Good food. Great books. And more!

Reba White Williams, author of Restrike: Coleman and Dinah Greene Mystery #1, joins us to discuss her thoughts on mystery novels, writing, as well as sharing her mother’s fudge cake recipe.

Tell us about your new novel, Restrike.

Two young cousins from small-town North Carolina come to New York after graduation from Duke, to seek their fortunes (I did). Coleman publishes a hot art magazine, and Dinah runs a fine art print gallery in Greenwich Village (on the street I lived on). A mysterious billionaire, Heyward Bain, comes to town and announces he is founding a museum of fine art prints. Coleman wants to write about him, and Dinah wants to sell him prints. Bain pays record prices for prints, lets his wealth become public knowledge, and thieves, forgers and murders come on to the scene. Coleman and Dinah are threatened, and they set out to right the wrongs that have invaded their world.

You have an extensive background in art and have written numerous articles on art, business, and finance before publishing your mystery novel. Have you always been interested in fiction writing?

Yes, I always wanted to write fiction, but necessity and a time-consuming hobby – our print collection – interfered. I won prizes in grade school and high school for my fiction writing. I’m a story teller, inherited from my father.

How did the idea for the mystery series develop?

I’ve been an avid mystery reader all of my adult life. I like solving puzzles. It’s fun to create some for others to solve.

You received your MA in fiction writing from the well-known Antioch University and have taken other writing classes and workshops. Tell us how this has helped your work.

Every writing school I’ve attended advertises that “writing is a craft, and can be learned.” It’s a cliché, but true. I was writing Restrike before and while attending some of these schools, and my early drafts are proof that school helped.

I know you’re quite the “bookworm.” Which authors have inspired you?

Jane Austen. Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Elizabeth George – for their great mysteries. Jane Smiley. Elizabeth Goudge, for her magical animals.

Who is your favorite artist and what is your favorite period of art history?

My favorite school of art are the women color woodcut artists who worked early in the 20th century. I love their floral images, and Edna Boies Hopkins is the best of the group, in my opinion. It’s no accident we kept this part of our collection when the rest went to the National Gallery.

Who is your favorite all time mystery hero/heroine and why?

Miss Marple. She’s a great solver of all types of crimes, just using her brain, and she proves you’re never too old to solve mysteries.

What’s next for you?

Restrike is the first of a series featuring cousins Coleman and Dinah Greene. The second, Fatal Impressions, will be published in March. I’m working on the third and fourth, and have a setting in mind for number five. I have years and years of ideas.

Reba Dorman White’s Recipe for Chocolate Fudge Cake

In the small North Carolina town where I spent much of my childhood, cooking, especially baking and desserts, was taken very seriously. Many of the women had specialties for which they were well-known. My Aunt Vera’s specialties were apple pie and oatmeal cookies. My cousin’s were lemon cake, spice cake, chocolate fudge, and Divinity fudge. A family friend made a Japanese fruitcake, which was neither Japanese nor a fruitcake, but it was delicious.

Everyone shared both the sweets themselves, and the recipes. Most of the recipes had originated in a cookbook, a magazine, or a label, like the Toll House cookie recipe on the Nestlé bag. But the cooks changed them, added to them, and made them from memory, no longer looking at the recipes, and may no longer remember where they got the recipe.

My family loved chocolate, so my mother prepared all kinds of chocolate goodies, but she was famous for her fudge cake. The source of the original recipe is no longer certain. It may have appeared on a Crisco label, but more likely, it came from a Softasilk label, or someone gave it to her. Or perhaps it came from General Foods’s 1932 cookbook, where I found a version.

Reba Dorman White’s Recipe for Chocolate Fudge Cake:

1 c. boiling water

4 sq. (4 oz.) unsweetened chocolate, cut into small pieces
2 ¼ cup sifted cake flour
2 c. sugar
½ tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
½ tsp. salt
½ c. Crisco
½ c. buttermilk
1 tsp. vanilla
2 eggs, well beaten

Stir boiling water and chocolate until chocolate melts. Cool. Sift flour, sugar, baking powder, soda and salt together. Stir into chocolate mixture. Add Crisco. Beat about 1 minute in an electric mixer at medium speed. Scrape bowl constantly while beating. Add buttermilk, vanilla and eggs. Beat again, scraping bowl. Pour into greased 9×13” pan (I line mine with wax paper). Cook 45 minutes in preheated 350 degree oven. Cool and frost.

1 Minute Fudge Frosting

4 sq. (4 oz.) unsweetened chocolate, cut fine

3 c. sugar
14 tbsp. milk
4 tbsp. Crisco
4 tbsp. butter
2 tbsp. corn syrup
½ tsp. salt
2 tsp. vanilla

Place chocolate, milk, sugar, Crisco, butter, syrup and salt in saucepan. Bring slowly to a full boil stirring constantly, boil briskly 1 minute. Cool to lukewarm, add vanilla and beat until thick enough to spread. If frosting becomes too thick, add a little cream or soften over hot water. (I add a cup of chopped pecans.)

This makes enough to thickly frost top and sides of a 9×13” cake.