Today we have the final installment in our Pink Carnation Cookery series from the wonderful Christine!

It does seem fitting that the last of the recipes should represent the last of the Pink books. This month, Christine has whipped up Portuguese biscoitos in honor of Jack and Jane’s adventures in Portugal in The Lure of the Moonflower.

I should turn the floor over to Christine now, but, first, I wanted to say a huge THANK YOU to Christine for making time in her insanely busy schedule to think up and execute all of these amazing recipes. I’ve enjoyed them so and I know I’ll be baking many of these for years to come.

Thank you!!!!

And now, without further babbling from me, over to Christine….

Well, after a year, we’ve finally come to the last Pink Carnation recipe. We don’t know much about The Lure of the Moonflower yet, but we do know it’s set in Portugal. When I started looking up Portuguese recipes, one treat I kept seeing over and over was Portuguese biscoitos, or biscotti. It’s also fitting that biscotti goes so well with coffee and Lauren loves her coffee! This recipe was taken from Avo’s Biscoitos at food.com, but I adapted it a bit. The original recipe yields 45-55 cookies, which was a bit much for me, so I halved (most of) the ingredients and got 2 dozen.

Ingredients:
1 stick of butter, softened
3/4 cup of sugar
2 1/2 cups of all purpose flour
3 eggs
2 teaspoons of baking powder

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
2. Cream butter and sugar together.
3. Add eggs, mixing until blended.
4. In a separate bowl, combine flour and baking powder.
5. Add flour mixture to creamed mixture.
6. If dough is too dry, knead a bit. If too wet, add a little more flour.
7. Break off ping pong sized balls.
8. Roll dough between your hands until you get a 5 inch rope.
9. Join the ends together, forming a circle, and fold one end over the other.
10. Bake for 15-18 minutes or until golden brown

Mine weren’t all that golden but my oven is weird and I didn’t want to burn them. They were absolutely delicious.

I first started reading the Pink Carnation books a few years after The Secret History of the Pink Carnation was first released. At the time, I was working part-time for a test prep company and part of my job was proctoring practice exams. That involved me saying “begin,” “5 minutes remaining,” and “stop work,” and doing a whole lot of sitting around in between. It left a lot of time for reading. Based on past purchases, Amazon suggested The Secret History of the Pink Carnation. It sounded right up my alley and I loved it. I was hooked. A few months later, I had the pleasure of meeting Lauren at a book festival and she was just as awesome as I imagined she would be – funny, brilliant and quirky in her own special way. I think she may have accidentally spilled coffee on a fan that day.

Thanks to everyone reading this for indulging me over the past year. I’ve had a lot of fun, tried recipes I wouldn’t have normally tried, and my stand mixer got a lot of mileage.

Lauren, I thank you so much for the wonderful books and I look forward to your future books. It was easy for me to be creative when I had such great inspiration.

Thank you so much, Christine! I’m about two-thirds of the way through writing The Lure of the Moonflower and Jack and Jane are being difficult. Do you think if I bribe them with these cookies, they’ll settle down? Or maybe I should skip the middleman and just bribe me with these cookies….

In the meantime, I’m raising a cup of tea to Christine, for creating all of these wonderful recipes. I doff my baking trays to you!

You can find all of Christine’s recipes here. Which was your favorite?

Here’s the complete list:

The Secret History of the Pink Carnation: Madeleines
The Masque of the Black Tulip: Ginger Biscuits
The Deception of the Emerald Ring: Irish Lace Cookies
The Seduction of the Crimson Rose: Strawberry Cakes
The Temptation of the Night Jasmine: Holiday Cookies
The Betrayal of the Blood Lily: Nan Khatai
The Mischief of the Mistletoe: Holiday Cookies
The Orchid Affair: Peppermint Marzipan Bites
The Garden Intrigue: Chocolate Chip Cookie Bowls
The Passion of the Purple Plumeria: Molten Caramel Brownie Cakes
The Mark of the Midnight Manzanilla: Vampire Cookies
The Lure of the Moonflower: Biscoitos