Guest Post

Guest Chick + Giveaway: Keenan Powell

The Chicks are over the moon and clucking with delight to host Guest Chick Keenan Powell. The award-winning author of the acclaimed Maureen Gould Legal Thriller series, Powell is an active member of the crime fiction community, an attorney, and a talented baker. Today, she shares some sweet insights and a chance to win her wonderful latest release.

How the Cookie Crumbled AND A GIVEAWAY!

Thanks, Kathleen and the Chicks, for inviting me to guest!

In the summer of 1981, I craved chocolate chip cookies. I decided to spend an entire month eating nothing but store-bought chocolate chip cookies to determine which was best. My roommates were appalled that I would eat nothing but chocolate chip cookies. For a while, I thought I might have a brain tumor that was affecting my appetite. Turns out I was pregnant.

I ate Keebler’s, Chips Ahoy, Grandma’s, and I don’t know what else. By far the tastiest was Famous Amos. Buttery. Chocolatey. Crispy. Yum. No small wonder they were the best! As Famous Amos told the story, his grandmother taught him how to bake and the recipe was hers.

After a short time of Famous Amos devotion, I noticed they didn’t taste the same anymore. A few years later, I learned the tragic reason. Wally Amos had lost control of his company, his brand, and his cookie recipe, and the money men who got a hold of it had changed the recipe, substituting shelf-stable ingredients. Yuch.

When I was casting around for an idea for my third Maureen Gould Legal Thriller, I happened across a You-tube documentary about Famous Amos’ story, and I was incensed all over again. In the stewing cauldron of my imagination, the story came to life of how Maureen’s client, Esmeralda Castillo, was swindled out of her bakery, her brand, and her grandmother’s recipes by the soon-to-be-dead man known as “The Great Tanzini.” Naturally Esme became the prime suspect.

The Pied Piper title came along when I ran across an article about how Maxfield Parrish’s iconic painting had been restored to the San Francisco bar for which it was commissioned following the 1906 earthquake. You might remember that The Pied Piper myth tells the story of a village who hired a piper to lead away its rats and when the villagers didn’t pay his fee, he led away their children as well. The villagers’ legacy had been stolen, just as Esme’s had.

I dedicated the book to my grandmother, who didn’t teach me how to bake, but she taught my mother, who in turn taught me. Before I tell you more about The Pied Piper, I’ll leave you with my grandmother’s fudge recipe. I think it’s a variation of “fantasy fudge” you’ll see around the net. In high school, I told my mother it was the best fudge in the world. Whereupon my mother told me Grandma got it off a jar. Whatever.

My Grandma’s Fudge Recipe

Ingredients

1 cups semisweet Hershey bits (12 oz size)

3 packages German sweet chocolate (4 oz size)

1 jar of marshmallow crème (8 oz size)

1 cup of broken pecans or walnuts (optional)

4 ½ cups of sugar

2 tablespoons butter

1 tall can evaporated milk

A pinch of salt

Instructions: Butter a 13 x 9 x 2 baking pan and set aside. In a big bowl, combine chocolate chips, sweet chocolate, marshmallow crème and nuts. Set aside.

Rub a large saucepan with salad oil. In it, combine sugar, butter, evaporated milk, and salt. Heat to boiling, stirring occasionally, but stand there and don’t turn your back on it because it will boil over, as it did when I made it today. (I used a 3-quart saucepan.) Boil 6 minutes, stirring often. Pour immediately over chocolate mixture. Stir until the mixture is uniform.

Pour into the prepared baking pan. Let stand a few hours. Cut into 1-inch squares.

Makes 5 lbs of fudge. Calories? Don’t ask.

A note on substitutions

Chocolate chips: Do they even make Hershey’s chocolate chips anymore? I don’t know. I used Ghirardelli because I think it tastes best. Could be I’m a victim of branding, but there you have it.

German sweet chocolate: I couldn’t find that anywhere in Anchorage. So, I used Ghirardelli semisweet baking chocolate. According to Google, German sweet chocolate is slightly sweeter than semisweet. Seriously, sweetness is not an issue. The recipe is all sugar.

Marshmallow crème: I used Dandee’s Marshmallow Cream (vegan) because all the other commercially available marshmallow crèmes in Alaska are made with corn syrup which gives me a migraine. The vegan cream worked just fine and lends a nice flavor.

Salad oil for saucepan. I used a spray. Nothing burned but boy, did that boiling sugar concoction climb up the sides like it had come to life and was trying to escape! Seriously, do not turn your back on it.

Question for Chicks and Chicklets (did I just make that up?): Comment below for a chance to win a free e-book of The Pied Piper:

Do you have a favorite dish that reminds you of family? Sweet or savory? What fond memories does this food conjure? (I hope it’s warmer and fuzzier than your mother snitching out your grandmother.)

***

The Pied Piper

San Francisco attorney Maureen Gould is sitting in her conference room, waiting for a witness to appear for his deposition. Seated around the table are the court reporter, fiddling with her phone, Maureen’s daughter, Quinn, a first-year law student, fiddling on her laptop, Maureen’s client, Esmeralda Castillo, head bowed, hands clenched, maybe praying, and the witness’ attorney, a slick young man who keeps checking his watch.

The witness, Alfred Tanzini, is late for his own deposition. In fact, he never comes. Instead, two San Francisco detectives arrive to announce his body was found that morning.

Months earlier, the man who referred to himself as “The Great Tanzini” had talked Esme into taking on investors, himself included, and forming a corporation, of which he was the president, promising that he would make Esme’s Casa de Galletas a national brand. Esme had been working night and day to launch her business. Her cookies sold out every day in trendy cafes, but because of her business inexperience, she was heavily in debt.

The Great Tanzini’s offer was a dream come true. Little did Esme know when she signed the paperwork that she had contributed her brand and her recipes exclusively to the corporation, as well as having signed a non-competition clause that forbade her from working in the bakery business should she leave Esme’s Inc.

So, when she complained about her baker’s working conditions and the new shelf-stable ingredients, she was voted off the Board and the corporation that bore her name went to court to obtain an injunction against her working in any competing business.

So when Tanzini is murdered, Esme is the prime suspect.

Preorder link: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0D1HC1TDF

***

Biography

Keenan Powell is a Lefty and Agatha nominated author. Although she was one of the original Dungeons and Dragons illustrators, art seemed an impractical pursuit – not an heiress, wouldn’t marry well, hated teaching – so she went to law school. The day after graduation, she moved to Alaska where she has vowed to keep practicing until she gets it right.

Her first Maureen Gould Legal Thriller, Implied Consent, won an Ippy gold medal, short-listed for the Silver Falchion, and received a Booklife Editor’s Pick Review.

37 thoughts on “Guest Chick + Giveaway: Keenan Powell”

  1. Hi, Keenan,

    I have to tweak my Grandma Irene’s recipe for Congo Squares (best described as blondies with chocolate chips) because my husband balks at putting a whole box of brown sugar in a single batch of cookies. My version has a slightly different consistency but they’re still tasty! Your grandmother’s fudge sounds scrumptious (I’d be skipping commercial marshmallow creme due to chemical fertilizers that are unavoidable nowadays).

    Mary

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    1. Hi Mary Garback,

      I wouldn’t balk at a whole box of brown sugar. Would love to see your recipe!

      I haven’t tried making my own marshmallow creme. I need to avoid corn in all forms so Dandies’ was good for that but it does have potatoes.

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      1. This Irish girl is fascinated by the potato angle. Although, I guess we do put marshmallow on top of our squash at Thanksgiving. (Some of us just eat the marshmallow, though, lol.)

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        1. I just noticed the potatoes when I googled the label this morning.

          The food of my people – I’m good with sugar-fying it!

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  2. My mom taught me how to make the stuffing for the Thanksgiving dinner. I still use her recipe. My Dad enjoyed cooking too and I loved his beef stew with my mom’s homemade bread fresh and warm from the oven. I make the beef stew but I never mastered bread or pie crust. I also took 5 years of cooking classes in school. A nice break from my business classes and the boys would be hanging around after class especially after we were baking. Thank you so much for this chance to your giveaway. pgenest57 at aol dot com

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  3. A delightful reminder, Keenan! The Famous Amos story also captured my imagination, and I’m glad you turned that sad muse into a full-length novel. However, I’m not so happy with the image of fudge before breakfast! Oh, well. Kudos on your latest book, The Pied Piper.

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  4. Famous Amos’s story is sad, but all too familiar. Want to ship the product further afield and make more money? Gotta make it able to survive and that can ruin it. When I was growing up, I loved this french onion cream dip from Bison (in Buffalo). You couldn’t get it very far outside the WNY area because the sour cream would separate and spoil. Well, the company tried to expand, but to do so they had to – yep – change the recipe. It was horrible. Fortunately, quality triumphed over money in this case. You still can’t get Bison dip outside WNY, but it’s delicious when I visit home.

    The fudge sounds awesome.

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  5. My grandma made wonderful fudge. Not sure of her recipe, however.

    And my family loves the sweet potatoes and apples that my parents make for most holiday dinners now. Looking forward to it at Thanksgiving in just a couple of weeks.

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  6. Can’t wait to read the new book, Keenan. As to family recipes, mine never used them. I grew up with the best homemade pasta and sauces and dishes on my Mom’s side, and equally delicious different dishes on Dad’s side. All of the recipes were in my relatives heads, so sadly, I can never replicate them. And I’ve tried.

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    1. My stepfather was Italian. If I wanted his recipe, I had to follow him around and take notes because it wasn’t written. I got the spaghetti sauce but never his rigatoni sauce, so when Leslie Karst posted Nonna’s Sunday Gravy, I was thrilled! That’s the recipe! Thanks, Leslie! Dylan loves it.

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  7. Hurrah on The Pied Piper, Keenan! Thanks for sharing the backstory behind the inspiration.

    As for recipes, my neighbor does homemade fudge. I used to do cookie swaps for the holidays and brought swirl cookies based on a recipe from a family friend. My own family didn’t really write down ingredients and directions…

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  9. Welcome back to Chicks, Keenan–and huge congrats on Pied Piper–the book sounds awesome! And I think maybe we were pregnant at the same time, because I, too, was a huge Famous-Amos-for-breakfast fan. I literally bought them each day for work the minute I stepped off the commuter train into the city. Our family recipe is for a filled pastry called banberries. My nana made them only for Thanksgiving and Christmas, because they’re time consuming to make–but delicious! My aunt took over the tradition (she’s almost 90 now) and always makes extra for us to have the day after Thanksgiving for breakfast and afternoon snack. The recipe entails extremely finely chopped raisins and lemon and nuts that makes sort of a paste. My sister makes them, too, but dreads the process (the food processor isn’t much of a timesaver due to all the stickiness). The key is the homemade flaky pastry surrounding the filling. And no, I have never even attempted to make these. (By the way, does Fluff count as marshmallow creme?)

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    1. I was pregnant with that one 1981-1982.

      I think marshmallow fluff is creme.

      Your family recipe sounds divine, but I don’t think I’d have the attention span. I just got around to attempting GF puff pastry. Lots of rolling and laminating. It was passable for a first attempt.

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  10. Funny you should mention the Maxfield Parish “Pied Piper” mural at the Palace Hotel bar in SF, as I was just telling someone about that the other day. Such a fab place to have a cocktail and stare at his astounding colors!

    As for family recipes, I often think of my parents when I do a stir fry, as back in the early ’70s they used to make them together–the only thing I can think of that they ever cooked together, as a matter of fact. It was because of all the cutting and chopping of vegetables, I guess. Very labor intensive. My dad talked about how much it hurt his back, and soon our family was calling the dish “brok bok wok.”

    Congrats on the new book, Keenan–such a great idea for a mystery! And thanks so much for visiting the Chicks today!

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    1. That’s so funny, Leslie! When I was back at home my first year of law school, we’d have sauteed mushroom contests on bridge nights. No one could agree on whose was the best, but I’m still quite fond of mine.

      I can’t wait for Left Coast Crime 2026. We should go down to The Pied Piper, toast Max, and take lots of selfies!

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  11. Thank you so much for being here, Keenan!

    A couple of weekends ago, I visited Poulsbo, Washington, affectionately known as Little Norway, and picked up some lefse. It immediately brought back fond memories of sitting with my grandma as we made our way through stacks of the butter-slathered lefse she’d made for Christmas. ❤

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    1. Thanks for inviting me, Kathleen!

      I’d never heard of lefse before, so I just looked it up. Sounds divine!

      I love how food memories bring us back into setting. I’m trying to fashion traditions like your grandma’s lefse for my grandchildren to remember me by. Which is kind of ambitious since I just mastered getting all the dishes on the table when still hot in the past few years.

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  12. (This comment is from Chick Becky, who’s having trouble posting today:)

    I’m incensed at the recipe change too and that my sister put together a cookbook of old family recipes. I gave a copy to all my kids after I made them promise never to make any of the recipes! Nobody needs to eat Frog Eye Salad or Grandma’s Fried Mush ever again!

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