Wedding Cake Murder (5 page)

“He didn’t have dessert?” Lisa looked shocked.

“Yes, he did. Allen always had a little bowl of Jell-O or butterscotch pudding, the kind you can buy ready-made in the grocery store. He was crazy about Jell-O and butterscotch pudding.”

“He ate them every day?” Andrea asked, and Hannah could tell she was surprised.

“Almost every school day, or at least every day that I was in the lunchroom with him. And I’m willing to bet that he had Jell-O or butterscotch pudding for dessert on the weekends, too. My mother always said that Allen’s mother wasn’t much of a cook.”

Hannah jotted that down. She wasn’t sure if it would come in handy, but it was a piece of personal information about the head judge. “Is there anything else you remember about him?” she asked Aunt Nancy. “I really need an edge for the hometown challenge.”

“I have that covered,” Aunt Nancy declared, looking very proud of herself. “I think you should bake something that Chef Alain Duquesne loves, but something he never could bake successfully.”

“What’s that?”

“A white chocolate soufflé. He adores soufflés, and he’s crazy about white chocolate. I saw him interviewed on television and he mentioned that it was the one dessert he had trouble baking.”

“Aren’t soufflés difficult to bake?” Lisa asked.

“Normally, yes. I tried to perfect a chocolate soufflé for years,” Aunt Nancy admitted. “But then my friend Anne Elizabeth gave me a never-fail recipe.” She turned to Hannah. “That’s what you can bake for the hometown challenge.”

“A chocolate soufflé?”

“Yes, but not just any chocolate. You should make yours white chocolate. Allen loves soufflés, and he’s crazy about white chocolate. I’m convinced that’ll bring you right back here to Lake Eden for the next Food Channel challenge.”

“Perfect!” Delores told her. And then she turned to Hannah. “What’s the next challenge, dear?”

Hannah glanced down at her notebook. “The cake challenge.”

“Wonderful!” Aunt Nancy clapped her hands. “I’ve got that one covered, too. The Allen I knew in high school was a dyed-in-the-wool romantic. As a matter of fact, when we were older, he took me to the senior prom.”

“So he was your high school boyfriend?” Delores asked.

“Oh, no. Not at all. Allen wasn’t anyone’s boyfriend. He had someone he spent time with, but that wasn’t exactly a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship. Allen was too in love with himself to love anyone else.”

“If you felt that way about him, why did you go to the prom with him?” Hannah asked.

“I wanted to go and I didn’t have a date. And Allen wanted to go so that he could show off in a white tuxedo. No one had ever worn a white tuxedo to a prom before. And he wanted his date to wear the black dress and long black gloves that Audrey Hepburn wore in
Break fast at Tiffany’s
because it would complement his white tuxedo so well. Allen fancied himself as a trendsetter.”

“Do you think he’s still that way?” Lisa asked.

“Oh, yes. You can tell that by the food he creates. I wouldn’t want to eat some of his meals, but they’re very successful and trendy. That man can put together the most unusual ingredients and make people eat them and rave about it.”

Delores began to frown. “I’d like to know more about that prom. Did Allen go shopping with you to help you choose your prom dress?”

“Yes, and no. He handed me a photo of Audrey Hepburn wearing the dress and he asked me if I could sew a dress just like it if he paid for the material. And since I’d always loved to sew and I was good at it, I said, ‘Yes, of course I can. What size do you need?’ And I still remember how he leaned back and looked at me critically. I got the feeling he could see right through my clothes, and it made me terribly uncomfortable. I was about to tell him to forget it, that I couldn’t make a dress like that after all, when he said, ‘You’ll do if you wear your hair up like it is in the picture. And I’ll buy the gloves. Make the dress in your size.’ And then he asked me to be his date for the prom.”

“That’s not exactly romantic!” Lisa looked dismayed.

“I knew that then. And I also knew that he thought of himself as a sophisticated and debonair man of the world. He didn’t care who he took to the prom as long as she looked the way he wanted her to look. His date was just a prop to make him appear even more suave and urbane. But I wanted to go to the prom, and he was the class president, the most desirable date I could possibly have, so . . .” Aunt Nancy gave a little shrug. “I made the dress, put it on, and went to the prom with Allen Duke.”

“Did you have a good time?” Andrea asked her.

“I had a great time! All the girls admired my dress, and their dates couldn’t take their eyes off me. We were the most stunning couple there. Allen was a superb dancer, and we spent the whole night on the dance floor. When the prom was over, Allen took me home and then he went out on a late date with another girl he said wouldn’t have looked good in the Audrey Hepburn dress.”

Delores just stared at Aunt Nancy. It was the first time that Hannah had ever seen her mother speechless. It took Delores several seconds to recover and then she said, “How awful for you!”

“Not really. I knew that Allen was all show, and I wasn’t interested in him anyway. And I knew from the start that he wasn’t interested in me. On the whole, he was a perfect prom date.”

“But prom dates are supposed to be romantic,” Lisa objected. “How could he be a perfect date?”

“Allen
looked
romantic. I’m talking about movie-star romantic. I looked the part of the ingénue, and Allen looked the part of the handsome lover. And that’s the reason I told you this story. Chef Alain Duquesne appreciates someone who looks the part.” Aunt Nancy turned to Hannah. “Everyone at the Food Channel knows you’re getting married right after the competition. And by the time you arrive in New York, the judges will know it, too. That’s why I think you should bake a wedding cake for the cake challenge. And you should present it to the judges wearing your wedding veil. Allen will really appreciate that, and I can almost guarantee that he’ll give you a perfect score so that you can win that challenge too!”

CHIPS GALORE
WHIPPERSNAPPER COOKIES

DO NOT preheat your oven quite yet—this cookie dough needs to chill before baking.

1 box
(approximately 18 ounces)
yellow cake mix, the kind that makes a 9-inch by 3-inch cake
(I used Duncan Hines—18.5 ounces net weight)

1 large egg, beaten
(just whip it up in a glass with a fork)

2 cups of Original Cool Whip, thawed
(measure this—a tub
of
Cool Whip contains a little over 3 cups and that’s too much!)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup assorted chips, chopped into little pieces
(regular chocolate, white chocolate, milk chocolate, butterscotch, peanut butter, or whatever you have left over from other cookies you’ve baked)

—

½ cup powdered
(confectioner’s)
sugar
(you don’t have to sift it unless it’s got big lumps)

Pour HALF of the dry cake mix into a large bowl.

Use a smaller bowl to mix the two cups of Cool Whip with the beaten egg and the vanilla extract. Stir gently with a rubber spatula until everything is combined.

Add the Cool Whip mixture to the cake mix in the large bowl. STIR VERY CAREFULLY with a wooden spoon or a rubber spatula. Stir only until everything is combined. You don’t want to stir all the air from the Cool Whip.

Sprinkle the rest of the cake mix on top and gently fold it in with the rubber spatula. Again, keep as much air in the batter as possible. Air is what will make your cookies soft and have that melt-in-your-mouth quality.

Sprinkle the cup of chopped, mixed-flavor chips on top and gently fold the chips into the airy cookie mixture.
(You can easily chop the chips in a food processor by using the steel blade and processing them in an on-and-off motion.)

Cover the bowl and chill this mixture for at least one hour in the refrigerator. It’s a little too sticky to form into balls without chilling it first.

Hannah’s 1
^st
Note: Andrea sometimes mixes whippersnapper dough up before she goes to bed on Friday night and bakes her cookies with Tracey in the morning.

Hannah’s 2
^nd
Note: If you see our mother, please don’t mention that I told you Andrea always gives Bethie a warm whippersnapper cookie for breakfast on Saturday mornings.

When your cookie dough has chilled and you’re ready to bake, preheat your oven to 350 degrees F., and make sure the rack is in the middle position. DO NOT take your chilled cookie dough out of the refrigerator until after your oven has reached the proper temperature.

While your oven is preheating, prepare your cookie sheets by spraying them with Pam or another nonstick baking spray, or lining them with parchment paper.

Place the confectioner’s sugar in a small, shallow bowl. You will be dropping cookie dough into this bowl to form dough balls and coating them with the powdered sugar.

When your oven is ready, take your dough out of the refrigerator. Using a teaspoon from your silverware drawer, drop the dough by rounded teaspoonful into the bowl with the powdered sugar. Roll the dough around with your fingers to form powdered-sugar-coated cookie dough balls.

Andrea’s 1
^st
Note: This is easiest if you coat your fingers with powdered sugar first and then try to form the cookie dough into balls.

Place the coated cookie dough balls on your prepared cookie sheets, no more than 12 cookies on a standard-size sheet.

Hannah’s 3
^rd
Note: I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating. Work with only one cookie dough ball at a time. If you drop more than one in the bowl of powdered sugar, they’ll stick together.

Andrea’s 2
^nd
Note: Make only as many cookie dough balls as you can bake at one time and then cover the dough and return it to the refrigerator. I have a double oven so I prepare 2 sheets of cookies at a time.

Bake your Chips Galore Whippersnapper Cookies at 350 degrees F., for 10 minutes. Let them cool on the cookie sheet for 2 minutes, and then move them to a wire rack to cool completely.
(This is a lot easier if you line your cookie sheets with parchment paper—then you don’t need to lift the cookies one by one. All you have to do is grab one end
of
the parchment paper and pull it, cookies and all, onto the wire rack.)

Once the cookies are completely cool, store them between sheets of waxed paper in a cool, dry place.
(Your refrigerator is cool, but it’s definitely not dry!)

Yield: 3 to 4 dozen soft, chewy cookies, depending on cookie size.

Andrea’s 3
^rd
Note: Tracey and Bethie love these cookies. Bill says the guys down at the Winnetka County Sheriff’s Station love them, too. His deputies are real cookie hounds!

Chapter Four

H
annah scrutinized the small group assembled around the workstation. Everyone there looked just as shocked as she was. “But . . . I’m not getting married until
after
the competition.”

“Of course you’re not.” Aunt Nancy smiled at her. “It’s just showbiz. And Allen, for one, appreciates showbiz. Didn’t you say that the head judge’s scores count double?”