Cooking With Christie

Cooking With Christie: Boredom

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Inspiration: Every now and then, for reasons I don’t fully understand, I get bored. And the only real cure, for me at least, is to try something new. A fix that is a tad difficult to achieve when you’re stuck at home — but not impossible. 

Fortunately, I’d finally figured out a method (that works for me) for making sourdough starter. Hopping onto one of my favorite baking websites, I found a completely unfamiliar recipe for Sourdough Pumpkin Spice Bread. Always wishing for Autumn in the middle of summer and excited to bake something new, I got to work…And quickly discovered I didn’t have all the ingredients. 

Happily, it was only the raisins and walnuts.

Substituting raw pumpkin seeds and chopped crystallized ginger, I followed the rest of the recipe to the letter. And it turned out great! 

Once you get everything measured the batter comes together very quickly.

Admittedly, the ginger didn’t add the same texture as the raisins would, but the burst of concentrated spice flavor more than made up for it, whilst the pumpkin seeds, which are naturally a tad bitter, helped keep the loaf from being overly sweet. Whilst the sourdough starter added a subtle, twangy note to the whole affair.

Christie’s Canon of Characters: Remember when, in Hallowe’en Party, Ariadne Oliver goes off apples for just a bit? I wonder, being as it was spooky season, if she switched to pumpkin flavor to fill that apple-shaped void in her life? 

Admittedly, Christie set Hallowe’en Party well before pumpkin spice was a thing that infiltrates our lives from mid-September to the end of November. However, both fruits pair well with allspice, butter, cinnamon, cloves, honey, ginger, nutmeg, thyme, and vanilla. Although pumpkin isn’t generally eaten raw, the similar spice palate could have helped Ariadne satiate her apple craving. Especially if she consumed something akin to the aforementioned bread recipe with some apple brandy.

Or maybe she switched to pears until Poirot solved the case.

Which, honestly, sounds more likely.

My 52 Weeks With Christie: A.Miner©2025

Cooking With Christie: Cake!

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Inspiration: Edging ever closer to summer and all the abominable heat the season entails, I decided to look towards my favorite time of year — Autumn. Thumbing through my library of cookbooks, I stumbled upon this gem from the publishers of the Bake From Scratch magazine: Mexican Hot Chocolate Bundt Cake. But rather than using a standard bundt pan, which can be a pain to slice up & distribute in an office setting and where I planned on sending it, I made small two-bite cakes instead. 

With dark and milk chocolate swirled together, a rich chocolate glaze, plus a healthy dash of ancho chili powder (which I doubled), they turned out a treat!

Leaning into my fall theme, I used a pan with deciduous leaves, pinecones, and acorns! Being larger than a tea cake but smaller than a cupcake, they worked out well!

Helpful Hint from Me to You: I don’t know it it was because I used a different style of pan than the recipe called for or general human error on my part — but these cakes need the glaze. Otherwise they ate just a tad dry.

Christie’s Canon of Characters: Whilst Poirot would undoubtedly enjoy the decadence of the chocolates, I’m not sure he’d enjoy my purposeful heavy hand with the spice. Colonel Race, on the other hand, I think would enjoy these treats due to their spiciness! 

My 52 Weeks with Christie: A.Miner©2025

Cooking With Christie: Outtake!

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Here’s the final product of my first foray into making whole grain mustard!

I actually used 2/3 brown mustard seed and 1/3 yellow — as it turns out I didn’t buy quite enough of the brown and I really wanted to make it! Still turned out great.

Cooking With Christie: Variants

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Inspiration: Recently, whilst my husband was working from home, I asked what cookie his coworkers were hankering after. Instead, they responded with a list of ingredients: oatmeal, cranberry, white chocolate, and bacon bits. Happily, I managed to make the majority of their vision come true in one cookie!

Except for the bacon bits, I’m still working on a recipe for that singularly unique ingredient.

That being said, I was a tad trepidatious about the bake. Why? Whether I used raisins, currents, cranberries, or lingonberries, whenever I made oatmeal cookies the dried fruit always seemed to catch during baking. As the condensed sugar makes it easier for these nuggets of antioxidants to scorch during the 9 – 11 minutes they reside in a 350 degree oven (as I understand it). Thus adding a bitter and burnt taste (I’m never looking for) to the final cookie.

Unwilling to back down from a challenge and having Betty Crocker’s otherwise tried & true recipe in my hip pocket — I decided to give berries one more chance. 

I’m glad I did.

The recipe I traditionally use comes from one of Betty Crocker’s many cookbooks. This recipe here is the one I found online that’s closest to mine.

According to my book, after combining the recipe’s first eleven ingredients in the bowl all at once, the baker is then instructed to mix the oats, flour, and raisins together — in that order. 

Unsurprisingly, I’ve strayed from this original order of operations over the years. Mixing the wet ingredients first. (The baker’s sugar and brown sugar are combined with the butter and butter-flavored Crisco, then the eggs are cracked in one at a time, and the vanilla is added last.) 

Whilst my mixer is churning and whirring the wet ingredients, I whisk the dry together in a separate bowl. (Flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon.) Then, I added the oats, pumpkin seeds, and raisins (when I used them).

Turns out I should’ve altered the order of operations just a little further. 

Turns out, when I mixed the fruit in first – and – the oats last, the fruit no longer scorched in the oven! Seems the thorough coating of the base batter the berries receive solved my scorching problem and, happily, didn’t create a new one! I’ve made a half-dozen batches since without issue, and for someone who’s constantly looking for a better breakfasts cookie, I’m over the moon!

I never thought such a simple trick would make such a huge difference. All thanks to my husband’s coworkers laying down a challenge (even if they weren’t aware of it).

Another Helpful Tip from Me to You: I did need to quarter the dried cranberries before mixing them into the batter; otherwise, they probably still would’ve still scorched due to their size. And according to the group of tasters, this flavor combo turned out really well.

Variant: Recently, I’ve substituted dried blueberries for raisins. A swap my tastebuds likes much better! They also stand up well to the increased amount of cinnamon I’ve started incorporating into the cookies. I also discovered powdered vanilla mixes more uniformly (with the dry ingredients) into my batter and is slightly stronger in flavor than its liquid counterpart.

Christie’s Canon of Characters: Predictably, the sleuths I can most see tinkering with recipes are Miss Marple and Tuppence for similar reasons. Fiddling with a recipe allows one to land unexpectedly on someone’s doorstep and ask their opinion of your new adjacent creation. This conversational gambit creates an opening that allows one to naturally segue onto more pertinent topics, like alibis, unofficial witness statements, and their opinions of the victim. 

(Joanna Fluke’s Hannah Swenson mysteries are predicated on this idea.)

My 52 Weeks With Christie: A.Miner©2025

Cooking With Christie: Outtake

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This was a bowl of Tagliatelle with Corn & Cherry Tomatoes…and sadly it called for way too much chicken stock and pasta water making it way too soupy despite simmering it for nearly three times longer than called for.

However, pasta is pasta and it was still okay.

Cooking With Christie: Hundreds & Thousands

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Inspiration: On a spring day not too long ago, I finally had the time and mental bandwidth to tackle a few new recipes, one of which was homemade sprinkles. Despite watching a baker on television make these tiny sugar-based decorations on an immensely truncated timetable, I felt their simplicity must be too good to be true.

It wasn’t.

Turns out sprinkles (or the name you feel most comfortable using) are dead easy to make. Five ingredients plus time — that’s it. Well, and some space to let the baking sheets sit unmolested by either a curious housemate or a stray fruit fly until they are dry.

The recipe I used came from here. 

The upside of freshly made sprinkles is they not only add a unique crunchy texture, but you can add extra flavor via these imperfectly perfect sugar toppings. Vanilla, lemon, cran-orange, ube…basically (almost) anything you can dream up, can put in sprinkles to enhance or compliment the base flavor of your bakes.

Helpful Hint From Me To You: You want to ensure your mixture remains on the thick side. If it’s too runny, you’ll encounter a similar problem I had when piping, i.e., flowing unbidden from the pastry bag in shapeless lines.

Not that this gaffe dampened the joy of making my own sprinkles! More importantly, be prepared for the question (if you live with someone else): Why is everything we own sticky?

Because powdered sugar, corn syrup, and water are extremely STICKY!

Agatha Christie: It’s easy enough to see, in one’s mind’s eye, Miss Marple, Tuppence, and Lucy Eyelesbarro patiently piping out sheets and sheets of hundreds-and-thousands for a Christmas pudding, birthday cake, or Halloween treats.

Making the confection in question just a tad more special.

BTW: I’m not sure what exactly possessed me to pick Peril at End House for this photo (other than I liked the cover). Mainly because within the rolls of Miss Marple mysteries, there’s one that actually features sprinkles!

But we’ll get to that in a bit.

My 52 Weeks With Christie: A.Miner©2025

Cooking With Christie: Distractions

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Inspiration: I don’t like to fly. 

Though, weirdly enough, I enjoy airports. All the different people mingling together, the opportunity to study them whilst standing in lines, and the eccentric selection of goods and services one can find leading to the terminals fascinate me.

I think this love stems from my parents taking me to watch airplanes take off and land as a small kid. On those evenings, when the terminals were quiet, I would tire myself out running hither, thither, and yon.

And all it cost was the price of a partial tank of gas.

Of course, these were the days before you needed a ticket to pass beyond the TSA’s metal detectors.

Interestingly, my first-ever flight didn’t frighten me at all. In point of fact, I found it exhilaratin, probably because the Captain spotted a pod of blue whales swimming in the Pacific Ocean and tipped the plane so we could see them too! Even thousands of feet in the air, these sea-faring mammals were monstrous in size, and I cannot help but thank this unknown Captain for showing them to us.

(Not my photo, my little Kodak Brownie camera did not capture this much detail. Nor, thankfully, did we get this close in a 737. Thanks to Unsplash for this image.)

However, sometime betwixt my 18th and 23rd birthdays (when I took my second flight), this wonder transformed into terror — that I’ve yet to shake….Despite boarding a plane about once or twice a year. (Until Covid, when my long-range travel came to a standstill.)

In any case, since then, I have discovered a few tricks to get me onto the plane. One of which is providing myself with something to look forward to on the other end. This helps curtail a nearly irresistible impulse to bolt from the plane, down the terminal, and out of the airport while declaring, “This is my new hometown now.” (When flying home.)

In this instance: Golden, Colorado.

Though a wonderful city, this sea-level girl did not exactly thrive at altitude. And yet, I still needed something besides my own bed to get my sneakers to stay still.

Then, King Arthur Baking Company sent me an email about a sale on their baking supplies.

Inspiration and credit card in hand, I ordered a modest assortment of specialized ingredients from their website. Amongst which was a bag of Harvest Grains Blend, which included a recipe for a new-to-me type of bread.

And it turned out beautifully.

Despite needing to substitute actual milk for powdered milk called for in the recipe, which I didn’t have on hand. And, since I was already straying off the beaten path, I swapped malt powder for white sugar. Since my palate thinks the flavor of malt pairs better with wheat than plain sugar. (I also used their Climate Change wheat blend, which paired beautifully with the grains and malt.)

Nutty and full of flavor, it made excellent sandwiches!

Christie: Speaking of sandwiches…..I think Captain Hastings and Inspector Japp would appreciate this loaf. Especially since I see both men as sandwich enthusiasts. Japp, whilst he staking out a person or place for either Poirot or his superiors. Unsurprisingly, I think Hastings would do the same whilst helping Poirot. Though, as an added wrinkle, I can also see Hastings making a sandwich or two for dinner during his bachelor days!

My 52 Weeks With Christie: A.Miner©2025

Cooking With Christie: Mustard

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Inspiration: Whilst shopping in my favorite spice shop, I spotted several bottles of mustard seeds and vaguely recalled a homemade mustard recipe I’d glanced at in one of my cookbooks. So I grabbed bottles of yellow, brown, and black seeds.

After taking a closer look at the Spicy Brown Mustard Recipe Master Recipe in Joseph Shuldiner’s The New Homemade Kitchen, I discovered mustard is dead easy to make.

Seriously. 

Seeds, salt, spices, vinegar, and time. That’s it. And let me tell you, it smells and tastes great! I highly recommend giving this condiment a whirl, as watching the seeds slowly absorb the vinegar is wild!

Helpful Hint from Me to You: Though the recipe says you can blend the seeds in a blender to create the finished product. Unless you own one of those fancy high-speed ones (and even then, I’m not sure as I don’t own one myself), this is the wrong tool for the job. 

Choose the food processor option! 

Otherwise, you could end up like me with a kitchen inexplicably covered in clumped-up seeds, despite the care taken when transferring the concoction from vessel to vessel!

Next: Halve the recipe. 

Until you get the flavor combo to your liking, at least, as it turns out that this particular recipe makes about two and a half cups of the finished product. 

Now, if you go through this whole-grain mustard like water, then the sheer volume this recipe produces isn’t a problem. However, if you don’t, it makes noodling with the recipe challenging.

One Last Thing: In future batches, on top of the aforementioned halving, I’m going to double the amount of Madras Curry Powder added (the additional flavor I chose for this trial run). Turns out, the spiciness of the brown mustard seeds and the tang of the apple cider vinegar wholly overshadow the curry powder. (i.e., I can’t taste it.)

Agatha Christie: Honestly? I can easily see Miss Marple, Tuppence, and Superintendant Battle making their own mustard…And closely guarding their version’s recipe! 

Can you imagine trying to crowbar the list of secret ingredients from any one of them? And even if they did, finally, relent….Would they actually hand over the complete list or hold one or two back?

My 52 Weeks With Christie: A.Miner©2025

Cooking With Christie: Conquering an Old Enemy

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Inspiration: Scratch-made soda bread doesn’t hold the same level of malevolence that madeleines once held for me, but in the past, I’ve struggled to produce this style of bread. My efforts looked okay as I mixed them up, and they smelled delicious as they baked….but the end product was less than stellar. 

The fruit caught in the oven, the center was underdone, and the texture was wildly tight. But since those dark, dark days, I’ve acquired a reliable thermometer to test the doneness, learned that after adding the buttermilk to the dry ingredients, you must not tarry in getting the dough into the oven and that I didn’t need to knead the dough the way I did my regular sandwich loaf. With these tidbits of knowledge tucked away in the back of my brain, when I spotted the recipe for a Small-Batch Irish Brown Soda Bread on page 31 of 32 in the March/April 2025 Cook’s Illustrated magazine — a small kernel of confidence sparked in the back of my mind.

(Especially since it didn’t call for any dried fruit.)

The only catch? I didn’t have any buttermilk on hand. However, as it turns out, this wasn’t a deal breaker as the recipe writer included instructions on making this loaf ahead of time (i.e., assembling all the dry ingredients), which uses buttermilk powder and water, which I did have on hand, I set to work. 

(My unbaked loaf & the magazine where I discovered the recipe.)

It took me longer to measure all the ingredients than it did to produce the round of shaggy loaf of dough(that I promptly shoved into the oven).

Even better? It turned out perfectly on my very first try! 

The upside to the Small-Batch Irish Brown Soda Bread is that the small loaf doesn’t feel like a faff. The ease it takes to produce is equal to its tastiness, and it is a loaf I can make on the fly.

Though I haven’t figured out how to keep the fruit some soda bread recipes require from singing while baking, I can happily put Small-Batch Irish Brown Soda Bread in my arsenal of reliable recipes!

Christie: I can easily see Chief Inspector Japp whipping up this loaf to accompany some leftover chicken soup or beef stew, so there’s a new penny at that evening’s meal! (Plus, a hearty bread helps fill the belly if there isn’t as much leftover in question as your memory thought there was in the fridge!)