Our guest today is the incredibly funny Mr. Mark Henry! You may be familiar with his Amanda Feral zombie novels published by Kensington, or his YA books under the name Daniel Marks. He's on tour right now to celebrate his new series, which kicks off this fall with PARTS & WRECK, the first of what will hopefully be many Parts Department novels from Entangled Covet.
I hear a lot of writers talk about their work as the great love of their life, that thing they “have to do” like breathing or sex, and I love writing to, it’s fun, I enjoy it, but it’s not my “Great Love.” That’d be cooking. My mother was a great cook in her day and as an only child, she’d have me with her most all of the time, teaching me everything she knew and lots of stuff that to an outsider would have seemed far beyond my capabilities. Spice combinations, technique, the difference between baking soda and powder, that kind of thing. By the age of nine, I was the resident bartender at my parents cocktail parties. Shit, it was the seventies, don’t make that face.
So I cook. It comes natural and I do it every day. I love it. It’s how I relax and think. I set up my laptop on the kitchen table with my work-in-progress open to whatever it is I’m tinkering at and start my mise en place (despite being a professional writer, I have no idea how to put those little accents where they need to go on French words). I’ve come up with some pretty amazing plot twists while cooking. It’s calming, inspirational and, yeah, fattening.
Which brings me to the internet. I’m hugely guilty of producing #foodporn (seriously, follow me on instagram.com/mark_henry. I’d feed you if I could but since you’re probably not living on my street I just have to share when a dish turns out so right. And then the recipe requests come…
Here’s one that I always get requests to reveal. It’s easy-ish and a really quick fix if you realize (on the day of) that the holiday party you’ve been invited to is actually a cookie exchange. I got this recipe a few years back from Angela James of Carina Press fame and since then I’ve had fun changing it up. It’s super flexible and magically delicious!
CrAcKeR CaNdY
(serves: 24 polite eaters or 1 holiday binge-eater)
- Preheat oven to 350.
- Line a jellyroll pan (cookie sheet with a surrounding lip) with tinfoil, coat with non-stick spray. Place a single (tight) layer of crackers (any kind will do, I’ve tried both Saltines and Ritz, Townhouse, whatever). If you use a round cracker, break up some pieces to fit in the bare spots of pan.
- In a saucepan, combine 1 and ½ sticks of salted butter and 1 and ½ cups of brown sugar. Bring to a boil, stirring over medium high heat. When the mixture is rolling in the pot, pour it gently and evenly over the crackers. Spread it around but don’t worry about getting it perfect.
- Bake for 5 -10 minutes until the whole thing is bubbling and evenly spread. Remove and add two cups of candy chips. Traditionally, semi-sweet or milk chocolate chips are used, but I find that semi and butterscotch is my go-to. You can use any variation, white chocolate, peanut butter, whatever, as long as it’s chips.
- Crumble top. You can use a cup of crumbled crackers, nuts, crushed candy canes. Whatever. It’s going to taste amazing.
- Refrigerate pan until it’s set. Break up into single servings or just eat the whole damn thing like the pig you are!!!
You will not regret making this! Oh wait, yes you will, because it’s like crack and by the end of the day you’ll be shirtless, covered in chocolate and laying on the floor with an empty pan promising sexual favors for more.
Don’t say I didn’t warn you!
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Thanks so much for visiting us, Mark! I'm definitely going to try out this recipe!
Check out the links below for more Mark or click on the banner for other tour stops:
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Here's the scoop on PARTS & WRECK:
Wade Crowson, a brutish and brooding playboy and veteran vivisectionist for the Parts Department, runs into more than he bargained for in new partner, Lucid Montgomery, a quirky beauty with a bizarre secret and a string of psychiatric diagnoses she tries hard to keep hidden.
Loving Luce will stamp a demonic target on her back and thrust Wade into a frenzied whirlwind of hilarious misunderstandings and, quite possibly, a stripping gig for emptynesters. Can they withstand the savagery of an exorcism (with or without the split pea soup) and come out alive and …in love?Purchase: Amazon
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Mark and Entangled Publishing are giving away a whole mess of stuff: signed copies of his adult and YA books and PDFs of some of his work!
Follow the Rafflecopter instructions to enter!
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Do you guys have suggestions for who you’d like to see featured on the blog? If so, you can make your suggestions on this page. No guarantees that your favourite authors will be able to participate but we’ll try!
Authors, would you like to visit us? Please email me at jenn (at) tyngasreviews (dot) com and we’ll set it up!
OMG, this recipe is EVIL!!!!! LOL! Thanks for sharing it.
ReplyDeleteIt will steal your soul!!!
ReplyDeleteToo late, lol! Here's the "rollos on pretzels" recipe that stole my soul a while back. Of course, now that the soul's already gone, I can indulge all I want. Yippee!
ReplyDeletehttps://www.hersheys.com/recipes/recipe-details.aspx?id=8631
OH MAN. It's times like these that I wished I weren't allergic to tree nuts!
ReplyDeleteI make many many batches of this year and top it with Hershey's Heath bits and we call it Brickle. But let me tell you, it is definitely addicting!
ReplyDeleteThe worse thing about this time of year are the sweets! I started eating less sugar this past Jan/Feb and it made a huge difference. Now when I eat more than one or two sweet things, I can certainly feel the sugar high. It is tradition that we give our friends cookie trays so it has been interesting making all of them and trying very hard not to eat them!
ReplyDelete