Bell Bridge Books

It’s the perfect time to try out some new dishes with the holidays just around the corner! Maybe you want to wow your coworkers at the annual office party, or you want to spice up Christmas dinner.

Whatever it is, we’ve got you covered!

Since it’s National Recipe Greetings for the Holidays week, we’re going to post a new recipe each day!

Have a recipe you just can’t keep to yourself? We’d love to hear from you! All recipes will be sent at the end of the week to our newsletter subscribers! Sign up here so you don’t miss out!

A delicious treat for the end of the week!

Rose’s Chocolate Meringue Pie

Chocolate Filling:
2 cups half-n-half
1 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup cornstarch
1/8 teaspoon salt
1-1/2 tablespoons Hershey’s Unsweetened Cocoa
3 egg yolks (beaten) [save the whites for meringue]
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 tablespoons butter
1 deep dish pie crust, baked according to directions

Instructions:

1. Heat 1-1/2 cups of the half-n-half, but don’t let it boil.
2. While heating half-n-half to a near simmer, mix together dry ingredients: cocoa, cornstarch and salt in a separate bowl.
3. Separate yolks from whites. Set aside whites in large metal or glass bowl to get to room temperature for making the meringue later.
4. Whisk the remaining 1/2 cup of half-n-half with the egg yolks. Whisk the mixed dry ingredients into the egg yolk and half-n-half mixture until smooth. Remove half-n-half from heat and gradually whisk into chocolate/yolk mixture.
5. Once everything is incorporated, place back on heat on medium-high and continue to whisk (so as not to burn the bottom) until the mixture boils. Remove from heat, add butter and vanilla and whisk. Cover with plastic wrap while cooling and make meringue.

Meringue:
3 egg whites
½ teaspoon cream of tartar
4 tablespoons powdered sugar
½ teaspoon vanilla

Instructions:

1. Beat egg whites until frothy. Add cream of tartar and continue beating until soft peaks form. Beat in powdered sugar until stiff peaks form. Add vanilla.
2. Pour chocolate mixture into cool pie crust. Spread meringue over chocolate filling, covering crust edge. Use spoon to create peaks.
3. Bake at 325° in preheated oven for 10-15 minutes, until peaks are browned. Cool for one hour, then refrigerate until serving.

For when the holidays become a little too stressful!

Santa Paws needs treats, too!

Today’s recipe is courtesy of Caro Lamont, former psychologist turned pet therapist, from The Pampered Pets Mysteries Series!

Caro’s PAWS Good Dog Treats

Ingredients:
1/ 2 cup of creamy unsalted peanut butter
1 cup oat flour
1 cup brown rice flour (Caro uses organic)
1 egg
1 tablespoon of honey
1/ 2 cup finely grated carrot (Dogbert loves carrots and so does Abbey)

1. Preheat your oven to 350 ° F.
2. In a big bowl, combine all the ingredients with just enough water to make it the consistency of cookie dough. Optional: You can also add cooked bacon, a bit of grated cheese, or other ingredients for flavor, but don’t add too much or it will mess with the consistency of the dough, and cause your treats to fall apart.
3. Once you’ve got your treat dough all stirred up, put it between pieces of parchment paper and roll it out to about ¼ inch thickness. Then cut the dough with a cookie cutter. You can use whatever shape strikes your fancy. Caro often uses dog bone shapes of different sizes.
4. Next, put them on a regular cookie sheet and bake them between fifteen and twenty minutes or until they’re Golden Retriever brown. Let them cool and then put them in an airtight container.
5. You can store your PAWS Good Dog treats for about a week (or you can freeze them for later use) but keep an eye on them.

There are no preservatives, so watch out for spoilage.
This makes a couple of dozen treats so there’s plenty to go around.
Please share them with your dog.

Enjoy!

You can find more recipes like this in Desperate Housedogs, book 1 in The Pampered Pets Mystery Series! Be sure to check back tomorrow for another dish!

Our first recipe is courtesy of  Bubba Rice, owner and head chef of Bubba Rice Lunch and Catering Diner, from The Mossy Creek Hometown Series.

Roasted Asparagus with Red Pepper & Scallions

Serves 4

Ingredients:
1 bundle of fresh asparagus
1 bundle of fresh scallions or green onions
1/2 cup of diced red bell pepper
3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
Salt & pepper to taste

1. Trim the asparagus and the scallions and dice the red pepper.
2. Place the asparagus spears in a baking dish. Add the scallions on top of the asparagus, then sprinkle the diced red pepper evenly over the top.
3. Drizzle the olive oil evenly over the dish. Add salt and pepper and place in a 375 degree oven for 15—20 minutes.

Enjoy!

You can find more recipes like this in A Day In Mossy Creek, book 5 in The Mossy Creek Hometown Series! Be sure to check back tomorrow for another dish!

Get into the holiday spirit with this yummy recipe

from Skye Taylor’s novel – TRUSTING WILL (The third

in The Camerons of Tide’s Way)

Blueberry & white chocolate Scones – from Sandy Cameron’s Kitchen

2 cups flour                              4 TBSP butter melted or veg oil

1 tsp salt                                   2 eggs

1/3 cup sugar                           ½ cup cream or milk

4 tsp baking powder                 1 cup frozen  blueberries (or raspberries​)

½ cup white chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350°

Stir all dry ingredients together, then add butter, eggs, cream or milk and mix well.

Fold in berries and chocolate bits.

Spoon onto baking sheet lined with foil and sprayed with Pam. Sprinkle tops with a little white sugar if desired. Bake for 20 minutes until bottoms of scones are lightly browned and top springs back with pressed with finger.  Eat still warm from oven or cool.

Go grab FALLING FOR ZOEY and LOVING  MEG today!

And make sure you grab TRUSTING WILL – coming soon! 

Caro’s PAWS Good Dog Treats

by Sparkle Abbey

Today is Dog Biscuit Day and we would like to give you a recipe so that you can make delicious dog treats for your furry friends! Just follow this easy recipe and you’ll have your pooches happy for days! 🙂

Ingredients:

1/2 Cup Creamy, Unsalted Peanut Butter

1 Cup Oat Flour

1 Cup Brown Rice Flour (Caro uses organic)

1 Egg

1 Tablespoon of Honey

1/2 Cup Finely Grated Carrot

(Dogbert loves carrots and so does Abbey!)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350°

Once you’ve got your treats dough all stirred up, put it between pieces of parchment paper and roll it out to about 1/4 inch thickness. Then cut the dough with a cookie cutter.

Next, put them on a regular cookie sheet and bake them between fifteen and twenty minutes or until they’re golden retriever brown.

Let them cool and then put them in an airtight container. You can store your PAWS Good Dog Treats for about a week (or you can freeze them for later use) but keep an eye on them. There are no preservatives.

Make sure you grab Sparkle Abbey’s fourth book in the

Pampered Pets Mystery Series – YIP/TUCK!

Just click the link!

Today is National Cherry Pie Day! So to celebrate, we are giving you a delicious cherry pie recipe to create and share with family and friends today!

Ingredients
4 cups fresh or frozen tart cherries
1 to 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
4 tablespoons cornstarch
1/8 tablespoon almond extract (optional)
Pie crust or pie dough recipe for 2 crust pie
1 1/2 tablespoons butter, to dot
1 tablespoon granulated sugar, to sprinkle

Cook cherries in medium saucepan over low heat and cover. Remove the pan after the cherries have lost much of their juice. Mix the sugar and cornstarch into a small bowl, then pour the sugar and cornstarch into the pan of heated cherries and mix. (You can also add in the almond extract now if you would like). After mixing, put the pan back onto the burner and continue cooking over low heat, stirring frequently until the mixture has thickened. Take off the burner and let the mixture cool. If your mix is too thin, you may add more cornstarch; however, if it is too thick, you should add a little water to thin it.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

Now time to prepare your crust. Cut your crust in half and flatten or roll each half into a piece that will be big enough to fit into a pan that is 8 to 9 inches. After preparing your crust,  pour your (now cool) cherry mixture inside of it. Use the butter to dot and to moisten the edge of your crust bottom. Now place your crust top on top and crimp your edges. Use a knife to make a cut into the middle of the top crust to let steam escape (and also for decoration ;)).  Sprinkle the pie with sugar and bake for 50 minutes before removing and letting it cool.

I recommend setting on top of a windowsill like they do in movies. Haha. 🙂

Also in honor of National Cherry Pie Day, we are putting Trish Jensen’s STUCK WITH YOU on promotion for only $0.99!! Just click the link and grab it now!

And while you’re there, make sure you grab the rest of Trish Jensen’s fabulous romances! 

And coming soon….

“He’d spent several hours thinking about what had happened between them. It had come as something of a surprise to discover that he really wanted to marry her. They had nothing in common except a firm wish to be in charge on both their parts. But he found himself remembering her loyalty, her honesty as she asked to touch him, and her great passion. What more could a man ask for in the woman he wanted to spend his life with?

He could see them together, not in his New York hotel, but in the wilderness, in a small rough cabin beside a roaring winter fire, making love. Alaska and Portia both called to him in a way he’d not felt in a very long time. Exciting, passionate, each with great promise to one who understood what was being offered.”

-From SWEETWATER by Sandra Chastain, available in most ebook platforms

Today is National Baked Alaska Day!

Ingredients:

Vegetable oil (for brushing)

1 pint raspberry sorbet (softened)

1 pint vanilla ice cream (softened)

1 quart chocolate ice cream (softened)

1 c crushed Oreos

1 loaf pound cake

1 c egg whites (about 6 at room temperature)

1 t cream of tartar

1 c sugar

Brush large metal bowl with oil and line with plastic wrap. Fill the bowl with random scoops of the raspberry sorbet, vanilla ice cream, and half of the chocolate ice cream. Press firmly to remove spaces between scoops. Sprinkle with crushed Oreos. Spread the remaining chocolate ice cream over the crumbs.

Slice the pound cake into ½ inch strips. Cover the chocolate ice cream base with pound cake (may have cake left over. Cover with plastic wrap and freeze for 3 hours (2 days max).

Once frozen, whip the cream of tartar into the egg whites for 2 minutes. Slowly beat in the sugar and continue to whip until the meringue forms stiff peaks.

Remove the frozen cake/ice cream mound from the bowl by pulling on the plastic wrap and invert  it onto parchment paper. Cover the mound with meringue (making sides of dome thicker). Freeze for 2 hours.

Turn oven to Broil. Bake cake for 3-4 minutes until meringue browns. Let soften for 5 minutes and serve immediately.

130 DAYS UNTIL CHRISTMAS

by Danielle Childers

Much to the chagrin of my husband who does not in any form or fashion enjoy watching Christmas movies every month and every season, I love Christmas.  I saved this post for August, because I really wanted to emphasize just how much I’m obsessed with the holiday cheer. It’s not December, and it’s not Christmas in July. I just really love Christmas. Ask my colleagues. Christmas is my only Pandora station.

So, I’m currently reading THE FAT MAN: A TALE OF NORTH POLE NOIR by Ken Harmon featuring Gumdrop Coal. He’s an angry elf.  It’s so satirical and

still kind all at the same time. It’s brilliant! There’s a mistletoe forest and an eye shooting BB gun. I could die of Christmas overload. I love it. It reminds me of a holiday version of John Hartness’s THE BLACK KNIGHT CHRONICLES. Comparable snark minus the vampires!

So, during my summer time winterfest and during the 198th time I’ve watched The Santa Clause starring Tim Allen (one of the best Christmas movies ever and in my top 5 favorite movies of all time) I happened to notice that there are . . . wait for it . . . RECIPES in the bonus material of the dvd!  It was foodie contemporary before its time!!!  One of the recipes was for Wolfgang Puck’s hot chocolate, which is, according to Judy the elf, not too hot, has extra chocolate, and shaken, not stirred.  I had to try it, but this launched a conversation in the work place about the best hot chocolate. Had I not seen the pinterest recipe with condensed milk? Thus, the hot chocolate war began.

We tried condensed milk, ghiradelli bitter chocolate, and bourbon vanilla from Madagascar. Gross. Way too sweet (and that may be the first time I’ve ever uttered those words). No, thank you.

So, to my delight, The Santa Clause won yet another competition of awesomeness!

The best hot chocolate:

2 oz semisweet chocolate

1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

pinch of salt

2 c heavy cream

2 c milk (I used 2%)

1/2 c sugar

3/4 t vanilla

Melt the chocolate into cream, stirring constantly over medium heat.  Whisk in cocoa, sugar, salt, and vanilla over low heat. Add milk.  Enjoy!

SUMMER PICNIC

by Danielle Childers

It’s August in Memphis, but it only feels a little like summer. We’ve had so much rain, that the temps haven’t really conquered very much of the 90s on the thermometer.  Winter’s my favorite season, so I’m not sad one bit, but there’s still room in my heart for summer.

I love summer, because I love the 4^th of July (I adore holidays). And I love the beach and lightning bugs and watching my bulldog play in his swimming pool. I love fresh cut grass and my fig tree.  But I really, REALLY love picnics. I love sitting on a quilt, eating watermelon, and enjoying family and friends.  In Memphis, we have the largest urban park in the country. Bigger than central park! Complete with paddle boats, rolling hills, a huge greenway, ponds, and, wait for it, buffalo. It is the best place for a picnic! So, today, on Foodie Wednesday, we’re making a super-fun picnic dessert! And it’s vintage . . . be still my heart! (Well, from 1969 . . . so, retro?)

Strawberry Jello Poke Cake!

1 boxed cake mix

1 3oz box of strawberry jello

1 tub of cool whip.

Make the cake per directions on the box. Boil 2 c of water. Dissolve jello in water. Poke holes in the finished cake. Pour jello on top. Let cool and spread with cool whip. Chill in the refrigerator for 2 hours or more. Enjoy!

And speaking of picnics, one of my all-time favorite picnic scenes is in Trish Jensen’s FOR A GOOD TIME CALL. Check it out!!!

SUMMER READING

by Danielle Childers

Okay, it’s almost August (which means there are only 148 days until Christmas! Get excited about your life!) And I’m just now thinking about summer reads.  Traditionally they’ve been chick lit or beach themed (SERIOUSLY check out the Tiki Goddess Mystery Series by Jill Marie Landis).  But, I define a summer read as a book that’s worth reading even though you have a beach and an endless blue sky and the sound of waves competing with it. With this in mind, I stumbled upon WHERE’D YOU GO BERNADETTE.

Now, it’s been popular on the lists and has this awesome art deco cover, and I’m thinking, “Wow, Bernadette looks cool!”  The only problem is that I accidentally read the entire book before I could find a beach. Sad day.  It started with a sample.  Book samples are gateway drugs.

This book is quirky. SO quirky, you’ll expect it to be magical, but it’s just so simple and so chocked full of the most amazing visual metaphors, it gets away with being . . . simply quirky.  Go read it and tell me how you would describe it!

WHERE’D YOU GO BERNADETTE is written in a smattering of correspondence, emails, newsletters, notes among gossipy friends, and billboards of all things. There is some narration by the only daughter of the star of the show, Bernadette, so don’t worry that you’ll be lost.

Now, I have to tell you about the blackberries. Bernadette, a brilliant but reclusive architect (even when you see the unreliability of other characters – and I love an unreliable tale) who walks around knitting from a backpack, managing to act refined and educated while simultaneously being treated as a pariah, has blackberries. Not just a plant or two, but so many blackberries that they prevent landslides and fill the basement of the house she lives in as they’ve grown up through the dirt to take over.  It’s cool, though. Both the overtaking of the house, which isn’t really a house, and the blackberries represent Bernadette’s talent and shame and … well, life just pushed her down a little. So she disappears to reclaim herself from the universe.

The ending is inspired.  The words will fly by.  You will devour this book.

In Bernadette’s honor, I’ve homemade blackberry butter today, because when life hands you blackberries, you just have to churn some butter.

This recipe is easy-peasy.  You’ll need 1 qt of heavy cream, 3 T of powdered sugar, 3 T of blackberry jam, and a pinch of salt. (Side note: Dear Grandma, A pinch is not a measurement.)

Just whip the cream (a stand mixer or processor is best) until it becomes whipped cream, but DON’T stop!  It will become butter.  The butter will eventually separate from the buttermilk (save it if you have cornbread on hand).  Here’s a fabulous tutorial. The whole process is less than 15 minutes.  Then mix in the jam, sugar, and salt, and voila! Blackberry butter! Serve on soft, warm bread.

Enjoy, but tell me, what’s your favorite kind of summer read?