
Preheat oven to 350℉ and grease a 9”x13” pan.
In a medium bowl, pour boiling water
over dates and one teaspoon of the baking soda. Set aside to cool. (If you don’t
let it cool, the butter will melt when you add it. Then the batter will be runny
and the topping will sink out of sight. The cake will taste just fine but the crunchy
topping is a lovely feature.)
In a second medium bowl, mix flour,
salt, and remaining ¼ teaspoon of baking soda.
In a large bowl, cream the butter and
sugar. Add eggs one at a time, stirring until thoroughly mixed.
Alternately add flour and date
mixture to the butter mixture, stirring until just combined. Pour into prepared
pan, spreading batter evenly to the corners.
Sprinkle top with the walnuts, then
the chocolate chips. Stir the sugar and salt together and sprinkle over walnuts
and chocolate chips.
Bake about 30 minutes, or until a
toothpick comes out clean.
Let cool, cut, and serve. MMMmmmm.
The Boston Globe says Molly MacRae writes “murder with a dose
of drollery.” She writes the award-winning Haunted Yarn Shop Mysteries, the
Haunted Shell Shop Mysteries, and the Highland Bookshop Mysteries. MacRae’s
short stories have appeared in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine and
she’s a winner of the Sherwood Anderson Award for Short Fiction. She’s a member
of Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, and is a past president of the
Short Mystery Fiction Society.
