Under His Touch Cannoli

Under His Touch by Jeffe Kennedy is a May-December boss-subordinate office romance, a setup that is complete catnip for me that nevertheless has epic potential to go really far wrong. I love huge age gaps in my romance (my husband and I are ten years apart) and I love the realism of office romances. But often neither of these storylines work so well. In any office romance, especially a boss-subordinate romance, and even more so with an age difference, there's a fine line to walk between hella hot and hella creeptastic. Kennedy manages to walk the line with room to spare, creating a delightful story of a precocious, ambitious young woman and her older, more experienced lover that worked for me on every level.

Amber Dolors is a bright, ambitious young woman who knows just what she wants, but not how to get it. Not quite yet anyway. She's had no trouble attracting harmless young men, but what she wants is a relationship that's quite different from that. Amber has developed an interest in BDSM and is eager to explore it with someone attractive, experienced and willing to teach. Her nascent kinkdar tells her that her boss, Alec Knight, might be her ticket into the world of dominance and submission. Maybe her only ticket since her local NYC kink scene is portrayed as being difficult for a youngster such as herself to break into.

Alec Knight is Amber's boss, many rungs above her in the corporate hierarchy. This presents a huge problem for him because not only is he in fact a dominant with a ex-wife in his past whose kinky standards he couldn't live up to, he's also a really good guy. He's painfully aware of the fact that getting involved with Amber could ruin his career, but mostly that it would open her up to accusations of having slept her way to the top, which is horrifically unfair because she's super bright and fully capable of getting there all on her own. After much resisting though, he finally gives into her pleas to teach her the, ahem, ropes.

One little fun thing for me was that Amber is also just a little bit geeky. She makes all these references to Neil Gaiman's Sandman comic series, which is the series that got me into comics and which hasn't ever been replaced in my affections. Seeing the myriad Sandman references just tickled me silly and probably significantly influenced my affection for this book. But they're not just Easter eggs for Sandman fans. Amber tries to share the series with Alec, who is fairly dismissive of them. It's a problem that isn't unique to May-December romances, but a lot of the time such issues signal death in them. Despite the relative youth of one partner, there still needs to be mutual respect and Alex spends much of the novel struggling with the fact that Amber is just so young.

Together the two of them eventually stumble their way through the minefields of all their various power dynamics (including the boss-subordinate one) in a way that felt believable to me, even given current human resource realities. It's mainly Alec's reticence to ruin Amber's career and her insistence on a sexual relationship that made this work for me. Alec really has a rough time trying to decide the best course of action. He veers a bit into over-protectiveness, which Amber neither needs or wants and which she makes very clear. I think it would be easy to say, "Nope, no way, always wrong" when confronted with a scenario like this. But I remember being a young woman eager to make my own decisions (even if they turned out to be wrong ones, against the wisdom of my friends and family) and sometimes big gambles pay off. It's part of growing up. And definitely makes Under His Touch one for my keeper shelf.

Jeffe Kennedy is a writer who keeps her characters very well fed. It's an aspect of her work that I very much appreciate. Her smoking hot erotic romance Ruby really belongs on every foodie romance lover's keeper shelf. The hero is a chef and, well, I reviewed it here so you can just go look at that if you're interested. Her latest effort is no exception. Even when her characters order in, they do it in style. When the hero and heroine get delivery, cannoli, an Italian filled pastry, is on the menu.

I made several batches of cannoli while testing out what might work best. At first, I thought I wanted the most traditional cannoli possible as Italian restaurants in New York City do not mess around. But sometimes what's possible in a restaurant isn't possible for the home baker. I suspect Italian pastry chefs likely roll this very stiff dough through a pasta machine. Just guessing since following a very traditional recipe, I was presented with a cannoli dough that was far too stiff to roll as thin as I'd have liked (and I have a MONSTER of a solid maple rolling pin). But adaptation is the name of the game.

I had made several pie crusts recently and the current trend in getting flaky, tender crusts is to use vodka in place of some of the water. The alcohol inhibits gluten formation. And well, this is basically pie crust dough. The proportions are almost the same. So I decided that rather than go completely toward the traditional Marsala, I'd replace some with vodka for a higher alcohol content. And OMIGOSH. Did that ever make a huge difference. They look like cannoli shells, they taste like cannoli shells, they get all blistered and crispy like cannoli shells. Teensy tiny little change, big damn result. I was pretty pleased with myself for figuring that out.

Anyway, once I'd added vodka, there was no looking back. Ricotta filling is a pretty traditional choice for cannoli and I did like this one just fine. I cut this filling recipe in half in case you want to do more than one filling. I also happened to have made a milk chocolate chantilly for a recipe over Christmas and thought it might be excellent as cannoli filling. Spoiler: it was. And I used the same technique to make a Nutella version. Make these two whipped ganache fillings a day ahead as they need to rest in the fridge overnight. You can double the recipes with no problem if you only want to make one type of filling. Otherwise, these are sized to fill 12 shells each and the shell recipe makes 24 so just pick two.

I stored the pre-fried, unfilled shells for 48 hours before filling and they were fine. Filled ones didn't last 4 hours in the fridge before they started to get a little soft and not as crispy. So it's best if you can fill them as you need them. I know I say this twice a month, but these cannoli are the best thing I've ever made for the blog. It's one of those horrible projects that takes forever and requires dipping molded baked goods into vats of boiling oil, but it's sadly completely worth the effort. Also, because it's a trifle complicated, I've included a dozen more photos of the process here.

I'm legendary among my friends for being able to resist my own baked goods, but I might have eaten a couple of these for breakfast. Okay, a few. And I maybe did it three days in a row. So there's that.

Cannoli
adapted from Canelle et Vanille and Food Network
Makes: 24 mini cannoli
Time: 2 hours (1 1/2 hours hands-on)


Nutella Filling (fills 12 cannoli)
250 grams heavy cream
90 grams Nutella
2 tablespoons chopped, toasted hazelnuts

1. Boil the cream and pour over the milk chocolate. Stir until the chocolate has melted. Cover with plastic wrap adhering to the surface so it doesn't form a skin. Let ganache rest in the refrigerator for 24 hours. Whip it as whipped cream.

2. Spoon into piping bag or ziploc bag with a corner cut off and use to fill cannoli shells. Sprinkle ends with chopped hazelnuts.


Milk Chocolate Chantilly Filling (fills 12 cannoli)

250 grams heavy cream
90 grams milk chocolate, chopped into small pieces

1. Boil the cream and pour over the milk chocolate. Stir until the chocolate has melted. Cover with plastic wrap adhering to the surface so it doesn't form a skin. Let ganache rest in the refrigerator for 24 hours. Whip it as whipped cream.

2. Spoon into piping bag or ziploc bag with a corner cut off and use to fill cannoli shells.


Ricotta Filling (fills 12 cannoli)
1 cup ricotta cheese (full-fat)
1/3 cup powdered sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon allspice
2 tablespoons heavy cream, whipped stiff
4 tablespoons of miniature chocolate chips, divided

1. Mix together the ricotta, powdered sugar, cinnamon and allspice. Gently fold in the whipped cream, then fold in 2 tablespoons of the mini chocolate chips.

2. Spoon into piping bag or ziploc bag with a corner cut off and use to fill cannoli shells. Sprinkle ends with remaining mini chocolate chips.


Cannoli Shells

2 cups all-purpose flour + more for work surface
1 tablespoon sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon + 2 teaspoons butter, chopped into 1/2 inch pieces
1 egg yolk + 1 egg white, separated
5 tablespoons dry Marsala
3 tablespoons vodka
4 cups vegetable oil (or other neutral high heat oil like canola--do not use olive oil)

1. Combine flour, sugar and salt in a food processor, about 6 pulses. Add butter and combine, about 10 pulses. Add egg yolk, Marsala and vodka and process until the dough starts to come together, about 15-20 seconds.

2. Form into a ball and refrigerate for 30 minutes. Heat 4 cups of vegetable oil to 365 degrees Fahrenheit. Flour a work surface and roll out dough to about 1/16th of an inch. Shells will puff while cooking and thinner shells will cook more evenly. Cut circles using a 3" or slightly smaller biscuit cutter.

3. Working four at a time (or however many cannoli molds you have) wrap each circle around a cannoli mold and coat one edge with egg white. Press together VERY firmly and then flair the ends. This is the most important step because otherwise your cannoli shells will unmold themselves in the oil and look more like taco shells than cannoli tubes.

4. Once the oil reaches the proper temperature, fry each cannoli one at a time, about 2 minutes each. I used metal tongs to hold each cannoli suspended in the oil. If you let them rest on the bottom of the pan, they brown unevenly. If I did this again, I might rig up a way to fry more than one at a time because this step was very time-consuming.

5. When removing hot shells from the oil, using a clean kitchen towel, gently remove the mold from the shell and set both aside to cool. Repeat until all shells are fried. Fill as desired and serve.

For more photos of the process, visit the cannoli album on my Facebook page.

Disclosure: I am friends with the author and I received a complimentary copy of Under His Touch from NetGalley for review purposes.

Ruby Sea Scallops Three Ways

Ruby by Jeffe Kennedy* is just one of those books that I wish I could dive into and paddle around in for a while. It seems oh-so-appropriate to set a BDSM-flavored erotic romance in the town that has everything to teach the rest of the United States about the meaning of true debauchery. This wickedly hot story is set in New Orleans in the lead-up to Mardi Gras and features an up-tight fashion editor and a kinky chef. This is not the mindless, tawdry gluttony of Las Vegas buffets and strip clubs, but the languid, sultry elegance of the Old South.

The heroine of Ruby, Danielle Sosna, is primed and ready for someone like Bobby. She is wound unbearably tight, skirting the edges of satisfaction in both her professional and personal lives. Her work as an assistant editor for a fashion magazine has brought her to New Orleans, the culinary capital of the United States, and while she's curious about the food, she can't get past the limitations she has imposed on herself with her diet. She orders sauce on the side, changes preparations, and completely guts the vision of the dish she orders. We've all known people like her. I felt sorry for her even as I wanted to shake her.

So does the hero. Bobby Prejean owns the restaurant where she has ordered this sad imitation of a meal. Upon hearing of her order, well, he kind of loses it. Though as the book progresses, it becomes clear that he's got the heart of a marshmallow, he also has a Cajun temper. Romance heroes typically smell like pine trees, fresh grass, cigars, whiskey and MAN. Bobby smells of butter and garlic. If at first I wanted to shake Dani, I wanted to lick Bobby.

When they meet up again by chance later that day, Dani agrees to an evening of pleasure with Bobby, but only if she's willing to play by his rules. The only hard limit she sets is maintaining her anonymity through the use of a pseudonym: Ruby Tuesday. This sets the stage for trip to a kink club, a testing of Dani's sexual boundaries, the ruination of her diet and, eventually, a happy ending that brings both hero and heroine some much needed peace of mind.

There are a couple things I loved about Kennedy's Facets of Passion series, which also includes the edgier Sapphire and the unusual Platinum. First, the characters are sexually kinky because they're sexually kinky. They don't have psychological wounds or mental illnesses that they're trying to heal by beating or being beaten. Second, the Doms in the relationships are not only strict and demanding, they're also nurturing and caring. They behave like real human beings rather than Dominant romance robots. Bobby in particular is heart-breakingly sweet and sensitive despite how controlling and adventurous he is in the bedroom.

I can't recommend these books highly enough. Even if you're normally not attracted to BDSM relationships in romance you might give these a try. They're hot, they're tender and Kennedy makes sure beyond a shadow of a doubt that they're romantic.

It was impossible to pick one spot where food became an important element of this story. Bobby's desire for sexual control is possibly only subsumed by his desire to feed people, particularly the calorie-phobic Danielle. Which brings me to the very best part of Ruby. Sure, the sex is epic-level hot and the characters are adorable together, but what made this book the stand-out of the series was Kennedy's sensual descriptions of Bobby's food. Honestly, I sensed a kindred spirit because the man just cannot stop cooking. It's almost compulsive. Blueberry muffins, truffle omelets and crepes for breakfast; cranberry and brie sandwiches for lunch; steak, scallops, souffles, oysters and who only knows what else for dinner. If you're not hungry by the end of this book, there's something wrong with your soul.

This dish comes from a scene in the middle of the book where Bobby brings Danielle to his restaurant and feeds her several small plates. My version of his scallop dish includes a cilantro-lime crema with a Greek yogurt base, a peppered mango curry with a coconut milk base and a spiced chocolate with a tomato base. If you're cooking for more than four people, just buy more scallops. Unless you're trying to feed 12, there will be plenty of sauce if you resist the temptation to heap sauce on the plate. And you should. My guests thought even half a tablespoon was borderline too much.

While it can be tough to reproduce the variety enabled by a walk-in fridge and a small army of sous chefs at home, these sea scallops are totally doable. For starters, this dish is not nearly as difficult as it looks. If you can operate a blender, you can make these sauces. Though if you've got a lover to impress, this fancy-looking dish should do it. And since the sauces should be made ahead and chilled for a few hours, and it only takes 4 minutes to sear the scallops, it won't even distract you from your other evening's activities for very long.

Plus if you're looking to introduce a little spice to your sex life, mangoes, chiles and chocolate are said to be aphrodisiacs. Just sayin'.

Seared Sea Scallops Three Ways
Makes: 4 servings as an appetizer or small plate
Time: 1 hour

Spiced Cocoa Sauce

4 tsps unsweetened cocoa powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp black pepper

1/2 tsp cumin

1/8 tsp cinnamon

pinch of mace

1 tbsp brown sugar

3 tbsps tomato sauce

3 tbsps water

1/2 tbsp molasses

2 tsp olive oil

1) In a small bowl combine the cocoa powder, salt, pepper, cumin, cinnamon, mace and brown sugar and whisk to combine. In a different small bowl, combine the tomato sauce, water and molasses.

2) Heat the olive oil in a small skillet over medium heat until it is shimmering and fragrant. Add the spice mixture and cook for 1 minute.

3) Add the liquid, scraping up any browned bits from the sides and bottom of the pan. Whisking constantly, simmer for 3 minutes. Remove to small dish and refrigerate until chilled, at least 1 hour.

Cilantro Lime Crema

1/4 cup minced cilantro

1 clove garlic, minced

1/4 tsp salt

6 tbsp Greek yogurt

1/2 tbsp lime juice

1) Combine all ingredients except lime juice in a blender or small food processor. Pulse until combined, about 10 pulses. Refrigerate until chilled, at least 1 hour.

2) When ready to serve, whisk in lime juice.

Peppered Mango Curry

1 tbsp vegetable oil

1/4 onion (1/3 cup)

1/4 orange bell pepper, roasted, peeled and chopped

1/2 garlic clove

1/2 tbsp minced ginger

1 tbsp yellow curry powder

1/4 tsp cumin

1/8 tsp cayenne pepper

2 tsps brown sugar

1/2 tbsp cider vinegar

1/2 can full fat coconut milk

1/2 mango, peeled and chopped

1) Heat vegetable oil over medium heat. Add onion and cook until soft, approximately 5 minutes.

2) Add bell pepper, garlic and ginger. Cook for an additional minute.

3) Add curry, cumin, cayenne and brown sugar. Cook for an additional minute.

4) Add cider vinegar, coconut milk and mango. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to low and simmer for 10 minutes.

5) Add sauce to blender and puree until smooth. Chill until cold, at least 1 hour.

Sea Scallops

12 sea scallops

salt and pepper

2 teaspoons oil with high smoke point like grapeseed oil (not olive oil)

Minced cilantro, curry powder and grated dark chocolate for garnish (optional)

1) Plate sauces by adding 1 to 1 1/2 teaspoons of each sauce to a plate. If desired, add garnishes: a pinch of cilantro, curry and dark chocolate shavings for the appropriate sauce.

2) Thoroughly rinse and dry scallops. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.

3) Heat oil over medium-high heat until shimmering.

4) Add scallops to the pan and cook two minutes on each side.

5) Remove to a plate and let cool one minute. Plate scallops over each sauce and serve immediately.

*Jeffe Kennedy did a lovely, lyrical post on her blog a couple of weeks ago while I was testing the recipes for this review. It was also very flattering of my efforts here at Cooking Up Romance. That said, I had already written the review part of this post and you know I only write about the  books I liked, right? So consider this my disclosure.