by Avery Aames
1 tablespoon espresso coffee
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Whipped cream and shaved chocolate for topping (optional)
Melt the butter in a heatproof bowl or double boiler over a saucepan of hot water. The water should be simmering, not boiling. Chop the semisweet and unsweetened chocolate and add to the butter. Stir until melted and smooth, about 5 minutes. Remove the bowl or top of double boiler, and set the mixture aside.
In a medium bowl, whisk 2⁄3 cup of the sugar, cocoa powder, cornstarch, and salt. Add the eggs and egg yolk and cream. Stir. Set aside.
In a medium saucepan over medium heat, heat the milk and the remaining 1⁄3 cup of sugar until it is steaming. You’ll see little bubbles around the edge of the milk. Note: Do not overcook.
Gradually stir half of the hot milk mixture into the sugar/cocoa mixture, whisking continually. Pour that mixture back into the saucepan with the remaining hot milk mixture. Stir continually and bring to a boil, scraping the sides of the pan. When the mixture starts to boil, reduce the heat and let bubble for about 30 seconds. It will thicken a lot!
Remove the saucepan from the heat. Have a sieve with big holes ready. Strain the pudding through the sieve into a medium bowl. Add the melted chocolate mixture, espresso coffee, and vanilla, and stir well.
Spoon the pudding into 6 dessert bowls. Cover each serving with plastic wrap. The wrap can touch the pudding surface. Pierce the plastic to let out steam. Cool the pudding to room temperature for 1 hour.
Refrigerate the pudding until chilled for at least 2 hours.
Remove the plastic wrap and top each serving with whipped cream and shaved chocolate.
[Note from Delilah: This can be made up to three days ahead. How cool is that? And here’s a cool tip that I learned from my dad. To shave chocolate, use either a vegetable grater or a knife instead of a cheese grater. These tools help make the chocolate look artistic.]
Dear Reader,
You may not know this, but I write two culinary mystery series under two names—my pseudonym, Avery Aames, and my real name, Daryl Wood Gerber. As Daryl, I write the Cookbook Nook Mysteries. I thought it would be fun for fans of the Cheese Shop Mysteries to have a taste of Cookbooks at the end of As Gouda as Dead. Why not? There are cheese cookbooks, aren’t there? (Hint: Yes, is the answer; I have dozens.)
If you’re not familiar with the Cookbook Nook Mysteries, let me introduce you to Jenna Hart, a former advertising executive who, two years after losing her husband in a tragic accident, moved home to the beautiful coastal town of Crystal Cove, California, to not only find her smile, but also help her aunt open a culinary bookstore. Jenna is an avid reader, a marketing whiz, and a foodie, but she doesn’t have a clue how to cook. She’s eager to learn. The Cookbook Nook sells cookbooks, foodie fiction, and culinary goodies for the kitchen. In addition, the store and the town offer all sorts of specialty events. In the fourth installment in the series, Fudging the Books, due out in 2015, the town is not only celebrating Chocolate Month, but during the first week of the month, they celebrate Pirate Week. Jenna and the Chocolate Cookbook Club have invited good friend and local candy shop owner Coco Chastain as well as Coco’s publisher, a former local, to join in the festivities. When the publisher is found stabbed while editing Coco’s latest cookbook, tempers snap. Argh, mateys, Coco claiming she’s innocent doesn’t amount to beans. Determined to find out who killed her friend, Jenna searches for clues. Will she melt under the pressure?
I hope you will join Jenna and her darling friends and family as she once again seeks to right a wrong. Perhaps you’ll even find a new chocolate-y cookbook or recipe to share with friends! Turn the page to read an excerpt from Fudging the Books.
For those of you who love the Cheese Shop Mysteries, don’t despair. The seventh in the series, For Cheddar or Worse, debuts February 2016.
Savor the mystery and say cheese!
Avery aka Daryl
Chocolate. Is there anything not to like—excuse me, love—about chocolate? And it’s February, so it’s national chocolate month, which means I can focus The Cookbook Nook’s theme on chocolate. Heaven. I plucked a homemade chocolate-cherry bonbon from a bowl sitting on the sales counter and popped it into my mouth, relishing the burst of flavor. Yum!
“Back to work, Jenna,” I whispered.
I was alone in The Cookbook Nook. My aunt had yet to arrive, and Bailey, my best friend in the world and the main sales clerk at the shop, had called saying she was running late, too. I enjoyed mornings in the shop by myself. I could take time to scan the wares and appreciate what I’d been able to build in the past few months.
Back in August, I gave up my cushy job at a swank San Francisco advertising firm and returned home to help my Aunt Vera open our culinary bookshop. I am so proud that, with my aunt’s financial backing and my marketing expertise, we have created a must-visit haven for foodies and lovers of cookbooks. The floors are filled with moveable bookshelves upon which sit hundreds of cookbooks with tasty titles. On the shelves along the walls are colorful arrays of cooking utensils, saltshakers, peppermills, aprons, and more. We fashioned the rear corner as a young cooks area, where kids and their parents could sit and read or even do crafts. My aunt, who loves to tell fortunes, set up a vintage kitchen table near the front entrance where she can offer occasional readings. She isn’t a seer; she doesn’t have extrasensory powers, but she likes to predict the future, and she occasionally reads for clients who trust her predictions. I’m not a believer, but I am not about to tell her sharing her passion is out of the question. Sometimes her predictions come true.
“Work!” I reminded myself.
I moved to the display table, where I had arranged delicious cozy mysteries with some of my favorites by Krista Davis and Jenn McKinlay. I added a new cozy to the grouping, Murder of a Chocolate-Covered Cherry by Denise Swanson. I also added a couple of new books to our permanent supply of food-related fiction: The Chocolate Lovers’ Club and The Loveliest Chocolate Shop in Paris.
“Perfect.”
Next, I gathered a stack of chocolate-themed cookbooks from the sales counter and skirted around the centermost moveable bookshelf, while gazing lustfully at the top book—one I intended to take home with me, written by the renowned chocolatier Michael Recchiuti: Chocolate Obsession: Confections and Treats to Create and Savor. Granted, it was not a book for beginners, like me. In fact, one woman who had reviewed the book on Amazon said to do exactly what Recchiuti said or else. Um, okay, perhaps she hadn’t written that as a specific threat, but it was implied. Make sure to buy the higher butterfat butter was one of her suggestions. Also use the expensive chocolate. Forget about baking with Hershey’s. Now, I adore Hershey’s Kisses and those adorable Hershey’s miniatures, but even I can tell the difference between an everyday chocolate and Scharffen Berger.
I placed the chocolate books on another display table, stood the Recchiuti book upright with its pages fanned open, and set a pile of books behind it. I laid out other titles, like Crazy About Chocolate: More than 200 Delicious Recipes to Enjoy and Share—the cover alone, with a dozen mouth-watering mini chocolate éclairs, would sell the book in a heartbeat—and Absolutely Chocolate: Irresistible Excuses to Indulge—its sinfully all-chocolate cover was great, as well. I had space for a few more titles and hurried back to the stockroom.
When I returned from the storage room, carrying a stack that reached my chin, a fortysomething woman with sleek black hair, one of our regulars, rapped on the front door, which I’d propped open—I love crisp, fresh air. She wiggled her fingers. “Jenna, are you ready for a few customers?”
It was almost nine. “Sure.”
“Can you help us?” She and two friends made a beeline for the paleo diet section of books. I followed. “Paleo,” she said matter-of-factly. “Can you explain the regimen to us?”
Although it wasn’t my preferred way to eat—I savored ca
rbs—I knew the basics. Paleo involved eating the way cavemen did, which meant consuming only things we could hunt, fish, or farm. Sugar-packed cereal and pasta made with white flour were out. Not the diet for me—
I really like fettuccini Alfredo.
“We’re confused, then,” she said when I finished speaking. “How can this be right?” She held up The Paleo Chocolate Lovers’ Cookbook: 80 Gluten-Free Treats for Breakfast & Dessert. The woman’s forehead and eyes were pinched with concern. “I thought you said sweets were out.”
I smiled, having wondered the same thing. With Bailey’s help, I’d made sense of the notion. “None of the recipes include gluten, grain, or dairy. The author, a popular cooking blogger, created many of the recipes using coconut or ground nuts. With the help of the herbal sweetener stevia, she shows you how to keep the honey and coconut sugar—her preferred sugars—to a minimum.”
“Ooh, I get it.”
“By the way,” I added, “I’ve heard the chocolate pie with raw graham cracker crust is to die for.”
Bailey tore into the shop and skidded on her wedged heels, almost taking our customers and me down. “Sorry.”
“Excuse me,” I said to the ladies. Juggling my pile of books, I scooted Bailey around a stand of bookshelves and whispered, “What’s gotten into you?” She was my age—twenty-nine going on thirty— and often full of pep, but this was over the top.
“I did it.”
“Did what?”
Bailey fluffed her fringed hair and batted her baby blues. “As head of the Chocolate Cookbook Club”—a club Bailey had divined a month ago for all of our customers who craved chocolate; we had over thirty members, men and women—“I declared we are going to celebrate the entire month of February by purchasing a new chocolate-themed cookbook each week. Everybody is on board. Do the math. Ka-ching!” She mimed opening a cash register then grabbed me by the shoulders, her arms barely able to reach around the books I held. I forced myself not to laugh. She was, after all, at a disadvantage, being shorter than I was by almost a foot. At five foot eight, I stood taller than most women I knew.
Bailey shimmied me. “C’mon, girlfriend, do a happy dance with me.”
My hair bounced around my shoulders. My tower of books teetered. “Cut it out.”
“Not until you dance.”
I shuffled my feet. “Look, Ma. I’m dancing.”
“You call that dancing?”
“Let me go.”
Bailey giggled but obeyed. “Get this, I talked them into buying Coco’s latest cookbook first. Sweet Sensations: All Things Chocolate, From the Delicious to the Fantabulous.”
Coco Chastain was one of Bailey’s and my good friends. We had known her since high school, although at the time we didn’t hang out. Bailey was in the popular girl group; I floated between the studious and theater groups; Coco was part of the art crowd. Now she was a local chocolatier who owned Sweet Sensations, a delectable candy store. I couldn’t walk by the place without stopping to inhale. Coco, a lusty woman with a curvaceous figure, had been engaged once, but her fiancé left her for a younger, skinnier woman. Boring, as Coco would say. I glanced over my shoulder at my customers. They didn’t seem to mind that Bailey was distracting me.
“Go on,” I said.
“I asked Coco to speak to the group,” Bailey said. “She jumped at the chance. She even offered to invite Alison.”
Alison Foodie, a successful independent publisher in San Francisco who specialized in cookbooks and related nonfiction, was Coco’s publisher. We carried a few of Foodie Publishing’s titles on our shelves. Foodie was Alison’s real surname, Scottish in origin, and not a fictitious name for her business. She originated from Crystal Cove, too. In fact, her family lineage, which was colorful to say the least, dated back to some of the first settlers. However, up until a couple of years ago, I had never met her. Neither had Coco. Alison was a few years older than we were. Bailey had brought us all together. Bailey and Alison met at a businesswomen’s retreat. When they realized they came from the same town, they became fast friends. Small world.
I said, “Alison will deign to come down from San Francisco?”
“Stop it.” Bailey swatted the air. “You know she’s not a snob.”
Actually Alison had a wicked sense of humor. She was incredibly smart.
“She doesn’t come back to town often because she’s super busy,” Bailey went on. “She does visit occasionally to check in on her mother.”
“That’s sweet,” I said, though I had to wonder. Alison’s younger brother lived with their mother. Didn’t Alison trust him to tend to her?
“Coco said Alison will give the club the inside scoop on the publishing world. Isn’t that cool?” Bailey clapped her hands.
“Super cool. Maybe she’ll give me an insight to the next best thing in the cookbook world.”
A swish of fur swiped my ankles. I sidestepped and eyed Tigger, my silly kitten. At least I think he was still considered a kitten. He’d wandered into the shop—and into my life—a few months ago. At the time, I’d pegged him at two months old. I had him neutered in November. Ouch, but necessary. As a result, he hadn’t ever sprayed my cottage, and he had retained his kittenish playfulness.
I set the books on a nearby table, scooped him into my arms, and scruffed him under the chin. “What’s up, Tig-Tig?” I’d dubbed him Tigger because, like the Disney character that pounced and trounced, Tigger had done twirls and other fun gyrations that first day to win my heart. “Did silly old Bailey and her loud voice wake you up from your nap?”
Invariably, when we arrived at the shop, Tigger moseyed into his spot beneath the children’s table for a lengthy snooze.
Tigger meowed.
“I am not loud,” Bailey said.
He yowled again, disagreeing with her.
“Are you hungry? Let me check your bowl.” I signaled the three ladies by the paleo section. “I’ll be right back, if you need me.”
Bailey trailed me through the shop to the stockroom. She propped the drape open with a hip and continued her conversation while I refreshed Tigger’s goodies. “I was thinking we should have a soiree for the book club tomorrow evening in the Nook Café.”
The eatery, an adjunct to The Cookbook Nook and connected by an enclosed breezeway, had become a wonderfully profitable side business, thanks to the budding reputation of our inspired chef, Katie Casey, another high school buddy of Bailey’s and mine.
“Tomorrow?” I said. “As in Thursday? Yipes, that’s quick.”
“Katie agreed to close the café.”
“You already cleared it with her?”
“Yep. She’ll make a tasting from Coco’s latest cookbook,” Bailey went on. “Not just the sweets, but the savory things, too, like the chicken with the luscious chocolate mole sauce.”
“Yum.”
“Or the mixed salad with orange slices dipped in chocolate. And, of course, an assortment of desserts. C’mon. This’ll be fun.” Bailey rapped me on the arm. “Girls’ night out. We’ll help Katie with the cooking.”
“We?” I gulped. “For thirty?”
“With Katie’s supervision.”
Remember, earlier, when I mentioned that Michael Recchiuti’s Chocolate Obsession might be beyond my ability? That is because I’m not a cook. I’m trying to learn. I’ve graduated from making five-ingredient recipes to multiple-ingredient ones. I’ve even tried my hand at cooking entrees as well as desserts. The chocolate cherries on the sales counter? Mine. But creating an entire meal for what might be a hypercritical crowd? My heart started to chug until I channeled Sophie Winston, the event planner from the Domestic Diva mysteries. She made cooking sound so easy; she always had things prepared way in advance, much of it stored in the freezer. I could do this. I could. Yes, indeed, with a battalion of cooks and Katie’s supervision, a soiree was going to be a snap.
Tigger butted my ankle with his head. He opened his eyes wide, as if offering reassurance.
“Please, pretty please,” Bailey said.
“Okay. We’ll do it.”
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