agatha Christie
Cooking With Christie: Pretzel Challah Buns
Inspiration: One of my new-to-me favorite cooking shows is Girl Meets Farm. So much so that when I spotted one of Molly Yeh’s cookbooks on the shelf of my local bookshop, I decided to make a purchase.
Within Molly On The Range was Yeh’s challah bread recipe.
However, the enclosed recipe makes two loaves — which is a lot of bread! Undoubtedly, aware that these loaves are huge, Yeh also offers alternate ways of utilizing this base dough — including prezel buns. Needing more than the line of instructions given in the book, I quickly located Yeh’s recipe here.
And I must admit, though these bakes looked intimidating to make, once you overcome that trepidation, they are pretty straightforward. And, despite my amateurish scoring skills, these buns turned out great!
Learn From My Mistake: This recipe calls for baked baking soda, which is easy to make. However, in this form, it can (and did for me) easily irritate the skin with very little contact.
Moreover, next time a recipe calls for baked baking soda, I will need to wear a mask while transferring it into a container, measuring it out, and before adding my wet ingredients into a mix. Since no matter how careful I was, the fine powder went airborne and irritated my lungs as well.
Agatha Christie’s Canon of Characters: I think Lucy Eyelesbarrow, from the Miss Marple mystery 4.50 From Paddington, would whip up this recipe (with far more finesse than I) for one of her clients. As the challah base recipe can yield at least nine different bakes, allowing Lucy to dazzle her clients with a variety of tasty treats with minimal effort!
My 52 Weeks With Christie: A.Miner©2025
Cooking With Christie: Apple Butter Cookies!
Inspiration: With the fridge and freezer now containing homemade apple butter, I took to the interwebs once again. This time seeking a tasty looking apple butter cookie recipe…and, happily, I found one on Dessert Now Dinner Later blog!
Thin, chewy, applely, and filled with warm spices, these were a total hit with the crew at game night! And we ate entirely too many in one go!
Though I must admit I did fiddle with the spices called for in the recipe, since I knew exactly what was in the apple butter. So I added a single pass, on a micro-planer, of nutmeg, 1/16 tsp of ginger & mace — just to give it a little added depth without muddying the hero flavors of cinnamon and apple.
Agatha Christie’s Canon of Characters: Although these cookies aren’t as sophisticated as millionaire shortbread or a petite four, they are tasty enough to tempt Poirot. Especially if Capt. Hastings trys them first! And in a rare bit of overlap, I believe Miss Marple would also enjoy nibbling on them whilst gathering intel over tea!
Cooking With Christie: Outtake!
This oyster mushroom was huge! 4 pounds! I just had to show you all. In the end I ground it up in my food processor and put the bits in some meatloaf and pizza for extra flavor and nutrients.
Cooking With Christie: Apple Butter
Inspiration: A few months back, my better half and I went apple picking. The obvious outcome of this fun-filled excursion was many, many pounds of apples that needed something done with them. One of the most obvious recipes that this quantity of apples could easily handle was apple butter.
Scouring the internet for recipes, I found one I liked on the Pioneer Woman website and gave it a go. (Since I intended to use the apple butter as an ingredient in my bakes, I was not concerned with the comments this recipe garnered. As many of the reviewers took umbrage at the amount of apple cider vinegar the recipe called for. Plus, I enjoy the extra tang of apple cider vinegar, and it helps ensure the end product doesn’t become sickly sweet.)
And let me tell you, the apple butter turned out great!
Though, admittedly, I did need to cook it a bit longer to get my stuff to match the picture.
The literal fruits of our labor!
Helpful Hint: If, like me, you intended to use this as an ingredient rather than simply spreading it on toast, be mindful of the spices you add. If you add a ton of cinnamon, then add the apple butter to another recipe that calls for yet more cinnamon (for example), you could end up with an end product that’s overwhelming (not in a good way) and a tad unpleasant.
Hence why, for once in a row, I stuck to the recommended Tbsp and tsp.
Agatha Christie’s Canon of Characters: I can easily see Miss Maple or Tuppence making apple butter as a treat or to fill their table for a sale of work to benefit their community!
My 52 weeks With Christie: A.Miner©2025
Cooking With Christie: Unexpected Inspiration
Inspiration: Within the book What You Are Looking For Is In The Library, there’s a minor subplot woven into the story featuring rice balls. Due to the shaping required to produce onigiri and the possibility of adding filling, I’d always found this dish an intimidating undertaking. Yet, in the story, this staple seemed relatively easy to make.
Then we hit a week plus of mid-to-high eighty-degree days which always scrambling around for foods that require minimal heat to produce. Since rice has become a comfort food and rice balls can be eaten cold, I decided to try my hand at making them*. Looking about the internet, I discovered this excellent website that provides a base onigiri recipe, as well as three variants.
Deciding to stick with the basics on my first rodeo, I purchased the required sushi rice. Following the directions on the package, I cooked up my first batch. Now, after reading the website’s instructions and watching a number of YouTube videos on how to shape the rice into a triangle by hand (which frankly looked like magic to my untrained eye), I pulled out my far less fancy muffin scoop and set to work.
What I failed to recall was that I had purchased an antique Chinese rice mold at an estate sale a year or so prior. Maybe I’ll use it if I ever make these when company comes over.
In any case, after stirring three tablespoons of ponzu and four tablespoons of yuzu furikaki into the steaming rice, I started scooping and, voila, in less than two minutes I’d two dozen riceballs! And they were just as easy to make as the characters in What You Are Looking For Is In The Library said they were! Even better? They taste great cold!
*(I’m not calling what I made onigiri because mine aren’t in the traditional triangle shape or wrapped in nori. Nor would I call the rice shaped in the aforementioned mold onigiri either, just to be clear.)
Agatha Christie’s Canon of Characters: I can easily see Colonel Race making and enjoying these during his bachelor days. Rice balls are easy to make, last for a while, and, if they don’t contain a fin based filling, are something that can be stuffed in a jacket pocket and eaten on the go. Which, if you’re caught up in an unplanned stakeout or suddenly break the case — having a bit of nutrition to keep your brain cells functioning at their peak is important!
My 52 Weeks With Christie: A.Miner©2025
My 52 Weeks With Christie 
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