Volume I, Edition 4     December 15, 2007

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RECIPES

Hot Spiced Cider / Puerto Rican Holiday Punch / Orange Balls / Easy Chocolate Fudge

Hot Spiked Cider from Lauren Dane

• 1 quart water

• 3 Market Spice tea bags (you can substitute orange spice tea but I promise you, Market Spice makes the best tea ever for this. You can get it in a lot of grocery stores and also online)

• 1/2 cup light brown sugar

• 3 cups apple cider

• 1 cups spiced rum (I like Capt. Morgan)

• 8 cinnamon sticks

Pour water into a large saucepan and bring to a boil. Remove from heat and toss in the orange spice tea bags. Cover and let steep 5 minutes. Remove tea bags and stir in sugar, apple cider, rum, and 2 of the cinnamon sticks. Heat just to steaming—do not boil. Let it sit on the stove on a very low flame for at least an hour or do what I do—put it in the crock pot on low and let it go for two hours.  The longer it simmers, the better the flavors marry. The added bonus is that your house smells fabulous.

I know folks have made this one without the rum for kids and adults who don’t drink and liked it as well. I’d probably add another half cup of water and another half cup of cider to even out the flavors in that case.

Puerto Rican Holiday Punch from Gabrielle Hewitt

Around the Christmas holidays, my mother enjoyed following a Caribbean tradition. She would make Christmas rum punch and bottle it to give to the family and neighbors. It was sooo strong, but delicious and creamy like a dream. It keeps for a while and is like eggnog, though with a real kick and exotic flavor. This is my mom’s variation of the popular holiday punch.

It’s because of memories like these that I turned to Puerto Rico for the setting of my first romantic suspense, Dark Waters. I think you’ll find that this punch combined with Rico, the hot Latino hero of my story, will get your blood heated quite nicely.

Coquito (Puerto Rican Punch)

A popular Christmas drink in Puerto Rico.

Ingredients:

1cup white rum

1 can coconut milk

2 egg yolks

1/8 tsp salt

6 fl oz sweetened condensed milk

Cinnamon or nutmeg spice

Pour half of rum into blender. Add coconut milk. Blend together.

Add egg yolks, salt, and condensed milk and blend until smooth.

Pour into large pitcher. Add remaining rum and stir. Refrigerate.

Remove from fridge 30 minutes before serving. Stir well and

serve in small glasses, sprinkle liberally with cinnamon or

nutmeg.

For more Puerto Rican recipes, download my free recipe booklet

ORANGE BALLS (as opposed to blue balls) from T.J. Michaels

Here's a quick recipe that's so easy it's hard to believe it tastes fabulous! These are great, especially if you have kids who like helping in the kitchen. In fact, my kids started making these every year at Christmas when they were nine and eleven years old because it's fun 'n’ messy, and they can do it all by themselves. Clean up is a breeze.

Ingredients:

1 Box Vanilla Wafers

1 to 2 cups Powdered Sugar (to taste)

½ cup Butter

1 can (about 6 oz.) Frozen Orange Juice Concentrate

Coconut - flaked or shredded

In a silver bowl, crumble up the Vanilla Wafers until fine. With your hands, mush cold or almost room temperature butter into the wafer crumbs along with the Powdered Sugar. Add the orange juice concentrate (start with about half the can - you can add more, but just make sure the wafer/butter mixture can absorb it and isn't runny). Be sure to mix it up together using your hands (a blender will make the mixture too fine).

Form into little tablespoon-sized balls and roll in the coconut. Then roll in enough Powdered Sugar to ‘dust’ the balls. Cover and put in the fridge to cool, then serve.