LEMON FILLING
8 tablespoons butter
1/4 cup crème fraîche
2 eggs (organic, cage-free)
3 egg yolks
2/3 cup fresh lemon juice
2/3 cup sugar
4 teaspoons lemon zest
Pastry: (You can skip this part if you’d like to use a pre-made pastry shell). In a bowl, mix the flour, sugar, and salt. Cut the butter into tiny pieces and mix in. Sprinkle the cold water onto the mixture and toss until it forms a ball. Separate the dough into two balls, flatten, plastic wrap, and chill for 3 hours. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Roll and trim the dough to make a circle. Fit the circle into the pan. Line the dough with pie weights and bake for 15 minutes. Remove the pie weights and bake the shell for an additional 5 minutes. Set aside the pastry shell to cool. Lemon Filling: In a saucepan, stir 8 tablespoons butter and crème fraîche. Set aside. In a separate pan, whisk the eggs, egg yolks, and sugar. Stir the lemon juice into the mixture and cook for 3 minutes. Add the lemon zest and butter-crème fraîche mixture to the eggs and cook for another 3 minutes. Pour lemon filling into the pastry shell and bake for 30 minutes, until golden brown. Allow the tart to cool. Serve chilled with a few bursts of whipped cream. Très refreshing!
Recipe #5
Petits Pains au Chocolat
(Mini Chocolate Breads)
2 sheets frozen puff pastry, thawed, cut into squares
1 egg beaten with 1 tablespoon water (for glaze)
4 bars French or Swiss dark chocolate, cut into pieces
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Line baking sheet with parchment paper. Brush top of each puff pastry square with egg glaze. Place 1 chocolate piece on edge of 1 pastry square. Roll up dough tightly, enclosing chocolate. Repeat with remaining pastry and chocolate. Place pastry rolls on baking sheet. Brush tops of pastry rolls with egg glaze. Sprinkle with sugar. Bake until pastries are golden brown for 15 minutes. Serve warm. Makes a very special breakfast!
Recipe #6
Mousse à L’Orange
(Orange Mousse)
3 cups whipping cream
2 cup orange juice
1 orange peel
6 egg yolks
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup flour
1/3 cup unflavored gelatin
1 tablespoon pear liqueur
5 cups Italian meringue
Cannoli shells (optional)
Soak gelatin in cold water. Bring whipping cream and orange juice to boiling point. Combine the egg yolks and sugar, and whisk until thick. Add the flour.
Pour the cream onto the egg, sugar and flour mix. Add the pear liqueur and gelatin. Mix pastry cream and Italian meringue. Arrange and let the mousse set in the fridge. Serve chilled in glass bowls with spoons; or fill cannoli shells and make an elegant finger dessert.
Recipe #7
Crêpes au Chocolat avec Grand Marnier
(Chocolate Crepes with Grand Marnier)
2 cups milk
1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup cocoa powder
6 tablespoons powdered sugar
2 large eggs (organic, cage-free)
2 tablespoons butter, melted
2 teaspoons Grand Marnier
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon salt
Can of whipped cream
Whisk all ingredients until batter is smooth. Refrigerate for 20 minutes. Melt a little butter in a skillet over low heat. Add 3 tablespoons of batter to the pan and swirl so the chocolate makes a free form pattern. Cook crepe for 1 minute until golden. Flip the crepe. Cook for 1 minute and transfer crepe to a plate. Repeat with the remaining batter. Serve your crepes warm with a dollop of whipped cream. Dessert doesn’t get more elegant than this!
Recipe #8
Tarte aux Fraises
(Strawberry Tart)
1 baked pastry shell
1 1/4 cups pastry cream
1 pound fresh strawberries, sliced
1/4 cup strawberry jam
1 tablespoon lemon juice
Spread the pastry cream across the bottom of the pastry shell. Arrange the strawberries in an attractive pattern over the pastry cream. Heat the jam with lemon juice until boiling. Apply the strawberry glaze over strawberries (with a pastry brush if you have one).Refrigerate the tart for a few hours before serving. Serve and enjoy your delectable French creation!
Recipe #9
Crème Brûlée
6 egg yolks
2 ½ cup heavy cream
6 tablespoons white sugar
2 tablespoons brown sugar
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Beat egg yolks, 4 tablespoons white sugar and vanilla extract in a bowl. Pour cream into a saucepan and stir over low heat until almost boiling. Remove cream from heat. Stir cream into egg yolk mixture; beat. Pour cream mixture into the top of a double boiler. Stir over simmering water for 3 minutes. Remove mixture from heat and pour into an oven-safe dish. Bake for 30 minutes. Remove from oven and cool. Refrigerate overnight. Next Day: Preheat oven to broil. In a bowl combine remaining 2 tablespoons white sugar and brown sugar. Sift evenly over custard. Place dish under broiler until sugar melts. Remove from heat and cool. Refrigerate until custard is set. A hard sugar shell should be covering the custard. Serve warm or cool, depending upon taste. Get a spoon and dig in!
Recipe #10
Gâteau au Chocolat
(Chocolate Cake)
1 package of your favorite chocolate cake mix
14 oz sweetened condensed milk
2 squares unsweetened chocolate, melted
½ cup water
1 package of your favorite chocolate pudding mix
1 cup whipped heavy cream
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Prepare and bake cake mix for two layers.
Cool and remove from pans. In a bowl, mix sweetened condensed milk and melted chocolate. Stir in the water, then instant pudding. Chill for 30 minutes.
Remove the chocolate mixture from the refrigerator and stir. Fold in whipped cream and return to the refrigerator for another hour. Place one layer of cake onto a serving plate. Top with 1 1/2 cups of mousse, then cover with remaining cake layer.
Frost with remaining mousse and refrigerate. Garnish with fresh strawberries, raspberries, or chocolate shavings. Serve and savor!
WHILE YOU’RE DIGGING YOUR FORK INTO A FRENCH CONFECTION,
TURN THE PAGE
FOR SPECIAL PREVIEWS…
Special Preview of Anisa Claire West’s
THE SCARLET SUIT MURDER
Prologue
Midnight Flight to Paris
Somewhere Over the Atlantic Ocean…
Blackness enshrouded the jetliner as it cruised incognito over the chilly waters of the Atlantic Ocean. Passengers leaned back against sanitized pillows and tried to catch a wink or two of sleep. Along with the other scarlet-clad stewardesses, I prepared breakfast trays with cartons of orange juice, crumbly croissants, and packets of whipped butter. By the time we landed at Charles de Gaulle Airport, rays of sunlight would be shimmering over Paris.
My feet ached from the high heels I had been wearing for the past five hours since the flight departed from New York. Ignoring the blistering pain, I adjusted my beret, wondering how many more transatlantic flights I could endure. Working as a flight attendant for Paris Rouge Airlines had initially seemed so glamorous. For a small town girl from the mountains of Pennsylvania, it had been the opportunity of a lifetime. But after three years of smiling my way through jet lag and coddling disgruntled passengers, I was ready to turn in my little red uniform and run back to the peaceful Pocono Mountains I had once called home.
“I really don’t feel well,” Robin, one of the other fed up flight attendants whispered to me.
“Do you need some aspirin? I think I have some in my purse,” I offered compassionately.
Wobbling on her feet, she pressed her hand into a wall to steady herself. “That’s okay, Natalie. I don’t have a he
adache. I just feel kind of dizzy.” Perspiring, Robin swept away moist strawberry blond bangs from her forehead.
“It must be the altitude,” Christine, the lead stewardess, surmised. In her late thirties, the Dallas native was a full decade older than most of the stewardesses and famous for her no-nonsense attitude. “Either that or we’ve been booking you girls for too many long flights lately.”
“We’re all definitely overworked,” I asserted. “But we’re used to the altitude.” I looked at Robin with concern, wrapping an arm around her slender frame to support her as she swayed.
“I need to sit down. Or lie down,” Robin said, clutching a hand to her gut as though she felt nauseous.
“Go ahead. I’ll take care of breakfast with Natalie,” Christine said firmly. “You better go straight to your apartment as soon as we land in Paris.”
“I will, believe me,” Robin said weakly.
Adjusting the lapels of my form-fitting jacket, I prepared to stroll the aisles and ask the same questions 300 times: Coffee or tea? Milk and sugar? Marmalade or grape jam? Blah, blah, blah!
My mind was elsewhere, someplace off in the smoky clouds, as I served breakfast to the cranky customers. I wondered how much worse it would be to work for an “ordinary” airline. Paris Rouge prided itself on being a first class air carrier, paying meticulous attention to every detail of the customer experience right down to the fashionable uniforms the stewardesses had to wear. And yes, they called us stewardesses. In our tidy scarlet suits and stilettos, our purpose was to return passengers to a bygone era of flying, a time when traveling by air was a luxurious and enviable experience.
“Do you have any extra butter? These croissants are very dry,” a male passenger grumbled, raking his eyes unabashedly up and down my body.
I wanted to smear the butter all over his leering face, knowing that he was only asking for an extra supply in order to get an eyeful of me. “Of course, sir. Here you go.” With a stiff smile, I handed him three more packets of butter. Go have yourself a heart attack.
The passengers became progressively crankier as I reached the rear of the plane. One man even slapped his hand impatiently on his empty fold-out tray as I paused for a five second conversation with another passenger. Dreamily, I thought of Stavros, the Greek musician I had met on my last flight from New York. Once I arrived in Paris, I would take a taxi with Robin to the apartment we shared, hopefully get a few hours of sleep, and then meet Stavros for dinner at Le Jules Verne, a dazzling restaurant atop the Eiffel Tower. Sigh. If only life had a fast forward button.
Finally, the last breakfast tray had been served, which meant it was already time to clean up. Starting all over again at the front of the plane, I transformed into the best dressed janitor in the world, collecting crumpled napkins and other offensive trash. At the tail end of the nasty task, our pilot Charles announced that the plane was making its initial descent into Paris. I scurried to the stewardess section of the plane, buckling my seatbelt and preparing for landing.
Robin’s freckled face was drained of her usual vibrant color as sweat continued to drip down her face. Gloomily, I wondered if there was some sort of virus going around. It wouldn’t be the first time the crew had gotten sick on a flight and spread the illness.
“Are you okay, Robin? Do you need some water?” I asked soothingly.
Feebly, she waved her hand at me. “No, I don’t need anything. Except a doctor! I think I’m about to pass out!”
The Scarlet Suit Murder - Kindle edition by Anisa Claire West. Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.
Special Preview of Anisa Claire West’s
CAKE BATTERED
Prologue
John F. Kennedy International Airport
Impatiently waiting for a gate…
“That flight was a total nightmare!” My new husband grumbled as I rubbed my temples in a weary circular motion. “Turbulence from start to finish! And now they’re holding us hostage on the runway. This is JFK! Why can’t they just get us a gate?”
“Calm down, honey,” I placated, refraining from reminding him that our entire honeymoon had been a nightmare.
First, our romantic penthouse suite in Montego Bay had been given to another couple, downgrading us to a noisy room right above the hotel bar and directly underneath a room full of frat boys. Then, the sky had gushed fountains of rain every day of our Jamaican getaway. As Murphy’s Law would have it, the sun only made an appearance as the taxi whisked us away to the airport for our flight home. And now the catastrophic rains had followed us to New York, causing us to fidget wildly as we remained trapped in our smelly coach seats.
“We should have just stayed home, Val! At least we wouldn’t have lost so much money paying the staff to run the bakery.”
“Enough, Dale!” I hissed, my emerald eyes flashing angrily. “There’s no point in complaining. Let’s just focus on getting back to our apartment and getting some sleep. We have to be up at 4:00 am, you know.”
“Don’t remind me,” Dale retorted bitterly as I rolled my eyes.
One week into marriage and our two years of dating seemed like a once upon a time fairy tale. I snorted, recalling how naïvely excited we had been to open our bakery six months ago. We were so googly eyed over each other at the time that we had actually thought it would be a brilliant idea to spend 24 hours a day fused at the hip. Biting my lower lip with a combination of amusement and exasperation, I remembered how the name of our cake shop had evolved:
Newly engaged, we had just unpacked the last cardboard box in our minuscule studio in Greenwich Village. The 300 square foot coat closet of an apartment had clearly been constructed for Lilliputians, but I was in no position to complain. I had recently been laid off from my corporate catering gig, and Dale was between jobs too. The timing had seemed perfect to partner and open a trendy little bakery. As Dale and I had flattened boxes for recycling, we brainstormed a recipe book’s worth of ideas for our venture.
“What do you think we should call the place, honey? And don’t say Chocolate Chip n’ Dale’s again, please! We want this to be a family atmosphere!” Dale had laughed as he claimed a corner of the apartment for his prized baseball glove collection.
“Right, and those guys are probably about 100 now anyway! So, I was thinking how everyone’s always telling us we’d be a power couple if we went into business together…you have the accounting background, and I have the culinary skills,” I had mused before smacking my forehead with a light bulb idea. “Ok, tell me if this is too cutesy or lame, but how about naming our bakery Powder Couple Cakes? You get it? Instead of power couple, it would be powder couple, as in baking powder or powdered sugar…”
Dale had chuckled and held up a large hand like a stop sign. “Oh, seriously, I get it, Val. You don’t have to beat me over the head with it.”
If only I had known at the time how uncanny and ominous his words really were. Throughout our foolishly, deliriously happy dating days, I had always been waiting for the other shoe to drop. But I never would have guessed that instead of the proverbial shoe, it would be a bundt cake pan to drop and crash down on our lives like 50 pounds of unshelled walnuts…
Cake Battered - Kindle edition by Anisa Claire West. Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.
Dear Reader:
Thank you for reading The French Maid Murder. I hope you enjoyed reading about Luna’s sleuthing and relationship with Max! I welcome your feedback and make an effort to personally respond to every email I receive. Write to me at [email protected].
Happy Reading!
Cordially,
Anisa Claire West
Titles Available by Anisa Claire West
COZY MYSTERY
& ROMANTIC SUSPENSE
A Fashion Felon in Rome
A Pastry Thief in Paris
Cake Battered
Cappuccino Twist
Champagne Deception
Cookie Dough Crook
Cupc
ake Shop Clues
Dark Chocolate Murder
Deep Dish Lies
Hotcake Homicide
Hot Fudge Fraud
Northern Moonlight
The French Maid Murder
The Scarlet Suit Murder
Vexed in Venice
Wild Autumn
FANTASY
Silver Goddess Series:
Island Tango, Book 1
Orca Dance, Book 2
Leopard Rhythm, Book 3
Mermaid Gold, Book 4
HISTORICAL ROMANCE
Eternal Melody
ANTHOLOGIES
Chocolate Covered Crimes
Deadly Bites
Exotic Daydream
Fashionable Crimes
Passion’s Raindrops
Silver Goddess
Sweet as Pie Crimes
Tasty Crimes
About the Author
Anisa Claire West graduated with honors from Yale University and also holds a Master of Arts degree in Literature and Teaching. Learning about cultures is Anisa’s passion, and she has studied more than half a dozen languages including French, Arabic, and Italian. A certified yoga instructor, Anisa embraces mind-body fitness, animal advocacy, and a compassionate lifestyle. She also enjoys all kinds of desserts and has sampled more than a few of the French recipes included in this book!
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