Hannah turned around when she heard the sound of footsteps. Grandma Knudson was coming back. “Thank you,” she said, as Grandma Knudson sat down next to her.
“You’re welcome. I heard some very interesting things down there, Hannah. I’m really glad I got those fancy new hearing aids.”
“I didn’t know you had hearing aids!”
“Neither does anyone else except Bob, and I swore him to secrecy. I’ve changed my opinion about a lot of people in this town. Why, the things I’ve heard could fill a gossip column!”
“But you wouldn’t . . .”
“Of course not!” Grandma Knudson said emphatically. “But I may not tell anyone about my hearing aids for a while. It’s a lot of fun for me.”
Hannah gave a little laugh. It felt wonderful to laugh and she was grateful to Grandma Knudson for giving her the opportunity.
“Seriously, Hannah,” Grandma Knudson began, “you haven’t heard from Ross since Mike and his boys located him, have you?”
Hannah shook her head. “No, not a word.”
“All right then. If Ross calls you, tell him that if he knows what’s good for him, he’d better never show his face in Lake Eden again. I heard Earl say he wanted to run Ross down with the county snowplow, and Bud Hauge asked Mike and Lonnie to give him five minutes alone with Ross if they picked him up. And Hal McDermott claimed he was going to leave out Rose’s heaviest frying pan so he could bash in Ross’s head.”
Hannah was shocked. “But do you think they’d actually do it?”
Grandma Knudson shrugged. “If I were Ross, I wouldn’t chance it. And I can tell you one thing for sure. If Ross comes back and winds up dead, you’re going to have a whole town full of suspects!”
VALENTINE WHIPPERSNAPPER COOKIES
DO NOT preheat your oven yet. This dough needs to chill before baking.
1 cup pecans (buy the bits and pieces of pecan— they’re cheaper than pecan halves)
? cup cherry jam (I used Smucker’s)
1 box (approximately 18 ounces) Cherry Chip cake mix, the kind that makes a 9-inch by 13-inch cake (I used Betty Crocker)
1 large egg, beaten (just whip it up in a glass with a fork)
? cup cherry liqueur (I used cherry herring—substitute cherry juice if you’d rather)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
? teaspoon cherry extract (substitute vanilla extract if you don’t have cherry)
2 cups Original Cool Whip, thawed (measure this— a tub of Cool Whip contains a little over 3 cups and that’s too much!)
? cup powdered (confectioners’) sugar (you don’t have to sift it unless it’s old and has big lumps)
Small jar of maraschino cherries, drained and cut in half vertically (optional for decorating your cookies)
Hannah’s 1st Note: If you live in an area where Betty Crocker Cherry Chip cake mix is difficult to find, you can use white cake mix with a half-cup of white chocolate or vanilla chips chopped up in it. (Just put the chips in the food processor with a steel blade and process them until they’re in small pieces.)
Use a food processor with the steel blade to chop the pecans into small pieces. (If you used white cake mix, you can chop up the white chocolate chips with the pecans.)
Transfer the contents of the food processor to a small bowl.
Put the cherry jam in the food processor. (You don’t need to wash it out—you’ll be adding the cherry jam to the pecans anyway.)
Process with the steel blade until the jam is smooth.
Add the jam to the pecans in the smaller bowl on the counter.
Pour HALF of the dry cake mix into a large mixing bowl.
Add your beaten egg to the large mixing bowl and stir it in.
Add the contents of the small bowl to your large mixing bowl and mix them in with a rubber spatula.
Rinse out the smaller bowl, dry it with a paper towel, and pour in the cherry liqueur.
Add the vanilla extract and the cherry extract.
Stir to combine contents of the smaller bowl thoroughly.
Measure the Cool Whip and add it to the smaller bowl.
Stir gently with a rubber spatula until everything in the smaller bowl is combined. Be very careful not to stir too vigorously. You don’t want to stir all the air out of the Cool Whip.
Add the contents of the small bowl to the large mixing bowl with the cake mix.
STIR VERY CAREFULLY with the rubber spatula. Stir ONLY until everything is combined. Be very careful not to over-stir.
Sprinkle in the rest of the cake mix and gently fold everything together with the rubber spatula. Again, keep as much air in the batter as possible. Air is what will make your cookies soft and give them a melt-in-your-mouth quality.
Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and chill the cookie dough for at least 1 hour in the refrigerator. It’s a little too sticky to form into balls without chilling it first.
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 powdered sugar in a small, shallow bowl. You will be dropping cookie dough into this bowl to form dough balls and coating the balls 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.
Hannah’s 2nd Note: 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. Also, make only as many cookie dough balls as you can bake at one time. Cover the remaining dough and return it to the refrigerator until you’re ready to bake more.
Place the coated cookie dough balls on your prepared cookie sheets, no more than 12 cookies to a standard-size sheet.
Hannah’s 3rd Note: If you coat your fingers with powdered sugar first and then try to form the cookie dough into balls, it’s a lot easier to accomplish.
If you decide you want to decorate your cookies, press half of a maraschino cherry, rounded side up, on top of each cookie before you bake them. Alternatively, you can decorate them with candy hearts or any other Valentine candy. For Valentine’s Day, Andrea uses the little hearts with sayings printed on them or the red gelatin hearts with sugar on the top.
Bake your Valentine 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, delicious cookies that taste a bit like macaroons but are much easier to eat.
Chapter Two
More parishioners stayed for the social hour than anyone expected. Most of them wanted to reassure Hannah that they weren’t angry she’d misled them about Ross’s absence. There were also plenty of favorable compliments about the Valentine Whippersnapper Cookies that Hannah had brought. Andrea, who was sitting next to Hannah at one of the long tables, looked delighted to take credit for creating the recipe.