Karen’s Killer Fixin’s
**AUTHOR SPECIAL**
with JUDITH HUDSON!

Welcome to my Friday bonus feature called Karen’s Killer Fixin’s **Author Special**!! Today, in lieu of one of my own recipes, I’m going to introduce you to a new author who will share one of her favorite recipes. Not only will you and I occasionally learn how to make something new and delicious, but we’ll get a chance to check out some wonderful authors. Introducing author, JUDITH HUDSON, and her favorite recipe for VANIA HUDSON’S CHILDREN’S DELIGHT COOKIES.

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SUMMER OF FORTUNE
Fortune Bay Series Book 1
BY JUDITH HUDSON

Blurb

When life gives you lemons…

Maddie’s making lemonade again. Her absentee ex-husband has swooped in and invited their daughter to live with him for the summer, robbing Maddie of what’s probably their last summer together. Deciding to take advantage of the unexpected freedom, she accepts an offer for her first photography show and leaves the safety of her job at an upscale Seattle gallery for Washington State’s Olympic Mountains, hoping the rustic cabin on Majestic Lake will get her creative juices flowing.

In Fortune Bay, she finds the life she’s always wished for but never thought someone like her could have: inspiration, new friends, and the man and family she’s always dreamed of.

Until her mother shows up in town. Will the secrets of her childhood ruin her chance of happiness, again?

SUMMER OF FORTUNE
Fortune Bay Series Book 1
BY JUDITH HUDSON

Summer of Fortune, the first book in my new romantic women’s fiction series I launching today! (Cue fireworks.)

To celebrate, I’m giving away an eCopy of Summer of Fortune AND the series prequel novella, Lake of Dreams, to one lucky reader. (See Special Giveaway below.)

In each book in the series, a different person moves into the cabin on the lake in Fortune Bay. In Summer of Fortune it’s Maddie, an adult child of an alcoholic mother who has carried the childhood stigma into adulthood. Maddie comes to Fortune Bay to work on her first professional photography show, but finds a lot more than that along the way.

Although the series is not the least bit autobiographical, many incidents from my past do make it into the books, in this case, Children’s Delight Cookies. A memory from my childhood, they wrote themselves into the story as the carrier of the scent of sweet spice that indicates the presence of the ghost of Aunt Augusta who still inhabits the cabin.

Here’s a scene from shortly after Maddie moves in:

Grime coated the windowsills, so she filled a pail with hot soapy water and went to work. Soon the bathroom shone and the fridge sparkled. There was a palpable shift in the atmosphere and she could have sworn the old building heaved a contented sigh.

After washing the pretty mis-matched china, she was wiping down the open kitchen cupboards when she discovered a wooden box on the top shelf. Small enough to sit in the palm of her hand, someone had carved a scene of the lake on the top. She opened the lid and the scent of sweet spices wafted into her nostrils, clearing her head like smelling salts and making her vision strangely focused.

Yellowing recipe cards filled the box, the names written in a spidery hand: Sunday Dinner Blackberry Cake, October Relish, Children’s Delight Cookies. The names—or was it the smell? —conjured visions of a woman in an apron with flour streaked across her cheek like a character in an old movie.

Maddie didn’t have any hand-me-down recipes. Most of hers came from magazines. Her mother Cindy, who never cooked and certainly didn’t own an apron, had spent most of Maddie’s childhood on the couch, watching her soaps with a beer in her hand.

The cookies reappear many times in the story as Maddie gets to know the family of the woman who used to live in the cabin.

All well and good, until I tried my old recipe out on my family and they all agreed—vehemently—that children wouldn’t like the cookies. Raisins and cloves? Too old fashioned.

So my new daughter-in-law Vania, baker extraordinaire, went to work and came up with this new recipe. I have to admit it’s delicious, and still has the spice I needed for the story and, coincidentally, included the peanut butter that Maddie couldn’t live without.

If you too like the idea of an old-fashioned cookie with raisins and cloves, you can find the old recipe on my website at www.judithhudsonauthor.com, under recipes.

But see the new and improved version below!

About Author Judith Hudson…  

While raising her children in a village in the Pacific Northwest, Judith got her fine art degree in painting and photography. Later she combined these interests by writing the Fortune Bay series in which many of the characters, who live in a village in Washington state, are artists of some kind. And some have children. Art imitates life? You decide.

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Links to Judith’s Website, Books, & Social Media:

Welcome to Fortune Bay
www.judithhudsonauthor.com

Lake of Dreams (prequel): http://amzn.to/1thITfU

Summer of Fortune: http://amzn.to/1Ur1DQj

Kobo: 
https://store.kobobooks.com/en-ca/ebook/summer-of-fortune

Barnes and Noble:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/summer-of-fortune-judith-hudson/1123909613?ean=2940153253183

iTunes store:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/summer-of-fortune/id1123701358?mt=11

I hope you enjoy the recipe Judith is sharing with us today on Karen’s Killer Fixin’s. Happy eating!

Karen

P.S. We’re at 264 recipes and counting with this posting. Hope you find some recipes you like. If this is your first visit, please check out past blogs for more Killer Fixin’s. In the right hand column menu, you can even look up past recipes by type. i.e. Desserts, Breads, Beef, Chicken, Soups, Author Specials, etc.

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VANIA HUDSON’S CHILDREN’S DELIGHT COOKIES
[Older version can be found www.judithhudsonauthor.com under Recipes]

Cream:
1 c. butter
1 ¼ c. natural peanut butter

Add:  
¾ c. granulated sugar
1 1/3 c. brown sugar

Beat in:
2 eggs
2 tsp. vanilla

Mix dry ingredients in a separate bowl:

2 tsp. cinnamon
2 tsp. nutmeg
2 ¼ c. all purpose flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt (if you use unsalted butter use more salt)
¾ c. quick oats

Mix dry ingredients into egg and butter mixture, and add chocolate chips.

(No chocolate chips in the old version!)

¾ c. chocolate chips

Bake at 375° for 10 minutes.

Now, Vania says it is better to bake one pan at a time, and to form the cookies into little towers, so they spread into perfect circles with a nice crackle pattern on top. And hers do look lovely. I shaped mine with a fork and they tasted just as good. Your choice.

Thanks for sharing my book launch cookie celebration!

Judith Hudson

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**SPECIAL GIVEAWAY**: Judith is giving away an eCopy of Summer of Fortune AND the series prequel novella, Lake of Dreams, to one lucky reader who comments on her Karen’s Killer Fixin’s blog. Thank you, Judith, for sharing your story and favorite recipe with us.

Don’t miss the chance to read this book!