Advent Calendar Day 10

Tonight is the final night of Chanukah, so I thought perhaps it would be appropriate to share this little jewel of a poem by Mark Strand.

The Coming of the Light

Even this late it happens:
the coming of love, the coming of light.
You wake and the candles are lit as if by themselves,
stars gather, dreams pour into your pillows,
sending up warm bouquets of air.
Even this late the bones of the body shine
and tomorrow’s dust flares into breath.

Advent Calendar Day 9

Day 8 already! It seems the holiday season is flying past as fast as the rest of the year.

Today I'm giving away three copies of If Only in My Dreams, the print collection of my five Christmas novellas. This is the only collection that has all my Christmas stories in one nice big package.

Share the three elements you personally find essential to a holiday romance story in the comment section below, and I'll randomly choose three participants to receive a free copy.

Advent Calendar Day 8

I can't remember if I shared this cartoon last year or not. It's about eight minutes of "The Night Before Christmas." I'm sure I saw this many times as a little kid because it's so familiar--starting with all those kids packed into that bed with the pink quilt. ;-)

Anyway, enjoy! Have a lovely weekend. May you get all your shopping done!

Advent Calendar Day 7

Today I'm sharing my current (admittedly kooky) Christmas Playlist. An eclectic mix of old and new and occasionally just peculiar songs I'm listening to a lot right now.

Are you a fan of holiday music? Share one or two of your favorite holiday songs in the comment section below and I'll randomly select a couple of people for an audio book download code. :-)

White Christmas - Louis Armstrong

All I Want for Christmas - Mariah Carey

Winter Was Warm - Jean Kean

The Rebel Jesus - Jackson Browne

Christmas Waltz - She & Him

Little Jack Frost Get Lost - Frankie Carl & His Orchestra

There's Always Tomorrow - Shawn Southwick

Il est né/Ça bergers - Kate and Anna McGarrigal

Santa Baby - Eartha Kitt

Just Like Christmas - Low

Snow! - Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney and Vera Ellen

My Dear Acquaintance - Peggy Lee

Advent Calendar Day 6

Brrrrr. It's very chilly this morning here in the high desert, but we have some fiction from Meg Perry herself to warm the cockles of your heart. Also make you chuckle. ;-)

Rum Balls

Meg Perry 

Bunche Hall, UCLA

Historians are a strange lot. I, Jamie Brodie, am allowed to state that, since I’m one of them. (Technically I’m a history librarian, but still.) We are only truly interested in our own area of study and will yammer on for hours about it with minimal prompting. I’ve even witnessed a couple of fistfights over matters as trivial as the purpose of Hadrian’s Wall. Did he build it to keep the Picts out, or his own soldiers in?

(Totally to keep the Picts out. The Romans were vastly outnumbered, and Hadrian knew it. The Picts were determined…)

Ahem. I digress.

UCLA’s history department is a proud bastion of oddity. My friend, Reuben Wolfe, will launch into a detailed discourse on the distinction between Pharisees and Sadducees with the least bit of encouragement. The department chair, Oscar Medeiros, loves to expound upon the political history of Nicaragua to anyone who will stand still. My least favorite professor, Marc Ballou, has a detailed mental map of every historic rancho in California, and will be pleased to inform you as to whom the land on which your house sits once belonged.

And then there’s Guy Snowden.

Snowden teaches occult studies, whatever the hell that means, which IMHO would fit better into sociology, or anthropology, or psychology...somewhere, anywhere other than history. But no. We’re stuck with him.

A few years ago he became entangled in a bit of police business, and was temporarily suspended when a handful of his former students was ritually murdered by a different handful of his former students. I kid you not. This was major news at UCLA, naturally, not to mention being incredibly bad publicity for the history department. Everyone in the department had dissected every detail of the crime, wondering aloud if they should have known…

At the time I asked my brother Kevin, an LAPD homicide detective, about it; he’d rolled his eyes. LAPD had assigned a couple of high-profile investigators to a task force which, quoting Kevin, was “a fucking waste of time.” As it turned out, Snowden himself solved the crimes, thereby achieving his reinstatement to the university. I didn’t know anything else about it.

Snowden wasn’t bad looking for an older guy. I guessed that he was in his mid-fifties. He was a few inches shorter than me and appeared to be in decent shape. He had long silvery hair and favored loose shirts, velvet vests, and Birkenstocks. Faintly ridiculous, to say the least. My husband Pete spotted him once at a gathering of Oxford University alumni and chuckled for the rest of the evening.

At that meeting, to my chagrin, I’d learned that Snowden was a fellow Rhodes Scholar. To my mind, he was the worst kind of Rhodes Scholar: he’d returned from his time in England - no more than three or four years, mind you - with a fake British accent. At the alumni meeting, he and I had exchanged pleasantries for a few minutes; when he’d walked away, Pete had muttered, “You’re fucking kidding me. Does he think he’s fooling anyone with that accent?” 

I neither knew nor cared. But the experience cemented my opinion of Snowden as a total poser.

Snowden was also gay. I knew this because I’d run into him once - figuratively speaking - at Cloak and Dagger Books, my favorite mystery bookstore. Turned out he was involved with Adrien English, the owner. I didn’t know Adrien well, but Snowden sure didn’t fit my idea of Adrien’s type. Apparently he didn’t fit Adrien’s idea, either; Snowden had since been replaced with a tall, blond ex-cop.

Snowden never consulted me for research assistance, which suited me just fine. That way I only had to encounter him when, as the library liaison to the history department, I attended department meetings. Or when, as was the case today, I was invited to the department holiday party.

The party was scheduled for 3:30 pm. At 3:20, Avery Roth appeared at my office door. Avery was a former librarian, now a doctoral student in history. Avery’s topic of study was notorious Roman emperor Caligula; Reuben Wolfe was her faculty adviser.

Avery was balancing a party platter covered in aluminum foil and a glass bowl which looked like it might contain spinach dip. I said, “Need some help?”

“Yes, please.” She handed me the bowl. “Now it won’t look as if you’re coming empty-handed.”

“You said I didn’t have to bring anything!”

“You didn’t.” She grinned. “But this way no one will make snide comments. Not that they would anyway.”

“Not if they want their research requests answered speedily, they won’t.”

She laughed. “You have a fast lane and a slow lane?”

“Of course I do. Rule number one for university faculty: Don’t piss off the librarians.”

“Words to live by. Come on.”

We left the library and crossed the plaza to Bunche Hall, where we rode the elevator to the proper floor. I could hear the merriment already leaking out of the conference room down the hall. When we appeared at the door, Oscar Medeiros raised a Solo cup of punch in our direction. “Jamie! Avery! You’re just in time.”

We returned greetings and carried Avery’s veggies and dip to the table. I left her to unwrap the goodies and “excuse me”-d to the stack of plastic plates at the end, delighted to see that the plates were dinner-sized. Occasionally at such functions, the plates were only big enough to hold three meatballs and a celery stick.

I loaded up with meatballs in three flavors, plenty of Avery’s baby carrots and spinach dip, and a mound of Reuben Wolfe’s 100-proof rum balls. Reuben’s rum balls were rightfully famous among the faculty, and they always disappeared fast. I didn’t want to miss out.

I said hello to Reuben and was chatting with him and Avery about Caligula when I spotted Guy Snowden across the room - and did a double take when I saw who was with him, nearly dropping my plate.

Peter Verlane.

A couple of years ago I’d taught as an adjunct in the history department for extra income. Verlane had been in my medieval history class. He’d been a lazy student, who turned in sloppily researched papers but would waste precious minutes of class time arguing with me about the most mundane facts. He’d been an insolent little prick. So when he was arrested halfway through the quarter in conjunction with the ritual murders of Snowden’s students, I thought, Good riddance. He never formally dropped the class, so I was forced to give him an F at the end of the quarter, since he’d only finished half the coursework.

Why the fuck wasn’t he still in jail?

I would have ignored both of them, but unfortunately Verlane spotted me as soon as I noticed him. His face reddened, and he said something to Snowden, who glanced my way and lifted his Solo cup. I nodded in return. Verlane said something else, and they headed my way.

I murmured to Avery, “Incoming.”

“Who, Ballou?” She turned, saw Snowden, and said, “Oh. Shit.”

Reuben said, “Gee whiz. Places to go, people to see.”

I muttered, “Coward.”

He grinned and vamoosed. Avery, who feared nothing and no one, stuck by me. She whispered, “Who’s that with him? Is that the kid…”

“Yup.”

Snowden and Verlane arranged themselves so that Avery and I were trapped between them and a wall. Purposely? I wasn’t sure. Snowden said, “Jeremy. What a pleasant surprise.”

Another thing about Snowden: he insisted on using my full first name. Just another of his bizarre affectations. I said, “Hey, Guy, good to see you, too. Peter, are you on work-release or something?”

Snowden tut-tutted. Verlane scowled. “I served my time.”

Snowden added, “Peter is on parole. He’s paid his debt to society.”

I seriously doubted that. Verlane practically spit out, “I couldn’t come back to school here, thanks to you.”

I had to laugh. “Whoa, there. How is it my fault that you committed three counts of conspiracy to murder?”

“You gave me an F in your class.”

Avery snorted. I sighed. “Well, Peter, you didn’t drop the course, and you’d only completed half the work. I didn’t have another choice.”

“You could have given me an incomplete.”

“You would have had to request an incomplete. We don’t just hand them out like raffle tickets. Guy should have told you that.”

Snowden said, “I have explained our grading system, yes. Fortunately, Peter is continuing his education at CSU-Northridge.”

“Outstanding. Good luck, Peter. If I find any pentagrams painted on my sidewalk, I’ll point the cops in your direction.”

Verlane snarled. Snowden sighed. “That won’t be necessary.”

I didn’t get the impression that Verlane agreed.

Snowden chose to change the subject. He arched an eyebrow in my direction. “Jeremy, that’s an impressive collection of balls on your plate.”

Hoo boy. Sounded like Snowden had already been enjoying the rum balls. Avery burst out laughing. I said, “I don’t share my balls, Guy. Sorry.”

“No?” Snowden was smiling suggestively. He was an attractive guy...but hell to the no.

“Nope.” I popped a meatball into my mouth. “Only with my husband.”

“What a shame. You do realize that monogamy is not a realistic expectation for healthy adult males, don’t you?”

“That depends on the healthy adult male, doesn’t it?” I speared another meatball with a toothpick and pointed it in Verlane’s direction. “What’s your position on monogamy, Peter?”

Verlane clamped his lips together. He was frowning so deeply that his eyebrows met.

Snowden sighed. “Ah, Jeremy. Let’s not be combative in this holiday season. Have you visited Cloak and Dagger recently?”

“Yep, a couple of weeks ago. I understand that Adrien is engaged.”

Snowden made a sound of disdain. “Indeed. What a rum do that’s been. I cannot fathom Adrien’s attraction to that asshole Riordan.”

Verlane was still snarling. “Asshole cop.”

Avery said, “Watch it, Peter. Jamie’s married to an ex-cop and my dad is a cop. You’re surrounded.”

Verlane paled. Snowden shook his head sadly. “Et tu, Jeremy?”

I grinned at him. “Uh huh.”

Advent Calendar Day 5

Happy Holidays--and welcome to Wednesday! 

Yep, we're five days into the holiday season. I've just about finished my shopping, the tree is trimmed, the fridge is well-stocked...

Oh, so about that well-stocked fridge. Last year I gave away something called a Yule Log. It's mentioned in Christmas Coda 37 (and I shared a version of the recipe for those of you with culinary ambition in the print coda collection All I Want for Christmas).

I finally got to sample my first Yule Log last Christmas and YUM. If you love chocolate cake, you will adore this traditional French yuletide dessert.

Anyway, we're giving away another Yule Log this year. Once again you must be in the US to be eligible--sorry about that! We'll have other gifts for those of you overseas!

Share the recipe for your favorite holiday dessert in the comment section below and I will randomly select our winner. PLEASE REMEMBER TO CHECK BACK ON FRIDAY MORNING BECAUSE SUPPLIES ARE EXTREMELY LIMITED.

And if you'd like to try baking your own Yule Log this holiday, here's the recipe!

Bûche de Noël (Yule Log Cake with Coffee Buttercream and Ganache)

(This is another really complicated recipe--you have to start a day in advance--but it's gorgeous. This version is from Saveur.com)

Ingredients

For the Sponge Cake

5 tbsp. unsalted butter, melted and cooled, plus more for pan

3⁄4 cup cake flour, plus more for pan

2⁄3 cup plus 2 tbsp. sugar, divided

4 eggs

Confectioners' sugar, for dusting

1 tbsp. dark rum

For the Ganache Icing, Coffee Buttercream Filling, and Finishing

14 oz. 70-percent dark chocolate, finely chopped

1 cup heavy cream

2 tbsp. honey

1 1⁄3 cups sugar, divided

6 egg whites, divided

2 tsp. green food coloring

24 tbsp. (3 sticks) unsalted butter, softened

1 tbsp. stongly brewed espresso

Cocoa powder, for dusting

Edible gold dust, to garnish (available from nycake.com)

Directions

Make the meringue decorations: Heat oven to 200°. Place 1⁄3 cup sugar and 2 egg whites in a bowl set over a saucepan of simmering water; stir mixture until egg whites register 140° on an instant-read thermometer. Remove bowl from saucepan and beat with a hand mixer on high speed until cooled. Place 1 cup meringue in a bowl, and stir in food coloring; transfer green meringue to a piping bag fitted with a 3⁄8-inch star tip. Working on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet, pipe two 1 1⁄2-inch-wide stars; pipe a 1-inch-wide star on top of each larger star, and then pipe a 1⁄2-inch-wide star on top of each middle star to form a three-tiered Christmas tree. Transfer uncolored meringue to a piping bag fitted with a 3⁄8-inch-round tip; pipe four 1 1⁄2-inch-wide mounds to resemble mushroom caps, and then pipe four 1⁄2-inch-wide x 1 1⁄2-inch-tall sticks to resemble mushroom stems. Bake meringue shapes until dry and crisp, about 2 hours. Turn off oven and let shapes cool completely in oven.

Make the ganache icing: Place chocolate in a bowl; set aside. Bring cream and honey to a boil in a 2-qt. saucepan over medium-high heat; pour over chocolate and let sit for 1 minute. Using a rubber spatula, slowly stir cream and chocolate until smooth and shiny; let cool at room temperature until set and thick, at least 6 hours or overnight.

Make the coffee buttercream filling: Place 1 cup sugar and 4 egg whites in the bowl of a stand mixer and set it over a saucepan of simmering water; stir mixture until egg whites register 140° on an instant-read thermometer. Remove bowl from saucepan and place on stand mixer fitted with a whisk; beat on high speed until meringue is cooled and forms stiff peaks. Replace whisk with paddle and add butter to meringue; beat until smooth, stir in espresso, and set aside.

Make the sponge cake: Heat oven to 400°. Grease and flour a 13-inch x 18-inch rimmed baking sheet, lined with parchment paper, and set aside. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a whisk, beat 2⁄3 cup sugar and eggs on high speed until mixture falls back in thick ribbons when lifted from the whisk, about 6 minutes; fold in butter and flour. Spread batter into an even layer on bottom of prepared baking sheet and bake until golden brown on the bottom, about 12 minutes. Place a clean kitchen towel that is larger than the baking sheet on a work surface, and dust it liberally with confectioners' sugar. Invert cake onto towel; dust with more sugar. Starting with a narrow end of the rectangle, immediately roll cake up into a jelly roll, letting the towel roll inside the cake. Let cool to room temperature.

Make the rum syrup: Bring 2 tbsp. sugar, rum, and 1 tbsp. water to a boil in a 1-quart saucepan over high heat; cook until sugar dissolves and set aside to cool.

Assemble the cake: Once cooled, gently unroll and remove towel from cake. Brush the inside with the rum syrup; allow to soak in for about 2 minutes. Spread buttercream evenly over cake; re-roll cake and set the roll seam side down on a serving platter. Slice about 3 inches off one end of the cake roll at a 30° angle; cut the other end to make it flat. Spread the flat end of the angled slice with a little buttercream and set the slice on top of the cake roll to create a "stump." Stir ganache until smooth and, using a small offset spatula, spread ganache over cake, leaving the ends of cake and cut top of the "stump" exposed. Drag the tines of a fork along the ganache, making markings to resemble bark; refrigerate until chilled.

Decorate the Bûche de Noël: Using ganache as glue, place meringue "caps" on top of "stems" to form mushrooms. Dust cocoa powder lightly over the mushrooms, and sprinkle gold dust lightly over the entire Bûche de Noël. Place meringue mushrooms and Christmas trees decoratively on and around the Bûche de Noël before serving. (There are videos on how to do this properly--I'd watch them if I were you.)

*********

Our Yule Log winners are Ariel and Sam Spayed PI!! Yes two winners--assuming I get your addresses before WS runs out of cakes. Congratulations! Sam and Ariel send me your shipping details ASAP either through email, Goodreads or Facebook. 

Advent Calendar Day 4

Today we're recreating one of my favorite calendar traditions and sharing holiday cocktails. 

photo from FastDrinkRecipes.com

Post the recipe to your favorite holiday cocktail below and I'll randomly select three commenters to receive an audio book download of "The Boy Next Door" narrated by the always wonderful Kale Williams.

I discovered this particular cocktail last winter on Catalina Island. There's something sort of autumny about it, and maybe it would make a better Halloween drink than a Christmas drink, but whatever. It's what I'm drinking at the moment.

(You know what else I discovered last year? hot cocoa made with heavy cream, half and half and melted chocolate!!! You don't even need booze for that one--but a splash of brandy will not do it any harm!) 

Anyway, I digress.

Ingredients:

1 ounce vanilla-flavored vodka

1 ounce sour apple schnapps

1 ounce butterscotch schnapps 

1 decorative squirt liquid caramel

(optional 1 maraschino cherry UGH)

Directions:

Kind of self-explanatory, to be honest. ;-) 
Artfully squirt caramel in a martini glass.

Fill a shaker with ice. Pour in vanilla vodka, sour apple schnapps, and butterscotch schnapps. Cover the shaker and shake until chilled or you throw your back out; strain cocktail into prepared martini glass. Garnish with maraschino cherry IF YOU MUST.

This is a caramelappletinicupcake!!!! EVEN BETTER!?