Hello world.
My newest young adult novel, Grey Lore, is out on Amazon and at Barnes and Noble!!!
You can find the hardback HERE
Or if you're a Barnes and Noble fan, find it HERE
To celebrate, Zinnie (one of the characters) and I have created a new recipe. Kip wanted to call it lots of, um, interesting things. Cream burrito, Fluffy snaps, and Molassy Fluff were among those monikers not to make the final cut. But you can call them whatever you want.
What's amazing about these cookies is... well, everything. They're super fancy and beautiful, but not outrageously difficult. They're perfect for Christmas (just like my book #shamelessmarketing). They are amazing fresh and that is how they're meant to be eaten--with a crispy outer cookie and that fluffy cream in the middle. But I left a few in the fridge and the cookie softened. Then it became something of an icebox cake--a perfect molasses-y, gingery icebox cake. And that little accident was just as delicious as the original cookie (maybe even more so). So pipe these fresh for a party. But don't be afraid to eat your leftovers either.
Now, a little about my book.
Grey Lore is really not
at all about baking. It’s about a girl
whose mother dies so she’s whisked away to live with an aunt she’s never met.
It’s about a boy who’s lived in fourteen states in the last three years. It’s
about wanting to fit in and not fitting in at all. It’s about trying to find
your place with people who care. Also, it’s about werewolves (because you were
getting that from the rest of my description, right?) It’s about a sleepy
little town buried in secrets, a town that starts to wake up as Ella and Sam
discover things about their pasts and themselves.
But
a lot of cookies get baked too. That’s because one of the main characters,
Zinnie, seems to subsist only on cookies and herbal tea. In my first book,
Grey Stone, she brought us these amazing Cinnamon Oatmeal Crispies.
In
the companion book, Grey Lore, Zinnie is back,
albeit somewhat changed. Her cookies are back too, although you can see they’ve
altered over the years as well.
Some
things grow even better with time.
Here’s
a scene where Zinnie and Sam meet and make cookies (of course).
She got up and hobbled
to what looked like a very old stove to retrieve the next batch of cookies.
“You may call me Zinnie,” she said, even though Sam hadn’t tried to call her
anything. “Now, what is your name?”
“Sam,” he said,
clearing a spot for the cookies she was carrying.
The cookies were thin
little things, like puddles on the pan. If Sam had pulled them out of the oven,
he would have thrown them all in the garbage.
But the old woman
didn’t. She handed Sam a dish towel, which he put on the table so Zinnie could
set down the hot, flat cookies.
“Help me out, dear,”
she said. Expertly, Zinnie took a cookie and, using the handle of a wooden
spoon, she rolled the flat cookie around the handle so that it formed into a
small cone while it was warm. She looked at Sam, waiting. “Give it a try,” she
said, handing him the spoon. “It’s not that hard once you get used to it. And
after we’re done, we’ll fill them with cream.”
Sam spent the next
thirty minutes rolling delicate cookies into even more delicate tubes and then
piping them full of whipped cream. By the time they were done, he was surprised
to look out the window and see blue sky surfacing.
Zinnie smiled. “Go
on, now, the rain has cleared. Every Friday I make cookies. Come whenever you
want.”
Sam stood slowly,
unsure of what to say.
“Go on,” she said. “I
bet if you leave now you’ll catch the rainbow.”
Sam left, and as soon
as he walked through the gates, there was a rainbow—doubled up—one stream of
colors sitting fat above another. Tornado country—it had its perks.
Molasses
Curls
(Zinnie and I would like to thank Pioneer Woman for her inspiration for these cookies, though neither of us is big on brandy, so it had to be adapted)
Cookies:
1
stick (1/2 C) butter
½
C molasses
¼
C sugar
¼
C brown sugar, packed
2
tsp vanilla
¾
C flour
1/8
tsp salt
¼
tsp ginger
Filling:
2
C heavy cream
1/3
C sugar
1
T vanilla
1
T cream cheese, softened to room temperature (this acts as a stabilizer)
Preheat
oven to 325 degrees.
Put
butter, molasses, brown sugar, and white sugar in a skillet. Allow butter to
melt, stirring constantly with heat proof whisk or a wooden spoon. Allow
mixture to bubble and cook for one minute.
Remove
from heat and add in the flour, ginger, and salt. Stir together quickly, then
stir in vanilla.
Drop
½ tablespoon FAR APART on a cookie sheet covered in parchment paper or a
silicone pad. You’ll only fit about 6 cookies on at a time. They will spread A LOT.
Bake
for 10 minutes. They should be bubbly and flat. Ours always ran together a
little no matter how hard we tried to get them not to.
Remove
from oven. Allow to cool three minutes. They should be pliable, but not
stretch when you pull them off the pan.
Drape
over cannoli mold (or the large metal handle of a whisk, which is what we used;
anything thick and round will do; we used the handle of an ice cream scoop as well). It will drape over the edges and you’ll kind
of form it into a cylinder shape. Set on parchment paper sealed side down and
allow to cool completely. You have to work kind of quickly so they don’t get
too brittle, but don’t panic. It’s not too hard.
Allow
to cool and set completely.
Meanwhile,
make whipped cream. Combine cream, sugar, vanilla, an softened cream cheese in
a large bowl. Whip until stiff peaks form.
After
all have cooled completely, use a frosting piping thing (or a Ziploc bag with a
small hole cut out of the corner like we did in our apparently insufficiently
stocked kitchen). Pipe the whipped cream into the cookies.
Trouble
Shooting:
-Once
we let our cookies cool too much and they were too brittle to form into cylinders.
Life went on; we ate them anyway.
-Since
you have to make these in batches, your batter will cool as you wait. That’s
not a problem. Just scoop it onto the cookie sheet when it’s its turn and it
will spread and bubble as it should.
-When we were folding these, they were very greasy and that worried me, but then the grease went away and wasn't a problem. So don't stress if they seem greasy.
-As I said above, if you want these to be as they are supposed to be (crispy cookies), you need to pipe them right before eating, but they are so divine soft that if they sit in the fridge, your life might just become a little bit fuller.
