Chick Chat, Group Post

Chick Chat + Giveaway: Libby Klein

The Chicks are so peepin’ excited to welcome Libby Klein back to the coop! Fun, funny, and all kinds of awesome, Libby is adored by, well, everyone for her kindness, wit, and fabulous books. Today, she’s pulling from her own life to whip up a tale as old as time: baking competition outrage. Read then comment for a chance to win a copy of Silent Nights Are Murder.

Take it away, Libby!

Nothing says Christmas like competition. At least that’s Aunt Ginny’s philosophy. In Silent Nights Are Murder, Aunt Ginny enters the Cape May Senior Center’s Holiday Bake Off even though she suspects it’s the Director’s cheap way of getting free food for the Christmas party. She does it to take down the reigning Queen who always wins first place because her fudge contains a generous amount of booze. Like seriously – don’t light a match too close to the plate. When Aunt Ginny finds an old family recipe with an unusual secret ingredient and she’s sure her entry will take home the blue ribbon. It’s so secret that she won’t even tell Poppy what she has planned.

My friends concocted a similar plan to the Senior Center Director when they suggested we do a cookie swap one Christmas. I made one of my family recipes that had been passed down for generations, lovingly crafted from the finest ingredients. They brought refrigerated slice and bake and Chips Ahoy. That was when I saw their cookie swap for the sneaky ruse it really was. So, the following year I suggested we make it a competition. With prizes. Including a Gingerbread Man who would be inscribed with the winner’s name in permanent marker. And the winner would keep him on display for a year until the next competition.

Suddenly these ladies were all about baking. Cookbooks were consulted. The internet was scoured. The cookies that showed up were works of art. Sometimes literally. The party grew until we had so many participants we had to break into teams. The competition got heated on more than one occasion. But meanwhile I’m in the kitchen packing the Tupperware – keeping y’alls cookies – so it was win-win for me.

I understand what Aunt Ginny was going through. I’ve not been lucky at competitions. There is one annual Fall event I’ve been involved in that always leaves me with a bitter taste in my mouth. No matter how well I bring my A game, I leave disappointed. I once entered French pastries filled with Crème Pâtissière made with hand scraped Tahitian vanilla beans and lost to a Death by Chocolate dessert made out of a boxed cake, instant pudding, and cool whip. I was stunned. I mean – excuse me, which one of us almost went to culinary school? That’s right. It was me.

There was one time, back in the day, when I entered a recipe competition through the local paper. I sent my recipe for Banana Custard Pie made with a shortbread cookie crust and that Crème Pâtissière I mentioned above. Time went on and I’d forgotten all about it. Until the call came in telling me that I’d won! I don’t even know who the competition was. It might have been boxed cake lady. Taste is subjective and I’d finally found my judge. They put my picture in the paper, something that I was very shy about, so I told no one. Then one of my friends showed up with a stack of papers and handed them out to all within reach. I should have made sure the Fall event judges each got a copy.

Readers, tell us about a baking competition you’ve entered, witnessed, judged, or enjoyed the sweet rewards thereof for a chance to win Silent Nights Are Murder.

About the Book:

Despite her best efforts, gluten-free baker Poppy McAllister finds herself confounded by a case of murder this Christmas in the latest installment of this delightful culinary B&B mystery series!

Ever since Thanksgiving, when an engagement ring in a velvet box—and no gift tag—was left behind, Poppy and her pals have been left with an unsolved mystery. But at least this mystery isn’t the kind that involves murder. That all changes when the body of a fish supplier is discovered in the kitchen of her ex’s restaurant—and he’s frozen, not fresh.

For once, it’s not Poppy who tripped over the corpse, yet she can’t escape being drawn in since the victim has a note taped to him reading Get Poppy. Figures—an engagement ring isn’t labeled, but the dead guy is addressed to her. Now, while Aunt Ginny plans a tree-trimming party and pressures Poppy to decode a mysterious old diary, the amateur sleuth is asked to “unofficially” go undercover at the restaurant to help the police. Until then, the only crime Poppy had been dealing with was the cat Figaro’s repeated thefts of bird ornaments from the tree; now it looks like it’s going to be a murder-y Christmas after all . . .

About Libby

Libby Klein graduated Lower Cape May Regional High School in the 80s. Her classes revolved mostly around the culinary sciences and theater, with the occasional nap in Chemistry. She writes culinary cozy mysteries from her Northern Virginia office while trying to keep her naughty cat Figaro off her keyboard. Libby was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease that prevents her from eating gluten without exploding. Because of her love for cake, she now creates gluten free goodies and includes the recipes in her Cape May based Poppy McAllister series. Most of her hobbies revolve around eating, and travel, and eating while traveling. She insists she can find her way to any coffee shop anywhere in the world, even while blindfolded. Follow all of her nonsense at www.libbykleinbooks.com and buy her books right here.

38 thoughts on “Chick Chat + Giveaway: Libby Klein”

  1. Hi Libby!

    Glad to have you here. Sigh! It’s so hard to put your all into something and not come out the winner. I’ve never entered any kind of baking/cooking competition – I just don’t have those skills. I did watch a cupcake decorating competition during a ladies conference. The cupcakes were amazingly decorative. And tasty! I am still in awe at what people are able to create.

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  2. I’ve never entered a baking contest, but did enter a crocheted afghan in a county fair many years ago. It did win a ribbon, can’t remember if it was 2nd or 3rd place. A friend said it would have won 1st place if it was red, white & blue instead of orange, white & yellow! I just went to this year’s fair with a couple of crafty friends & we’re planning to enter a few items next year!

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  3. I haven’t ever entered a baking competition. But Libby’s fun stories of competition brought back fond memories of the flip side of the coin. The neighborhood I grew up in was extremely close. There were picnics on Memorial Day, Independence Day, and Labor Day. Christmas brought one of my favorite traditions, the Cookie Exchange! It wasn’t a competition. It was just a chance to get together and visit without kids. And at the end of the evening you went home with some of everyone’s cookies. My brothers, sister and I always looked forward to it. We always mobbed our mom and barely gave her a chance to get in the door before we started eating the cookies lol.

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  6. Libby, hilarious! And your creations are fantastic.

    I’ve only entered one contest and it was a few years ago. The local public radio station hosts a pie contest at UCLA every year. Attendees get tickets to sample 3. There are a variety of categories. I entered the Sugar High Pie recipe I’d come up with for one of my books – I can’t even remember which. You had to make your own crust, which I’d never done before. When I got to the event and had to cut my pie into pieces, I discovered my crust was hard as a rock. I needed the strength of a body builder to saw through it.

    Needless to say, I didn’t win.

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  7. I’ve never been much of a baker, since I have little patience with measuring and weighing ingredients. I’m much more of a taste-it-and-add-a-dash-more-of-this-and-that kind of cook. But when I was in cooking school I had to take a baking course, during which I learned all sorts of fun stuff, such as those choux paste and crème anglaise swans pictured above.

    Thanks so much for visiting the Chicks today, dear Libby! (But now I’m hungry for cookies, and it’s only 8am here….)

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  9. At a former job we had a pie baking contest. I won the “pie baked by a guy” category. Pretty relieved since I do have Baker as a last name. I used the Key Lime Pie recipe from Joanne Fluke’s book. (No need to enter me in the giveaway.)

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  10. Hestia here,

    Libby, it’s been a bad week for me, and this post made me smile.

    I’ve never entered a baking competition (hmm, bucket list anyone?), but I do silly competitions at potlucks, office events, cookie exchanges. Usually I end up near the top of the on-the-fly voting.

    Speaking of, I have a a recipe for you, that I think you could adjust to your desires. A chocolate cookie reminiscent of a cherry cordial. Tag me if you want it. The hubbs loves it (and now you know who I am) 😂

    Reminding myself to buy a copy of the new book for my MIL for Christmas.

    I challenge ALL the chicks to a cookie contest for a Christmas blog post (if it’s not too late. Or for early next year. Send me your recipe you think will win. I will make them all and announce the winner. I am a cookie connoisseur.
    Consider the gauntlet thrown down!

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  11. I won an award for the San Jose Mercury Newspaper’s cake decorating contest in middle school. We had to decorate half of a round cake. I made it into the Man in the Moon. I also won the Bank of America Outstanding Achievement Award in high school for sewing a quilt, a matching hope chest cover and a quilted soccer ball pillow.

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    2. I haven’t entered a baking contest either, Jen, but I love a good cookie exchange!

      Libby, I’ve never won a food oriented anything contest, but at our last family Christmas in September gathering, I was awarded “Best Mother.” It came with a trophy and everything! It proudly gathers dust next to my husband’s “Best Grill Man of 1978” from his stint at McDonalds. We are truly a power couple.

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  13. This is so great, Libby, just like having you here. ❤

    This post is a hoot and brings back memories of all of my cookie-baking escapades. Mine are mostly fails, and my best friend and I once spent an afternoon lauhing ourselves silly over our creations. (I blame the strong aroma of vanilla.)

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  18. I haven’t entered any baking competitions but many years ago my supervisor at work loved pumpkin roll so he told the ladies in our work area that he would give a ‘day off of your choosing’ as a prize in a pumpkin roll contest. The ladies were all excited about the contest and one of them told me that I would win because she thought that my recipe was the best. I assured her that I would not enter the contest because there was no way possible that the supervisor could deliver on the prize (union shop, seniority rules PTO). Word got around and the contest ended before it began.

    I can’t wait to read about Aunt Ginny’s experience!

    Laura

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