Friday Recipe: White Chocolate Valentine's Cookies

This week, in honor of Valentine's Day, I think cookies are in order! And besides, who doesn't like a cookie? Exactly. These are easy, trust me, because who wants a difficult cookie recipe? Now you can use the pre-made ones in the store, but I always have problems rolling them out to get a shape that isn't lopsided-slightly-round.Your choice. This is from Food Network.

Prep Time: 20 min
Inactive Prep Time: 2 hr 0 min
Cook Time: 8 min
Level: Easy
Serves: About 3 dozen

Ingredients
Ingredients for 1 recipe Sugar Cookie Dough, at room temperature
1 teaspoon red gel paste food coloring
4 ounces white chocolate, melted
Pink gel paste food coloring

Directions
Start with Alton's Sugar Cookie dough recipe.

Equipment: 2 1/2-by-3-inch heart-shaped cookie cutter

• Sift together flour, baking powder, and salt. Place butter and sugar in the bowl of a standing mixer and beat until light in color. Add the red food coloring, egg and milk and beat to combine. Proceed with recipe and chill for 2 hours.
• Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.
• Sprinkle a work surface and rolling pin with confectioner's sugar and roll out dough to 1/4-inch thick. Move dough frequently to prevent it from sticking and add more confectioner's sugar to the work surface and rolling pin as needed. With a 2 1/2-by-3-inch heart-shaped cookie cutter, cut 36 hearts, re-rolling dough as needed. Place at least 1 inch apart on parchment-lined baking sheets, and bake until cookies are set but not brown, about 7-8 minutes. Let cool on the pan slightly before transferring to a rack to cool completely.
• To make striped Valentine hearts, transfer half of the melted chocolate to a disposable pastry bag, twist the end closed, and using scissors, snip a very small opening in the tip. Starting at the bottom of the cookie, apply gentle pressure to the pastry bag and drizzle lines of chocolate back and forth over the cookie, moving up as the chocolate flows. Allow chocolate to set before eating or packaging.
• To make polka-dot Valentine hearts, color the remaining chocolate with pink food coloring to the desired shade of pink. Transfer to a disposable pastry bag, twist the end closed, and using scissors, snip a very small opening in the tip. Hold the pastry bag perpendicular to the cookie and apply gentle pressure to pipe a dot of chocolate. Release the pressure on the bag until the flow stops, and continue over the surface of the cookie, piping different sized dots, if desired. Gently tap the cookie to settle the chocolate and allow to set before eating or packaging.

Cook's Note: If gel paste food colorings are not available, add liquid food coloring until you achieve desired color. For pink, simply use a little red.

Happy (Meaningful) Valentine's Day!

If you do a quick search for Valentine's Day, you'll see that a flower shop is #1 closely followed by the obligatory Wiki article, the movie on IMDB, and a History Channel article. But an article I stumbled upon on Huffington Post may be the best thing out there. This line ought to convince you: I see time and again how the pressure to conform to cultural ideals of romance and the emphasis on consumerism can leave us feeling depleted both financially and emotionally.

So instead of flowers or chocolates, how about:
Valentine's Day is also an excellent time to think more expansively about love and how we can give back to our communities. Instead of buying traditional gifts, couples can choose to support a non-profit that embodies their hopes for the world. If you want create and sustain a harmonious relationship, you could consider making a tax-deductible donation to a domestic violence shelter on behalf of love for all.

This Valentine's Day consider helping another. It can be with a kind word, a little less impatience in line, a monetary donation to a favorite or new charity, or even spending time--valuable, meaningful, alone time--with loved ones.

Weekly #Goals

I'm happy to say that this past weekend was super productive!

I finished Forbidden Road: A Havenbrook Ménage Series. By finished, I mean it's done, but certainly not edited. In fact, I think I changed one of the hero's eye color half-way through. Must fix that! And I'm positive I managed to mess up another defining characteristic or two for all 3 of my characters. Plus I need to change the name of a secondary character to one that does not begin with a G. Garret is a great hero's name, but Grant doesn't match the secondary character needs to go.

This week I want to take a couple days and not think about this story but then start to edit it. I love this book and the concept I have for the next 2 in the trilogy, but need to flesh out book 2 a bit.

Also on my weekly goal list is more exercise. I've slacked due to this plaguing cold, but need to get back into it. Just because it's freezing out there doesn't mean I shouldn't exercise! I'm told it helps with your body heat, but my body didn't get that memo. As I type this, my fingers are blue. Literally. I need a nice cup of hot tea to get me through this day. At least one.

Have a great week! And remember: Some people strengthen the society just by being the kind of people they are. John W. Gardner

#CelebratingValentine @readingromance Love is in the air

Valentine's Day...you either love it or hate it. Let's face it, it's now a multi-billion dollar industry and not going away any time soon.

But is it really all about flowers? No! It's about the romance.

What's your favorite? Flowers or dinner out? A quiet night where your honey does the dishes and takes out the trash? Chocolates hidden in your car by your sweetie or that single rose by a secret admirer?

Tell me either your favorite memory or what you wish for for this Valentine's Day!  Leave a comment for a chance to win!

#CelebratingValentine

Share a Valentine's Day moment!

This Giveaway Hop was organized by Reading Romances!

What you can win here: $10 Amazon or Barnes and Noble gift card

Number of winners: 5

Open to (INT, US or US/CAN): INT

How to enter: Leave a comment either here or on my Twitter account

#BookBlitz: 3 by Julie Hilden

What's the greatest sacrifice you would make for love?

Maya and Ilan have an unusual marriage: Maya will tolerate Ilan's chronic infidelity as long as he includes her in the affairs. Initially, Maya finds these unorthodox threesomes as arousing as they are disturbing - but when her writing career takes off and she becomes more independent, Ilan feels threatened, and opts for sexual experimentation of another kind: one that plays on Maya's fear and ultimately threatens her life.

Meanwhile, Maya is drawn into a relationship with a fateful third character. When her new liaison begins to mirror her marriage to Ilan, Maya discovers that her lover, seemingly a stranger, knows far more about her past than she has revealed.

Brave, daring and deeply erotic: 3 is a compelling chronicle of obsession and power.

'Julie Hilden does what few writers can dare to. 3 is smart, sexy, strange and impossible to put down.' Dani Shapiro

 

Available from:

Amazon UK

Amazon

Excerpt:

It is the first Saturday in August when I walk up to the porch of the summerhouse and see them. I am supposed to be in the city this weekend but my interview is canceled, the actor called out of town. I see them through the fan propped in the window, through the transparent blur of its blades.

She is moving on top of him slowly, with such concentration that though she faces the window, though she could look right at me, she does not. I am only a few feet away from her. I have never seen her before.

I watch her glossy brown hair shift on her shoulders, I watch her empty eyes as she moves on him with calculation, with slack lips, with nipples so erect that the areolae wrinkle around them – as she moves with such pleasure, really, that who could hate her in this moment?

To love her, to want to be her, to want to touch her, yes. But not to hate her, not in this.

I watch her, and watch, too, a sliver of Ilan’s narrow chest beneath her, its pattern of hair that breaks across his sternum. I can see the necklace sliding on his chest as they move, the tiny

silver hand slipping back and forth, its touch faster and jerkier than Ilan’s own smooth caresses – than the touch of his hand moving on her downy back.

For perhaps five minutes, I don’t say a word. It seems a weird privilege: here is the life I don’t see, the life that goes on without me. I watch them as a ghost watches the living.

Then I say his name slowly, just audibly. She starts and looks around wildly. When she looks through the fan and sees me, she gasps.

Ilan does not start at all; not a flicker. But he lifts his head, sees me, and winces, and just like that he lifts her off him and at the same time off the bed.

‘You have to go now,’ he tells her.

She dresses insolently slowly. Her blouse fastens in the back with a line of ties – it is really just a square of cloth that settles on her breasts – and she loops each of the ties into a perfect bow.

‘Fuck you,’ she tells Ilan. ‘You fucking liar. I deserve better than you.’ Righteous anger, but controlled.

She and I brush past each other. It’s as if she’s preempted me with her anger; I want to shout at Ilan too, curse at him, but I don’t have the heart. ‘I should leave too,’ is all I say.

‘You can’t leave me, Maya. I love you.’

‘Was this the first time – the only time? I need to know.’

‘It started in college,’ he admits, ‘a few weeks after I met you.’

I shiver. I never expected to be chosen by myself, for myself alone. It had felt wrong – unlike me – to be chosen. Now, hearing this, I feel only a sickening familiarity, not surprise.

‘It never meant anything,’ he assures me. ‘I felt awful about it. I don’t know where it comes from. I thought, with enough therapy, I’d talk myself out of it. But all I do is confess, I don’t change.

Look, can we at least sit down? I feel like any moment, you’re going to leave.’

‘Okay, but I’m not promising to stay.’

I sit down on the rattan couch. He stands behind me. I lean back and reach my head up to him – like a rabbit in a cage straining to sip from its water dispenser, the single round, hanging drop. And he leans down, princelike, to kiss me.

Then he starts to touch me. He slips his hands down my jeans, his fingers splayed, rubbing my clitoris insistently, with the slightest pressure. I moan quietly, move against him.

‘Don’t I know you?’ he says. ‘I know exactly what you want, don’t I?’

It agitates me as he rubs and rubs, softly, softly. He touches me the way he learned from me years ago – the way I touch myself. He studied it. The detail of his knowledge of me devastates. If I were to close my eyes, I could confuse his touch with my own.

But as he nuzzles into my shoulder, I smell sex in his hair and break away from him.

‘Would you at least shower?’ I demand.

‘No, you love that. Tell me you love it.’

In seconds my jeans are gone, my shirt is gone. He holds on to me, won’t let me leave.

‘It’s so soft,’ he says as he touches me. ‘You’re so wet.’

He gets a little bleat out of me as he rubs. Then I clamp my mouth shut. Ah, but then I relax it. I begin to breathe in the sex smell in his hair; I begin almost to like it.

‘Maya. Tell me you want this.’

‘I want it.’

‘I knew you did.’ And I do. And it is hours, then, before we can stop.

About the Author:

Julie Hilden graduated from Harvard, and earned a law degree at Yale and an MA in creative writing from Cornell. After several years of practicing law, she has now turned to writing full time. Her first book, a memoir entitled The Bad Daughter, was published by Algonquin Books, and she has also written for Slate magazine. She lives in New York City.

Other Modern Erotic Classics available:

The Houdini Girl by Martyn Bedford

Lie to Me by Tamara Faith Berger

The Phallus of Osiris by Valentina Cilescu

Kiss of Death by Valentina Cilescu

The Flesh Constrained by Cleo Cordell

The Flesh Endures by Cleo Cordell

Hogg by Samuel R. Delany

The Tides of Lust by Samuel R. Delany

Sad Sister by Florence Dugas

The Ties That Bind by Vanessa Duriés

Dark Ride by Kent Harrington

3 by Julie Hilden

Neptune & Surf by Marilyn Jaye Lewis

Violent Silence by Paul Mayersberg

Homme Fatale by Paul Mayersberg

The Agency by David Meltzer

Burn by Michael Perkins

Dark Matter by Michael Perkins

Evil Companions by Michael Perkins

Beautiful Losers by Remittance Girl

Meeting the Master by Elissa Wald

Lucy Felthouse and her new anthology-The Military Wife

The Military Wife by Lucy Felthouse

Three hot and romantic military tales from the pen of uniform aficionado, Lucy Felthouse.

The Military Wife
Tess’ salacious fantasies about her husband, Aidan, see her through the long periods of time when she doesn’t see him—when he’s away on tour with the Army. The rest of the time, she has to deal with day to day life alone. One day, a dull chore is interrupted by the unexpected arrival of her husband, and things quickly hot up in their kitchen, and beyond.

Passing Out Passion
When Christina attends her brother’s passing out parade with her parents, she’s full of pride at his achievement. What she’s not expecting, though, is to bump into old flame Phil Ashdown. They didn’t part on good terms and the atmosphere between them is awkward. But when they’re forced into conversation, it turns out that all those years ago, there was a misunderstanding. One that can very easily be put right.

Double Vision
Becky’s a military wife with a uniform fetish. She loves nothing more than having fun in the bedroom with her squaddie husband, where they share and act out many of their fantasies. However, there’s one fantasy that she’s never divulged, as it breaks their rule about bring other people into their sex life. One day, though, Becky decides to bite the bullet and tell Paul everything. She never expects him to make her fantasy come true. But then, Paul’s a very resourceful man.

Available from:

Amazon UK

Amazon

All Romance

Excerpt:

Tess grumbled to herself as she heaved the shopping bags out of the boot of her car. It was a pain in the arse having to do this all by herself. Yet she’d been through this more than once, and it was going to be for the foreseeable future. May as well just get on with it and shut up moaning, she thought.

Just as she got to her front door and started fumbling for her key, risking dropping all her bags in the process, a voice said, “Let me help you with that.”

Tess dropped the bags.

She whirled to face the owner of the voice, unadulterated joy on her face.

“Aidan!” she shrieked. And, without caring who could be watching, she hurled herself into her husband’s arms. Luckily, Aidan had been fully expecting this kind of greeting and had braced himself. Supporting his wife’s bottom with his hands as her legs clasped around his waist, he felt himself stiffening almost immediately. You couldn’t blame him though, it had been months since he’d been home.

As she took his face in her hands, Tess was almost teary with happiness. She leaned in for a kiss that would show her husband exactly how much she’d missed him. Tightening her legs around him, she smiled into his mouth as she felt his erection nudging against her bottom.

What seemed like hours later, the couple finally came up for air. Surveying the damage around them, Tess made a quick decision.

“Grab the other bags while I dump this lot in the kitchen. Then lock the door behind you and get upstairs.”

Grinning, Aidan moved to do as he was told. Tess scrabbled items back into carrier bags and rushed into their home to put them down. Now the kitchen looked like a bomb had hit it. But she didn’t care. Her man was home. Smiling to herself, she turned as Aidan came in with the rest of the bags. She gestured to the floor and he put them down.

“Corporal Scott reporting for duty ma’am,” he said, snapping her a smart salute.

Bastard, she thought, he knows what it does to me when he goes all military on me. We’ll be lucky to make it upstairs at this rate.

Tess drank in every inch of her husband. The climate in Afghanistan had given him a decent tan, but of course he hadn’t been on holiday. He’d been fighting a war, and she was eternally grateful that he’d come back to her in one piece. He was still wearing his combats, with the regulation boots, but no headgear. He looked hot.

“Come here, soldier,” she said, crooking a finger, “and kiss me.”

About the Author:

Lucy Felthouse is a very busy woman! She writes erotica and erotic romance in a variety of subgenres and pairings, and has over seventy publications to her name, with many more in the pipeline. These include Best Bondage Erotica 2012 and 2013, and Best Women's Erotica 2013. Another string to her bow is editing, and she has edited and co-edited a number of anthologies. She owns Erotica For All, and is book editor for Cliterati. Find out more at http://www.lucyfelthouse.co.uk. Join her on Facebook and Twitter, and subscribe to her newsletter at: http://eepurl.com/gMQb9

Friday Recipe: Baked Potato Soup

I know, the name itself sounds odd. Baked potato and soup? Or as soup? I've had a ham and potato casserole, a delicious recipe from my mom that's cheesy and creamy. But this soup is thin, like a broth (well, yes...like chicken broth).

It wasn't bad. I don't think I'd make it again, but it was an interesting experiment and I'm glad I gave it a try. My problem was that I wanted something thicker, not so chicken broth-y.

Prep Time: 15 Minutes (try 30-45 but then I had to race  out for chicken bouillon) Cook Time: 7 Hours 15 Minutes

Ready In: 7 Hours 30 Minutes Servings: 4 (Not a lot for all this food!)

Ingredients:

10 red potatoes, cut into cubes 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour 3/4 cup real bacon bits 1 small red onion, chopped 1 clove garlic, minced 2 tablespoons chicken bouillon granules 1 tablespoon ranch dressing mix

2 teaspoons dried parsley 1 teaspoon seasoned salt 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper 3 cups water 1 cup half-and-half 1/2 cup shredded Cheddar cheese, or to taste 1/4 cup chopped green onion, or to taste

Directions:

1.	Put potatoes in the bottom of your slow cooker crock. Scatter flour over the potatoes; toss to coat.
2.	Scatter bacon bits, red onion, garlic, chicken bouillon, ranch dressing mix, parsley, seasoned salt, and black pepper over the potatoes.
3.	Pour water into the slow cooker.
4.	Cook on Low 7 to 9 hours.
5.	Pour half-and-half into the soup; cook another 15 minutes.
6.	Garnish with Cheddar cheese and green onion to serve.

February #goals, #series, and more #menage romance

This month I shall figure out a way to stop time (only for a little while, a few hours at most!) so I can accomplish more. Or possibly sleep more so my waking hours are more productive.

Groundhog Day/Stargate aside, this month is yet another busy one! Who here wishes that just one month would be free from obligations? Or at least limited to maybe a small handful of them?

Setting aside writing time is harder and harder to do, but this month my goals are to finish up a couple stories and get everything ready for publication. I'm so close to finishing my 2 ménage stories that I'd really just like them finished, edited, polished, and done! Plus I have some serious plotting to do for the next books in the series.

• Re-write the ending to Cursed Love: A Wicked Demon Story--I liked the ending when I wrote it but upon second and third read, it needs something a bit more.
• Edit the whole thing once more and have that converted
• Finish Forbidden Road: A Havenbrook Ménage Series
• Edit it, write the synopsis and blurb, and submit it
• Outline and plot Forbidden Love: A Havenbrook Ménage Series
• Outline and plot Forbidden Temptation: A Havenbrook Ménage Series 
• Finish Wicked Seduction: A Victorian Ménage at the Parisian Expostion
• Write blurb and finish cover
• Edit it and have it converted
• Outline and plot The Wallflower's Seduction: A Victorian Ménage at the Parisian Expostion