Here’s a new twist on an old favorite that will leave you longing for those good old days when family holiday get-togethers were spent hanging with your cousins, and playing with your new toys at your grandparents’ house. Not only perfect for the dessert table, these holiday-inspired muffins also make wonderful gifts. Fill a festive tin from the dollar store to create the perfect present for teachers, baby-sitters, hair-stylists, and neighbors.
Christmas Pudding Muffins
1⅓ cups all-purpose flour
⅔ cup brown sugar
1 tsp. baking powder
2 eggs
½ cup unsalted butter, melted
½ cup milk
1¼ cups mincemeat
6 glace cherries, halved
PREHEAT oven to 350° F.
INSERT cupcake liners into a 12-cup muffin pan.
WHISK flour with sugar and baking powder in a large bowl.
WHISK eggs with butter and milk in another bowl, then stir into flour mixture.
STIR in mincemeat.
SPOON batter into prepared muffin tin.
BAKE until a skewer inserted in a muffin comes out clean, 40 to 45 minutes.
COOL completely in pan.
Glaze
1 cup icing sugar, powdered sugar
2 tbsp. milk
Glace cherries
WHISK icing sugar with milk. Brush muffins with glaze and top with glace cherries.
While you’re waiting for your muffins to cool, take a seat in your favorite cozy chair and crack open one of my books. May I suggest a visit to Fairy Falls? I guarantee these books will take you on a journey far away from the busyness of the holiday season.
Fairy Falls was bores-ville from the get-go. Then the animals started talking...
The Fairy Falls Animal Shelter is in trouble. Money trouble. It’s up to an old calico cat named Whiskey—a shelter cat who has mastered the skill of observation—to find a new human pack leader so that their home will be saved. With the help of Nobel, the leader of the shelter dogs, the animals set out to use the ancient skill of telepathy to contact any human who bothers to listen to them. Unfortunately for fifteen-year-old Meagan Walsh, she hears them, loud and clear.
Forced to live with her Aunt Izzy in the safe and quiet town of Fairy Falls, Meagan is caught stealing and is sentenced to do community hours at the animal shelter where her aunt works. Realizing Meagan can hear her, Whiskey realizes that Meagan just might have the pack leader qualities necessary to save the animals. Avoiding Whiskey and the rest of shelter animals becomes impossible for Meagan, so she finally gives in and promises to help them. Meagan, along with her newfound friends, Reid Robertson and Natalie Knight, discover that someone in Fairy Falls is not only out to destroy the shelter, but the animals as well. Can Meagan convince her aunt and co-workers that the animals are in danger? If she fails, then all the animals’ voices will be silenced forever.
BUY LINKS
The only witness left to testify against an unsolved crime in Fairy Falls isn’t a person…
City born and bred, Hart Stewart possesses the gift of psychometry—the psychic ability to discover facts about an event or person by touching inanimate objects associated with them. Since his mother’s death, seventeen-year-old Hart has endured homelessness, and has learned ways to keep his illiteracy under wraps. He eventually learns of a great-aunt living in Fairy Falls, and decides to leave the only life he’s ever known for an uncertain future.
Diana MacGregor lives in Fairy Falls. Her mother was a victim of a senseless murder. Only Diana’s unanswered questions and her grief keeps her going, until Hart finds her mother’s lost ring and becomes a witness to her murder.
Through Hart’s psychic power, Diana gains hope for justice. Their investigation leads them into the corrupt world threatening Fairy Falls. To secure the town’s future, Hart and Diana must join forces to uncover the shocking truth, or they risk losing the true essence of Fairy Falls forever.
