Wedding Cake Murder (34 page)

ANGEL CRUNCH COOKIES

Preheat oven to 275 degrees F., rack in the middle position

(That’s two hundred seventy-five degrees F.)

3 egg whites
(save the yolks in the refrigerator to add to scrambled eggs)

¼ teaspoon cream of tartar

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

¼ teaspoon salt

1 cup brown sugar
(pack it down in the cup when you measure it)

2 Tablespoons flour
(that’s
cup)

½ cup finely chopped pecans
(measure AFTER chopping)

3 to 4 dozen candied pecan halves OR 3 to 4 dozen Maraschino cherry halves to place on top of your cookies before baking.

Before you do anything else, separate the egg whites from the yolks. Place the egg whites in the bowl of your mixer so that they will warm to room temperature. Egg whites at room temperature yield more volume and whip easier than cold egg whites.

Place the egg yolks in a Tupperware container with a cover. Store the yolks in the refrigerator to add to your scrambled eggs the next morning.
(My mother always said
that there’s nothing like a little extra protein for breakfast to give you a head start to the day. I once tried to convince her that cookies had extra protein, but it didn’t work.)

Hannah’s 1
^st
Note: I always use a stand mixer when I make these cookies. It’s a lot easier than whisking egg whites by hand in a copper bowl.

Prepare your baking sheets by lining them with parchment paper
(works best)
or brown parcel-wrapping paper
(also works, but parchment is preferable)
. Spray the paper with Pam or another non-stick cooking spray and dust it lightly with flour. You can also use baking spray, which is cooking spray mixed with flour.

Beat the egg whites with the cream of tartar, vanilla, and salt until they are stiff enough to hold a soft peak. Add the cup of brown sugar gradually, sprinkling it in with your impeccably clean fingers by quarter cups and beating hard for ten seconds or so after each sprinkling.

Take the bowl out of the mixer.

Mix the flour with the ground nuts. Sprinkle them on top of the whipped egg whites and fold them in with a rubber spatula, keeping as much air in the mixture as you possibly can.

Drop mounds of dough by heaping Tablespoons onto your prepared cookie sheets. If you place 4 mounds in a row and you have 4 rows, you’ll end up with 16 cookies per sheet. These cookies do not spread out very much as they bake.

Hannah’s 2
^nd
Note: I use a Tablespoon from my silverware drawer to drop the mounds on the baking sheets. A cookie scooper doesn’t work very well for this.

Place one candied pecan or a half Maraschino cherry
(rounded side up)
in the center of each mound. Push the pecan halves or half cherries down a bit, but leave them clearly visible.

Bake your Angel Crunch Cookies at 275 degrees F. for approximately 40 minutes, or until the meringue part of the cookie is slightly golden and dry to the touch.

Cool your cookies on the paper-lined cookie sheets by pulling the paper, cookies and all, over to a wire rack. When the cookies are completely cool, peel them carefully from the paper and store them in an airtight container in a dry place.
(A cupboard shelf is fine, just NOT the refrigerator!)

Yield: 3 to 4 dozen sweet and crunchy meringue cookies that are as light as air and that everyone will love to eat.

Chapter Twenty-four

W
hen Mike left, Hannah mixed up a batch of Honey Drop Cookies. She was tired when she sat down on a stool at the workstation to wait for them to bake. As always, baking had helped to clarify her thoughts and she reached for her shorthand notebook, flipped to the suspect page, and was just beginning the process of deciding which suspect to interview next, when Michelle came through the swinging door from the coffee shop.

“Lisa’s telling the story again,” Michelle announced, “and I found out more from Aunt Nancy. She touched base with a couple of friends from her old hometown and she found out that Chef Duquesne’s older brother is a career Navy man and he’s an instructor at Annapolis Naval Academy. I called the academy and found out that he had an eight o’clock class the morning after Chef Duquesne was murdered. There’s no way he could have flown to Minnesota from Maryland, killed his brother, and then flown back in time to teach that class.”

“Good work, Michelle!” Hannah praised her. “I’ll cross him off my suspect list.”

“Who do you have left?”

“No one except Chef Duquesne’s children, if he has any.”

“And the unidentified suspect for an unknown motive,” Michelle reminded her.

“Of course. That’s a given in all murder investigations.”

“Andrea and I took a few minutes to check online for other biographies of Chef Duquesne. Neither one of us found any mention of children.”

Hannah thought about that for a moment. “I guess it’s possible that Doc’s friend at the DNA lab was wrong.”

“He must have been, unless Chef Duquesne had children that no one knew about.”

“He could have had a child that not even
he
knew about,” Hannah suggested.

“I guess so, but that’s really unlikely, isn’t it?”

Hannah shrugged. “Given his background, it might not be as unlikely as you think!”

Michelle laughed. “You’ve got a point. According to what Aunt Nancy told us, he’s been a womanizer all his life.”

“That’s right. Just think about it for a minute, Michelle. What if Allen Duke got some girl pregnant when he was in high school? If that happened, and the girl’s parents didn’t want her to marry Allen, they might have convinced her to leave town and live with a relative until the baby was born. Then she could have given it up for adoption.”

“That’s certainly possible. And sometimes parents who adopted really young children don’t tell them that they’re adopted.”

There was a knock on the door and Michelle turned to Hannah. “Mother again?”

Hannah shook her head. “It’s not Mother’s knock. And it’s not Norman’s or Mike’s either. I don’t know this knock at all. I’d better go find out who it is.”

Hannah hurried to the door and opened it. She stared at the man standing there in surprise, and then she laughed. “Ross! I didn’t expect to see you before the competition! Come in and have a cup of coffee with us. And try out some of the new cookies I just baked.”

“There’s no way I’ll turn down an invitation like that,” Ross said, pulling her into his arms for a kiss. “Do you know you have flour on your nose?”

“No, but it makes sense. I’ve baked a lot of cookies today.”

“Too bad it’s not powdered sugar.” Ross gave her a look that made the heat rise to her face, and Hannah knew she was blushing. Then he turned to Michelle. “Hi, Michelle. All ready to steal the show tonight?”

“I’m always ready to steal the show. They teach us how to do that in our beginning acting class. But tonight I’ll let Hannah be the star. Those cookies of hers are phenomenal.”

“All of Hannah’s cookies are phenomenal.”

The stove timer rang and Hannah motioned to Michelle. “Pour coffee for all three of us, will you please? I’ll just take these cookies out of the oven and be with you in a minute.”

The Honey Drop Cookies were the perfect color on top, golden brown. They smelled divine as Hannah took the pans out of the oven and set them on the baker’s rack to cool. She didn’t usually bake with honey. It was messy and it didn’t keep as neatly as sugar in her pantry. But Aunt Nancy had promised that this recipe would work like a charm, and it certainly looked as if it had. Hannah could scarcely wait to taste them!

“Great aroma,” Michelle commented as Hannah walked back to the work island and took a stool next to Ross. “They look really good, too.”

“We’ll find out in a couple of minutes.” Hannah turned to Ross. “What brings you here?”

“I came by to see if there’s anything I can do to help you. I’ll be going out to Sally and Dick’s in an hour or so, and I wondered if you wanted me to sound anyone out.”

“About what?” Hannah was genuinely puzzled.

“About Chef Duquesne’s murder. I can always do a background interview with anyone you choose.”

“Great idea!” Hannah praised him. “Have you interviewed Helene Stone yet?”

“No. I was planning to do that this afternoon. I even asked her if she’d be free around four-thirty for a background interview.”

Hannah gave Michelle a meaningful glance that said,
How about that? He must have read my mind.
And Michelle gave her a glance right back that said,
You’re right. This is perfect. It means you don’t have to confront a Food Channel judge before the competition tonight.

“Was that sisterly telepathy?” Ross guessed, noticing the unspoken exchange.

“Yes. Tell him about the elevator in New York, Michelle. I’ll go see if the Honey Drop Cookies are cool enough to taste.”

Once Ross had learned about the suspicious incident on the elevator, he turned to Hannah. “So what do you want me to ask her?”

“See if you can think of a way to get her to tell you where she was and what she was doing on the night that Chef Duquesne was murdered. And if you can, see if she’ll mention anything about her relationship with him, whether or not she thought he was a good chef, and what she thought of his comments at the judging table.”

“Piece of cake,” Ross said and then he gave Michelle an apologetic look. “Sorry if that brought back bad memories.”

Michelle laughed. “Don’t worry about it. Working on this case with Hannah has been really good for me. I’m not that sensitive about it anymore.”

The cookies were still very warm, but Ross reached for one. “Good cookies!” he said after his first one. “I really like these, Hannah. The flavor is complex. I can taste the cinnamon and the honey, but . . . there’s another flavor that’s . . . I can’t think of the best word to describe it.”

“Deeper?” Hannah suggested. “A little darker, smokier, and more mysterious?”

“Yes, that’s it! What is it?”

“Cardamom. I used the ground kind, but you can also buy the pods and grind the seeds yourself. It’s a very powerful spice.”

Michelle began to smile. “If you use too much, it’s awful! I did that once when I made Great-Grandma Swensen’s cardamom bread and nobody could eat it!”

“It reminds me of some other spices, but it’s different,” Ross said, taking another cookie from the plate. “It tastes a little like cinnamon, with a tiny bit of cloves thrown in.” He turned to Michelle. “You mentioned your great-grandmother’s cardamom bread. Does cardamom come from the Nordic countries?”

“Hannah?” Michelle threw the question to her.

“No, but they use a lot of it in baking sweets. It’s also used in Indian cuisine, and it’s often found in spice mixtures like curry. Then it’s used as a savory in meat dishes.”