Into the Shadows Bourbon Chocolate Milkshakes

So this is a secret baby book. I hate secret baby books. HATE. I hate them so much that my review policies caution people against sending them to me.

Except...I loved this secret baby book.

Into the Shadows, the third book in Carolyn Crane's Undercover Associates series, features undercover Associate Thorne, who isn't really an official part of the group. He's a self-contained unit, tasked with taking down a large criminal syndicate and the highly placed government officials shielding it, from the inside. Vengeance for his sister's murder years before is what drives him and he's spent years getting to a place where he can kill the last guy involved in her death. Heroine Nadia is the daughter of Thorne's former boss, who died two years before. While Thorne was working for Nadia's dad the two of them were an item and unbeknownst to Thorne, Nadia got pregnant shortly before they broke up. Fast forward to the present and their son, Benny, is almost two years old.

The major reason I loved this book is Thorne. Thus far, the Associates books have worked well for me largely because of the heroines. And Nadia is terrific. She's fierce, protective and smart. She has her own goals that have nothing to do with the hero. In fact, she never expected to see him again. She was heartbroken when he left, but she has gone on with her life and I loved her for it. But it's tortured, messed up Thorne who made this book for me. He thinks he's a bad guy, a thug and unworthy of love. He doesn't trust anyone. He can't take a compliment. Both he and Nadia think he'd be a terrible father. The only reason he and Nadia ever got together in the first place is that she told him to fuck off. And while Nadia has some of her own demons to slay, it's Thorne's emotional journey toward being able to accept the love and intimacy Nadia offers that made this story so gripping for me.

Previous stories in this series have been quite epic. In general, the protagonists have been saving the world, or at least a bunch of innocents, from certain destruction. Into the Shadows is a much more personal, intimate, family-oriented plot. Thorne's issues stem largely from his dysfunctional childhood. Nadia's wasn't much better. And the two of them have to band together to save both Nadia's mother and their son. The result is a poignant, closely-written, emotional book. Honestly, I had no idea romantic suspense could be this good.

So if you aren't reading the Associates series, you should start, even if you're not that into romantic suspense. Maybe not with this one since you'll have more background on the secondary characters if you read them in order (and the fourth book just came out this week), but yeah. Start today.

The connection between bourbon chocolate milkshakes and Into the Shadows will probably not be apparent to anyone but me. But there are several key scenes involving whiskey and one right at the very end of the book involving some ice cream.

So I'll just say this: what are milkshakes but ice cream that has been melted strategically?

This recipe couldn't be easier. Just put everything in a blender and blend until smooth. The only bit of advice I have is that actually, the quality of the ice cream seems to be more important than the quality of the bourbon. Though I used pretty good bourbon here because I just don't really buy bad bourbon. This isn't the time to go generic on the ice cream though. You want the creamy richness of premium chocolate ice cream. I've found that if I use the cheap stuff it just takes more of it to get the consistency right because it has more air whipped in. So yeah. Häagen-Dazs or your favorite local artisan brand is the way to go.

Oh, and try not to fall over when you drink this much alcohol and sugar through a straw.

Bourbon Chocolate Milkshakes
Makes: 2 16-oz shakes
Difficulty: Easy

4 ounces bourbon
4 ounces chocolate syrup
3 1/2 cups good quality chocolate ice cream

1. Put all the ingredients in a blender. Blend on low speed for 15-30 seconds. Pour into glasses.

Disclosure: I am friendly with Carolyn Crane on Twitter and often receive ARCs from her, but I purchased Into the Shadows myself.

Crock Pot Balsamic Chicken with Spicy Bourbon Bacon Honey Glaze

Today's post has nothing to do with romance. And that picture has nothing to do with this recipe. But this post is all food all the time. I tried out a new recipe from a favorite food blog a couple weeks ago and was quite pleased with the final product, but not with the amount of time it took (marinating overnight, grilling, making a glaze). Plus I, um, don't have a grill. But I love to make stuff in the crock pot when we have our friends over for game night. It keeps me sitting at the table instead of cooking in the kitchen. So I decided to translate this into a crock pot recipe.

Once I'd rejiggered the recipe, several of my Twitter buddies requested it. Of course, those same Twitter buddies are probably gonna hate it because the standout of this dish is really the spicy bourbon bacon honey glaze that I decided to go ahead and keep from the original recipe. Which means that this isn't a full-on crock pot recipe. That said, the crock pot part is so extremely simple and you're going to have to make rice or quinoa or something to eat with it anyway so this hardly even counts as an extra step. (I hope.)

Oh, and sorry for the lack of pretty food pictures, but I never really intended this to be a blog post. It was just...dinner. I do just cook sometimes without taking photos of it.

Rarely.

Crock Pot Balsamic Chicken with Spicy Bourbon Bacon Honey Glaze
adapted from The Food Charlatan
Makes: 4-6 servings
Time: 6 hours, Hands on time: 30 minutes

8 bone-in chicken thighs or 4-6 boneless chicken breasts

1/3 cup balsamic vinegar
3 tablespoons Barbeque seasoning (I used McCormick's the 1st time & a local one the 2nd time--just pick something with brown sugar in it--not sauce--the dry stuff in the spice aisle)
2 cups chicken stock

8 slices bacon, chopped
3 tablespoons bourbon
1 cup honey
4 tablespoons worcestershire sauce
1 1/2 tablespoons hot sauce

1. Combine first four ingredients in a large crockpot. Cook on high for 6 hours.

2. Half an hour before chicken is done, brown the bacon in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Pour out bacon fat and reserve for another use. Deglaze the pan with the bourbon. It will steam so keep fingers and faces out of the way. Add honey, worcestershire sauce, and hot sauce to the bacon and whisk to combine. Simmer on medium-low for approximately 5 minutes or until sauce is reduced by half. Set aside until chicken is finished. Sauce will thicken as it cools.

3. Serve chicken over rice or other grain and top with sauce.

East of Ecstasy Bourbon Peach Ice Cream

I admit it. My reaction to most paranormal romance has been eye rolling. It's ridiculous because I love fantasy and even some horror; my first "book boyfriend" was the Phantom of the Opera. It's also unjust to dismiss an entire sub-genre because of some horrible covers you once saw fifteen years ago. For the record, I feel the same way about most romantic suspense. Also unjust. I'm working on it.


However, if most paranormal romance is like the Hearts of the Anemoi series by Laura Kaye, I'm well on my way toward revising my opinions. The premise of the series is that the Anemoi are wind and weather gods. Each hero represents a different wind and a different season of the year: winter, spring, summer and in the case of East of Ecstasy, fall. The heroines are all at crossroads in their lives, most having lost someone they loved to accident, death or disease. In each case, they are back on their feet, but maybe still a bit wobbly, making them both receptive to a divine hunk of man appearing in their lives and surprisingly non-skeptical of their love interests' supernatural natures. In East of Ecstasy, we get the resolution of the entire series so don't run right out and buy just this one: these aren't stand-alones.

Devlin is the son of the god of the East Wind, the dangerously mentally unhinged super-villain of the series. Remember when we talked about really broken heroes a few weeks ago? Well, apparently I hadn't seen broken until I saw a broken god. Devlin is so broken that heroine Anna even coins a term for him: Tall, Dark & Angsty. My husband promptly abbreviated that TDA. So if you ever see me refer to a TDA hero again, you'll know what I'm talking about. As for Devlin, I'll just say this: he had a very rough childhood and adulthood hasn't been any kinder. I don't want to go into too many specifics because it's pretty integral to the romance, but when he arrives in the heroine's doorstep, he's literally starving. I suppose given the blog I write, it shouldn't come as too much of a surprise that I have a pretty visceral reaction to starving people. That reaction apparently also extends to fictional characters. Devlin just has so much emptiness to fill. And when yawning emptiness meets vast power, it's clear that not only this relationship, but the entire world may hang in the balance of him getting it together.

By contrast, Anna is quite self-aware and capable. She does suffer from a chronic pain disorder, but manages to take care of her father, who has Alzheimer's, and also manages a thriving career as an artist. That's actually something I appreciated in the entire Anemoi series. Though the heroines all have challenges, they come across as capable, confident and not particularly needy. I guess one of the perceptions I had of paranormal romance was that the heroines always need saving. But these heroines do an awful lot of their own saving, both of themselves and their heroes. Plus Anna is not all she seems, but that's a big part of her story arc so in the interest of not going all spoilery, I'm going to leave it at that.

The plot is more epic than the previous three books, which all seemed more personal and much more about the romance than this last one, which not only had to resolve the romance between Devlin and Anna, it had to resolve the entire series, including dealing with Eurus, Devlin's super-villain father. I'll be honest, the love story in East of Ecstasy did get a little tiny bit overshadowed by the epic battle I knew must be looming, but because Devlin and Anna were such a strong pair, it was easily my favorite book of the series. Watching Devlin come into his own in every respect was immensely satisfying and in the end, it's really Anna who saves the day.

Hearts of the Anemoi wasn't a completely perfect series, but it was close enough that it guaranteed I'll be trying more paranormal romances in the future. And more Laura Kaye too; I already read Hearts in Darkness, her indecently hot contemporary erotic romance set practically in my backyard. If you're new to Laura Kaye and unwilling to commit to a four-book series, start with that one. It's cheap, short and will absolutely hook you on her style.

It's the snow demigod who kicks off the series, Owen, who loves ice cream with a passion, but the frozen treat does manage to make an appearance in nearly every Anemoi book. Particularly peach ice cream, which is Owen's heroine Megan's favorite. There's also a neighbor character who first pops up in the third book who constantly tests out her new ice cream concoctions on the gods next door. And poor Devlin. He's so happy any time someone sits him down and feeds him. He loves everything. It's completely heartbreaking.

I always assumed it was much more difficult than it really is, but if you can make custard and are willing to invest in one piece of special equipment, you can make ice cream. You'll need an ice cream maker or stand mixer with a freezable bowl attachment for this recipe. Also, the bowl really does need to freeze overnight and your custard needs to chill overnight. Rushing either of these steps will result in frustration.

Anyway, peaches are at the height of their season right now in the middle of summer and our farmer's market has tree-ripe luscious peaches by the score. You'll need a pound and a half or so of them. I used five medium size ones, resulting in about 3 cups of peach puree. If you get a bit less, that's fine too. You'll beef up the peach flavor with some peach schnapps.

Speaking of the alcohol, which includes both peach schnapps and bourbon, there is no Anemoi-esque reason for it. I just found some super cool instructions for adding significant quantities of alcohol to ice cream using unflavored gelatin and wanted to try it out. Surprisingly, it worked. I expected the ice cream to be meltier than normal non-alcoholic ice cream, but that wasn't the case. The gelatin really does seem to stabilize it somehow. I haven't tested this recipe without the alcohol and gelatin so I'm not sure what kind of results you might get from leaving it out.

Finally, this ice cream is beyond amazing. I have a pretty tough resistance toward my own creations. I mean, I bake something nearly every day and it takes something extra special to keep me eating it after smelling and tasting it for sometimes hours while I made it. This ice cream? This needs or leave my house immediately or I'm going to eat all of it all by myself, one spoonful out of the freezer at a time.

Someone save me please?

Bourbon Peach Ice Cream
adapted from View From Great Island and Gizmodo

Makes: 1 quart
Time: 48 hours (Hands on: 1 hour)

1 1/4 pounds ripe peaches (about 5 medium), peeled and pitted
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 cup heavy cream
1 1/2 cups half & half
2/3 cup white sugar
4 egg yolks
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 packet unflavored gelatin
3/4 cup bourbon, cold
2 tablespoons peach schnapps, cold

1. Place the freezer bowl for your stand mixer or ice cream maker in the freezer and let it freeze at least overnight. Put your bottles of bourbon and peach schnapps in the fridge to chill.

2. Roughly chop the peaches and puree in a food processor or blender until completely smooth, should yield 2 1/5 to 3 cups peach puree. Stash this in a bowl in the fridge for a few minutes.

3. In a heavy saucepan over medium heat, heat the cream and half & half until hot enough that it's too hot to keep your finger in it, but not boiling, stirring frequently.

4. In a heat proof bowl, whisk egg yolks and sugar until completely combined and lightened in color.

5. Temper half a cup of the hot liquid into the egg mixture, whisking constantly. Then whisk the tempered mixture back into the saucepan and heat over medium heat until thickened enough that it coats a spatula and drawing a line across the spatula with your finger creates a nice, hard line with no drips.

6. Remove the thickened mixture to a heat proof bowl and whisk in the vanilla extract and peach puree. Refrigerate overnight.

7. When ready to freeze your ice cream, put a 1/4 cup of cold water in a small bowl and whisk in the unflavored gelatin. Whisk in the cold bourbon and peach schnapps. Add this mixture to the chilled peach mixture, pouring it through a fine sieve to catch any large lumps of gelatin. Whisk to combine.

8. According to the manufacturer's directions on your ice cream maker, churn the mixture for 20-30 minutes until it resembles slightly melty soft serve. Remove from freezer bowl with a silicone spatula to a large, shallow container and place in freezer. It will freeze to a more standard ice cream consistency over the next 6-8 hours.

Bourbon Caramel Pecan Cinnamon Buns

Here at Cooking Up Romance, I post a romance novel review with a matching recipe on Mondays and then Thursdays usually mean a brief essay on some topic tangential to my interest in romance like how to find great writers on Twitter and why romance gets so little literary credit. This week though, my brush with romance was actually a recipe rather than some profound philosophical discourse (ha!).

I was testing out a recipe for chocolate ice cream with a bourbon caramel swirl and it left me with a lot more caramel than I had an immediate use for. Enter Shari Slade, Queen of Temptation. She suggested pouring the caramel in the bottom of a pan of cinnamon rolls, which as a solution to my caramel problem seemed like a super one.

Do you know Shari? She just released a wildly delicious book with Amber Lin called Three Nights with a Rock Star , which is basically the romance equivalent of Bourbon Caramel Pecan Cinnamon Rolls: sweet, decadent and totally addictive. I thought it was great, but if you want a full review, you can see mine here at Goodreads. Seriously, go buy the book.

So...these cinnamon rolls. I knew they'd be good, but I really didn't know that they'd be this good. The bourbon in the caramel is subtle, acting like a secret ingredient for awesome. Seriously, I sent most of the batch to work with my husband and I got an actual marriage proposal. Delivered by my husband. By the time they were gone, people were offering to drive seven hours to snag some. So they're pretty delicious.

I started with this recipe for cranberry orange rolls from Smitten Kitchen for the dough. I kind of winged it when it came to quantities of brown sugar, cinnamon, pecans and caramel to use since I never intended to post the recipe. So I had to make them again in order to double-check quantities and rise times. Twenty-four cinnamon rolls in two days. Whoopee! Now that's what I call wild.

You'll probably need a glass of milk or cup of coffee to go with these. Or, you know, you could just go with bourbon. I suspect I can guess what Shari would say about that.


Bourbon Caramel Pecan Cinnamon Buns
adapted from Smitten Kitchen and Food & Wine
Makes: 12 buns
Total Time: 5-6 hours (1 hour hands on time), can be refrigerated overnight for morning baking

Dough
4 large egg yolks
1 large whole egg
1/4 cup granulated sugar
6 tablespoons butter, melted, plus additional to grease pan
3/4 cup buttermilk (I used powdered buttermilk: 3 tablespoons added to 3/4 cup of 2% milk)
3 3/4 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting counter
1 packet instant dry yeast
1 1/4 teaspoons coarse or kosher salt
1 teaspoon oil for bowl

Topping
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup water
1/2 tablespoon light corn syrup
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/4 cup bourbon (or whiskey, or rye)

Filling
1 1/2 tablespoons butter, softened
3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1 cup chopped pecans, 4 tablespoons reserved

1) To start the dough, in the bottom of the bowl of a stand mixer, whisk the yolks, whole egg, sugar, melted butter and buttermilk.

2) Add 2 cups of the flour along with the yeast and salt; stir until evenly moistened. Switch to the dough hook and add the remaining 1 3/4 cups flour and let the dough hook knead the mixture on low speed for 5 to 7 minutes. The dough should be soft and moist, but not overly sticky.

3) Scrape the dough into a large, lightly oiled bowl and cover it with plastic wrap. Let dough rise at room temperature until doubled, which will take between 2 and 2 1/2 hours.

4) While the dough rises, make the caramel. In a heavy-bottomed medium saucepan, bring the sugar, water and corn syrup to a boil over high heat. Cook until the sugar is dissolved. Continue cooking, without stirring, until it turns golden, about 8 minutes. Remove from the heat and whisk in the cream. It will boil up like crazy. Let cool for 1 minute, then stir in the bourbon. Bring the mixture to a boil over moderate heat and cook, stirring, for 1 minute. Let the caramel sauce cool.

5) To prepare the filling, in a small bowl, combine the brown sugar, cinnamon and pecans, reserving 4 tablespoons pecans.

6) To assemble the buns, butter two 9-inch cake pans and line with parchment paper, then butter the paper as well.

7) Turn the risen dough out onto a floured work surface and roll it into a rectangle that is 18 inches wide (the side nearest to you) and 12 or so inches long. Spread the dough with the softened butter using a knife or spatula. Sprinkle it with the brown sugar mixture.

8) Roll the dough into a tight, 18-inch long spiral. Using a sharp serrated knife, very, very gently saw the log into 1 1/2 inch sections; you should get 12. Don't press down with the knife or you'll squish the spirals.

9) Pour 1/2 cup of caramel in each cake pan and scatter with 2 of the reserved tablespoons of pecans in each pan. This is my rule with making stuff that has nuts in it: for allergy purposes, when I can, I always put some on top so people know what they're getting.

10) Arrange the buns in your cake pans. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise for 2 hours on the counter or refrigerate overnight (up to 16 hours).

11) To bake the buns, if they've been refrigerated, take your buns out of the fridge 30 minutes before you'd like to bake them, to allow them to warm up slightly. Heat your oven to 350 degrees. Bake your buns until they're puffed and golden (the internal temperature should read 190 degrees), 20-25 minutes.

12) Transfer pan to a cooling rack and let cool 5 minutes. Invert the pans onto the cooling rack. If any of the caramel gets trapped in bunless corners, just scrape it up while it's warm and spread it back on the inverted buns. Allow to cool for 5 more minutes. Serve warm.