Tasty Tuesday & a Teaser ~ Arlene Hittle

Every Tuesday we'll welcome an Author who will share

a foodie type post with a recipe or two and some book promo!

Today please help me welcome Arlene Hittle...

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“Mmm...donuts.”

Is Homer Simpson the only one who can’t get enough donuts? Of course not.

*I raise my hand and offer a guilty smile.*

A quick Google search for “how many donuts are sold in America each year” yields countless pages of stats. Among them: “The Donut Book,” published in 2005, reports 10 billion donuts are eaten in America each year. Another blog reports the average American eats 63 DOZEN donuts a year.

Sixty-three dozen? Guess that means Homer and I are in good company.

Meg Malone, the heroine in my March release, BEAUTY AND THE BALLPLAYER, is much more talented in the kitchen than I am. As a graphic designer who longs to quit her day job to open a bakery, she not only makes delicious donuts from scratch but also creates her own flavor combinations.

Wish fulfillment on my part? Perhaps. I wish I could be a domestic goddess. Wait—would that mean endless hours of cooking and cleaning?

My sole claim to donut-making fame is a recipe I vaguely remember learning in Girl Scouts. It’s super-simple, and involves vegetable oil and a can of biscuit dough.

Super-Easy Donut Holes

Ingredients:

1 can of your favorite biscuit dough

Enough oil to stand 3/4 inch deep in a skillet

4 Tablespoons sugar

1 Tablespoon cinnamon

Directions:

Mix cinnamon and sugar and set aside. Heat oil until a drop of water sizzles in it. Quarter each biscuit and drop the quarters into the hot oil. Cook until the bottom is golden brown, then flip to brown the other side.

It happens very quickly — within a minute or so — so be sure to have a metal slotted spoon and paper towel-lined bowl or plate ready to pull them out. If you wait too long, they’ll bypass golden brown and go straight to burnt.

Let cool slightly (another minute or two) and then roll the donut holes in the cinnamon sugar mixture.

Serve warm.

I used a cinnamon-sugar topping, but you could use powdered sugar if you prefer. Or drizzle them with a simple milk/powdered sugar/vanilla or cocoa glaze.

If you wanted to get extra fancy and have a pastry bag, you could shoot them up with a squirt of your favorite jam. I bet they’d be delicious that way. (Dunkin’ Donuts’ jelly-filled Munchkins are my faves.)

Matt, the hero in BEAUTY AND THE BALLPLAYER, probably has a very different favorite. This little excerpt will tell you why:

She gave him her address and directions to her apartment. “There’ll be hot, fresh donuts when you get here.”


His mouth started to water. It was past time for a late-night snack. “I can’t wait.”

The directions were easy enough to follow, and he soon pulled into Meg’s apartment complex. He claimed one of the empty visitor’s spots and headed to Apartment 122, steps away from the pool.

“And she was worried about the pool at the condo?” he muttered to himself, rolling his eyes. He rapped on the door.

A muffled “Come in,” made him imagine her with her head stuck in the cabinet again, looking for something else. He stepped inside and braced himself for another crash.

The sight that greeted him, however, was not Meg’s rear end sticking out of a cabinet. Far from it. Meg was lying on the kitchen table, naked except for a few well-placed donuts.

The donuts, one chocolate topped with nuts and two others he couldn’t immediately define, looked delicious, but not nearly as delicious as Meg. He wanted a taste of her.

Matt’s mouth went dry and his heart started to pound. He managed to croak out, “Hi, honey. I’m home.”

About the book, the second in my “All Is Fair in Love & Baseball” series:

Beauty and the Ball Player

Spunky, independent graphic designer Meg Malone finds herself pregnant soon after her no-good boyfriend abandons her for the professional poker circuit. Glad to be out of that mess, she swears off relationships. Then she meets Matt Thatcher, a solid, stable man, who throws her plans a curve.

Matt, an up-and-coming minor league catcher burned one too many times by women who see him as their ticket to the good life, carefully guards his heart against “baseball babes.” He’s drawn to Meg for many reasons, chief among them she has no clue what he does for a living.

Will it be game over when their secrets come to light? Or is their budding relationship strong enough to win the World Series of love?

Find BEAUTY at Turquoise Morning Press, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, iTunes and All Romance EBooks.

Bio: Arlene Hittle is a Midwestern transplant who now makes her home in northern Arizona. She suffers from the well-documented Hittle family curse of being a Cubs fan but will root for the Diamondbacks until they run up against the Cubs. Longtime friends are amazed she writes books with sports in them, since she’s about as coordinated as a newborn giraffe and used to say marching band required more exertion than golf. Find her at arlenehittle.com or on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, Goodreads or the Turquoise Morning Press website.