Joanne Fluke Christmas Bundle: Sugar Cookie Murder, Candy Cane Murder, Plum Pudding Murder, & Gingerbread Cookie Murder (91 page)

This recipe is from Minnie Holtzmeier and she says it’s so easy, no one can possibly get it wrong. (She obviously forgot about Andrea!)

6 slices bacon, diced

¼ cup brown sugar

¹
/
₈
cup flour
(2 Tablespoons)

2 teaspoons salt

1 teaspoon pepper

¾ cup dry red wine

¼ cup butter, melted
(
½
stick,
¹
/
₈
pound)

1 head red cabbage, roughly shredded
(6 to 8 cups)

1 chopped onion

Dice the bacon, put it in a 2-cup microwave bowl and cook for 2 minutes on high, stirring midway through cooking time. Pour off the bacon fat and set the bacon pieces aside.

Grease
(or spray with non-stick cooking spray)
the inside of a 4-quart slow cooker.

Combine bacon pieces, brown sugar, flour, salt, pepper, red wine, and butter in the bottom of the crock-pot. Stir it all up.

Shred the red cabbage and chop the onion. Add them to the crock and toss them with the liquid. Cover and cook on LOW for 3 to 4 hours.

Either drain some of the juice before serving, thicken it with a bit of flour and water, or use a slotted serving spoon.

Irma York contributed this recipe. She got it from her friend, Ginnie Redalje.

2 pounds carrots, peeled, cooked and sliced***

10 ¾-ounce can condensed tomato soup
(Irma uses Campbell’s)

¾ cup white
(granulated)
sugar

¾ cup wine vinegar

¼ cup olive oil

2 teaspoons prepared mustard
(Irma uses Dijon)

2 cups diced celery

1 teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon pepper

*** or two 16-ounce packages frozen, sliced carrots prepared according to package directions

Combine all ingredients except carrots in a saucepan. Heat to boiling. Turn down heat and simmer for 10 minutes. Pour over the cooked carrots.

Serve hot, or cold. If you choose to serve them cold, these can be made in the morning and refrigerated until dinner.

If you’re going to bake this right away, preheat oven to 350 degrees F., rack in middle position.

This is Michelle’s recipe. It’s very good and I’m proud of her.

Assemble:

½ cup butter
(one stick)

2 Tablespoons grated onion
(you can also use dried and add them with the spinach)

²
/
₃
cup flour
(no need to sift)

2 cups Half & Half
(or cream, or milk)

2 cups grated Cheddar

2 cups cooked, well-drained chopped spinach

2 teaspoons Season Salt
(See Mrs. Knudson’s recipe on backmatter)

¼ teaspoon white pepper

6 eggs, separated

Melt butter in large saucepan. Throw in onions and sauté. Then dump in flour and stir around for at least two minutes.
(They say it should bubble, but mine never does.)
Add Half & Half and stir until it thickens into a thick sauce. Take off heat.

Stir in: spinach
(and the onions, if you used dried,)
cheese, salt & pepper. Beat egg yolks
(by hand is fine)
and add them.

At this point you can stick the whole thing in a bowl and refrigerate it until later. Overnight is okay, too. Keep egg whites refrigerated in a separate covered bowl.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F., while you wait for the concoction and the egg whites to warm to room
temperature. Beat egg whites until soft peaks form
(not hard peaks)
. Fold into spinach mixture. Dump in a greased oven dish.

Bake at 350 degrees F. for an hour
(mine took an extra 15 minutes)
until the top is nicely browned. This soufflé doesn’t fall when you take it out of the oven, so you can take it to a potluck dinner.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F., rack in the middle position

Lucille Rahn contributed this recipe. She got it from her friend Meryl in New York, who got it from her friend Hazel. Lucille asked Meryl to ask Hazel, but Hazel’s not sure where she got it in the first place.

3 cups cooked, mashed sweet potatoes or yams***

²
/
₃
cup white
(granulated)
sugar

¼ cup melted butter
(
½
stick,
¹
/
₈
pound)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

½ cup whipping cream

2 beaten eggs

1 cup brown sugar, firmly packed

1 cup chopped pecans

½ cup flour

½ cup softened butter
(1 stick,
¼
pound)

*** It’s better with freshly cooked sweet potatoes or yams, but you can also use well-drained canned sweet potatoes or yams. It’ll take one 29-ounce can and one 15-ounce can to make a scant 3 cups of mashed sweet potatoes. Two 29-ounce cans will yield almost 4 cups, but you can use them and things will still turn out just fine.

Spray a 9-inch by 13-inch baking dish with non-stick cooking spray.

In a large mixing bowl combine sweet potatoes, sugar, melted butter, vanilla, and cream. Mix in the beaten eggs and stir thoroughly. Pour the mixture into the baking pan you’ve prepared.

Rinse out the bowl you used and dry it with a paper towel. Combine the brown sugar, chopped pecans, and flour, mixing them up with a fork. Add the butter and mix with the fork until it’s crumbly.

You can also do this in the food processor with the steel blade and cold butter cut into 8 pieces. If you do this, add the chopped pecans by hand after everything else is processed.

Sprinkle the brown sugar mixture over the top of the sweet potato mixture. Bake, uncovered, for 30 to 45 minutes. If the rest of the dinner’s not ready, cover the pan with foil, turn off the oven, and leave the casserole inside. When the guests arrive, take out the casserole and serve.

A note from Hannah: When you page through the dessert section, you may wonder why you don’t see Shawna Lee Quinn’s Brownies, especially since you know that they were accepted by the Lake Eden cookbook committee.

To make a long story short, Lisa happened to be paging through her mother’s copy of “Joy of Cooking,” and she came across a brownie recipe that sounded wonderful. She started to make it and that’s when she realized that it was EXACTLY the same as the brownie recipe that Shawna Lee had submitted, right down to the amounts and the method and everything. The cookbook committee thought it was only right to attribute the previously printed source, “Joy of Cooking,” but Shawna Lee didn’t like that idea and she told us to just leave her brownies out if that’s the way we felt about it.

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F., rack in the middle position

This recipe is from my Grandma Ingrid. She used to make this cake every Christmas.

2 cups chopped pitted dates
(you can buy chopped dates, or sprinkle whole pitted dates with a bit of flour and then chop them in a food processor.)

3 cups boiling water

2 teaspoons baking soda

Pour the boiling water over the dates, add the soda
(it foams up a bit)
and set them aside to cool. While they’re cooling, cream the following ingredients together in a large mixing bowl:

1 cup
(2 sticks)
soft or melted butter

2 cups white
(granulated)
sugar

4 eggs

½ teaspoon salt

3 cups flour
(you don’t have to sift it)

Once the above are thoroughly mixed, add the cooled date mixture to your bowl and stir thoroughly.

Butter and flour a 9-inch by 13-inch rectangular cake pan.
(This cake rises about an inch and a half, so make sure the sides are tall enough.)
Pour the batter into the pan. Then sprinkle the following on the top, in this order, BEFORE baking:

12 oz. chocolate chips
(2 cups)

1 cup white
(granulated)
sugar

1 cup chopped nuts
(use any nuts you like—I prefer walnuts or pecans)

Bake at 325 degrees F. for 80 minutes. A cake tester or a long toothpick should come out clean one inch from the center when the cake is done.
(If you happen to stick the toothpick in and hit a chocolate chip, it’ll come out covered with melted chocolate—just wipe it off and stick it in again to test the actual cake batter.)

Let the cake cool in the pan on a wire rack. It can be served slightly warm, at room temperature, or chilled.

Preheat oven to 300 degrees F., rack in the middle position

These cakes pack a punch, especially if you have more than one piece.

If you’re planning to give them as Christmas gifts, bake them at least 3 weeks ahead of time, preferably right after Thanksgiving.

3 sticks melted butter
(1
½
cups,
¾
pound)

4 cups white
(granulated)
sugar

8 beaten eggs
(just whip them up with a fork)

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon ground nutmeg

½ teaspoon cardamom
(or 1 teaspoon cinnamon, but cardamom’s better)

½ cup unsweetened baking cocoa

½ cup molasses

1 cup milk
(or light cream)

4 ½ cups flour
(you don’t have to sift it)

1 cup brandy or rum***
(you’ll need an additional cup or two for the wrapping)

1 cup chopped dried apricots
(or any chopped dried fruit)

2 ½ cups chopped nuts

1 cup chocolate chips

1 ½ cups coconut flakes

cheesecloth to wrap cakes

***If you don’t want to use alcohol, use a cup of fruit juice instead of the brandy, do not wrap in cheesecloth, and either give the cakes as gifts within a day or two of baking, or wrap them tightly in foil and freeze them in freezer bags.

Spray 8 baby loaf pans with Pam or other non-stick cooking spray.
(My pans are stamped 5
¾
x 3 x 2
¹
/
₈
on the bottom.)
Line the pans with wax paper by cutting a strip to extend over the width of the pan, leaving “ears” on the side. You don’t have to worry about the ends of the pans—they’ll be okay unlined. Spray the whole thing again with Pam or other non-stick cooking spray, dump in some flour, and swish it around
(over the wastebasket or sink)
so that all the inner surfaces of the wax paper and the pan are dusted with flour. Knock excess flour out.

Melt butter in a large microwave-safe bowl. Add the sugar and mix it up. Allow it to cool slightly while you beat the eggs in another bowl.

When the butter and sugar mixture is no longer hot to the touch, mix in the beaten eggs. Then add baking powder, baking soda, salt, nutmeg, and cardamom, and cocoa, stirring after each addition. Mix in molasses and milk.

Add the flour cup by cup, stirring after each addition. Then add the cup of brandy and mix some more. Dump in the apricots, nuts, chocolate chips and coconut and stir until everything is thoroughly mixed.

Fill the baby loaf pans ¾ full with batter. This batch should make eight or nine mini-cakes.

Bake at 300 degrees F. for 1 hour. Remove from oven, place pans on rack and let them cool for 10 minutes. Gently lift out cakes, put them back on the rack, and allow them to cool for another 10 minutes. Peel off the wax paper and finish cooling.

Open a window near your work surface. This sounds silly, but you can get pretty light-headed doing the next step, as it involves some powerful fumes.

Pour a cup of brandy into a bowl. Fold the cheesecloth over so it’s double thick and cut lengths that are long enough to wrap around the cakes. Dip lengths of cheesecloth in the brandy, one at a time. Spread the cheesecloth out on a breadboard or on wax paper on your counter, wrap the cake in the cheesecloth, and place it in a gallon freezer bag.
(I put 2 cakes in each bag.)
Seal the bags and store them in the bottom of the refrigerator for at least 3 weeks, taking them out every week to add more brandy to the cheesecloth.
(I use a small bulb baster so I don’t have to unwrap them.)

If you give these cakes for Christmas, just take them out of the refrigerator, leave the cloth on, and wrap them in Saran Wrap. Then wrap them again in foil and stick a bow on top. These cakes are wonderful sliced and topped with ice cream!

NOTE: Cheesecloth has gotten really expensive. If you can’t find any on sale, I’ve substituted one thickness of unbleached muslin from the fabric store. Just wash the muslin in hot water with NO SOAP and dry it in your dryer. Cut it into lengths AFTER washing and drying (it’ll shrink in the washer and dryer,) and it’ll work almost as well as the cheesecloth.