Black Pepper Cookies

Today's recipe comes from my new book, Finders Keepers, which is due to be released next Tuesday. There's the pretty cover I just got for it. Isn't it yummy? Well, so are these cookies which one of my heroes (yes, I have two. we're greedy! ) bakes for the other characters in this excerpt here:

Aldo was baking cookies. Spicy black-pepper-cinnamon cookies—Davis’s favorite. He rolled the dough thin, then cut them out using the maple-leaf cookie cutter Sally and Davis had brought him back from Vancouver. Then he decorated them with sanding sugar in a variety of colors, some in plain red or green in a nod to the season, some swirled with autumn shades of burgundy and gold, others frosted just at the tips in blue and white, as though they’d been touched by an ice fairy. Maple leaves weren’t particularly Christmasy, he supposed, but he didn’t care. He liked the way the cookies looked, liked the way the edges browned first, like real leaves would. Besides, he doubted anyone else here would even notice what shape cookies he made…not unless he used the pornographic cookie cutters he’d received one year as a gag gift. Too bad he wasn’t in the mood to play around like that. Not when he was the only one in the house who wasn’t getting any.

That was a big part of the reason he was baking, come to think of it—because he had nothing better to do. Or no one better to do. No one at all to do, for that matter—but let’s not go there. And because baking cookies was part of what he’d always done at this time of year.

Of course, in years past he’d baked mostly because Davis, who had a hellacious sweet tooth, couldn’t get enough of them. But Sally had always liked his cookies as well, and anything that made her happy, anything that made her feel like the world hadn’t ended with Davis’s death was a good thing. They both needed to feel like that. Besides, the weather had turned cold and it had been snowing for the better part of the afternoon, so going for another hike was out unless he wanted to end up with hypothermia. He could either bake or spend all his time curled up in front of the fire thinking gloomy thoughts. He’d done more than enough of that in the past few days.

Mmm. There's no better time for cookies than Christmas and these cookies are guaranteed to warm your heart--if not the rest of you as well! So here's the recipe. Enjoy!

Ingredients

• 1 stick of butter
• 1 cup of sugar
• 1 egg
• ½ cup honey
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 2 teaspoons ground ginger
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 2 tablespoons ground walnuts
• 2 teaspoons ground cardamom
• 1 teaspoons ground black pepper
• 4 cups all-purpose flour
• Multi-colored sanding sugar

Directions

1. Cream butter and sugar together
2. Add the rest of the ingredients, except the flour
3. Add flour—just until dough stops sticking
4. Wrap dough in plastic and let chill
5. Preheat oven to 350F
6. Roll dough thin (1/8 inch) on lightly floured
7. cut into shapes
8. Arrange on baking sheets lined with parchment paper and sprinkle with colored sugar, if desired
9. Bake until golden at the edges, approximately 15 minutes

Please visit my fellow Tasty Tuesday authors ~ Changing the world one word and recipe at a time:

For the Chocolate Enriched Diet Plan by Selena Robins

Cranberry Apple and Sausage Stuffing by Moira Keith

Smoking Bishop Punch by Renee Wildes

Servings by Nancy Lauzon

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Sometimes finding what you want is the easy part... 

Caleb is a bionic soldier with little-to-no memory of his past. He's traded pieces of himself for some very highly classified, high-tech hardware, but he's lost far more than he's gained. He's seeking the truth. About himself. About his past. About those missing memories. 

Aldo's an undercover cop who just might have the answers to Caleb's questions. But Aldo's already lost one love too many. If it turns out Caleb's the man Aldo thinks he is, how can he even think about letting him get away from him a second time?

Then there's Sally, she's an ER physician who used to be married to Aldo's late partner, Davis. Although she does her best to hide it, Sally's not really coping very well with widowhood. She cares deeply about both Caleb and Aldo, and she knows they both care about her--one as a lover, the other as a friend--but she needs something more. If the truth about the men's shared past comes to light, she could lose them both. Along with her last, best reason to continue living.

This holiday season, chance will bring these three together and give them an opportunity to help one another find what they each want most. But every gift comes with a price. And keeping what they've found once they've found it? Yeah, that's gonna be the hard part all right. 

Available December 2012 at Loose Id. 

Read Another Excerpt Here