2 teaspoons baking soda ? teaspoon salt 4 cups flour (don’t sift it—pack it down in the cup when you measure it)
1 cup miniature chocolate chips (I used Nestlé)
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? cup white (granulated) sugar in a small bowl for rolling the dough balls
Melt the butter and the one ounce of unsweetened baking chocolate in a large microwave-safe bowl. Heat it on HIGH for 1 minute. Leave the bowl in the microwave for another minute and then check the butter and chocolate to see if it’s melted. If it’s not, give it more time, in 20-second increments followed by 20 seconds standing time, until it is.
Take the bowl out of the microwave and mix in the white sugar. Mix until it’s well combined.
Add the frozen orange juice concentrate to the bowl and mix it in. Mix until it’s thoroughly incorporated.
Let the butter, chocolate, sugar, and orange mixture sit on the counter while you get out the eggs.
Break the eggs into a small bowl or a large glass and whip them up with a fork from your silverware drawer.
Add the eggs to the large bowl with the chocolate mixture and stir them in thoroughly.
Hannah’s 1st Note: Lisa and I use a stand mixer to mix up this cookie dough down at The Cookie Jar. You can do it by hand at home, but using an electric mixer makes it a lot easier.
Sprinkle in the baking soda and salt. Mix until all of the ingredients are well combined.
Add the flour in one-cup increments, mixing after each addition.
Hannah’s 2nd Note: You don’t have to be painstakingly precise when you add the four cups of flour. No one’s going to know if one cup is a little bigger than the next one. Just make sure you mix after each addition of flour.
The dough will be quite stiff after you add the flour. This is exactly as it should be.
Add the miniature chocolate chips and mix them in by hand. Your goal is to get them evenly distributed so there will be chips in every cookie.
Cover the dough with plastic wrap and refrigerate it for at least two hours. (Overnight is even better.)
When you’re ready to bake, take the cookie dough out of the refrigerator and let it sit, still covered with the plastic wrap, on your kitchen counter. It will need to warm just a bit so that you can work with it.
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F., rack in the middle position.
While your oven reaches the proper temperature, prepare your cookie sheets. You can either spray them with Pam or another nonstick cooking spray, or line them with parchment paper. (The parchment paper is more expensive, but easier in the long run. If you use it, you can simply pull the paper over to the wire cooling rack, cookies and all.)
Prepare a shallow bowl by filling it with the half cup white sugar. This is what you’ll use as a coating for the cookie dough balls you’ll roll.
Take off the plastic wrap and roll the cookie dough into walnut-sized balls with your impeccably clean hands. Roll each dough ball in the bowl with the white sugar, one ball at a time, and place it on your prepared cookie sheet—12 dough balls to a standard-sized sheet.
Press the dough balls down just a little so they won’t roll off when you carry them to the oven.
Hannah’s 3rd Note: If you form the dough into smaller dough balls, the cookies will be crisper. If you choose to do this, you’ll have to reduce the baking time. If I roll smaller balls, I start checking the Orange Fudge Cookies after 8 minutes in the oven.
Bake the walnut-sized cookie balls for 10 to 12 minutes or until they’re nicely browned around the edges. The cookies will flatten out, all by themselves. Let them cool for 2 minutes on the cookie sheets and then move them to a wire rack to finish cooling.
Hannah’s 4th Note: Orange Fudge Cookies freeze well. Roll them up in foil, the same way you would roll coins in a wrapper, put them in a freezer bag, and they’ll be fine for 3 months or so.
Yield: 8 to 10 dozen tasty chocolate-orange cookies, depending on the size of your dough balls.
Chapter Six
“What did you want to give me, Mother?” Hannah asked when they were all seated at the antique, red oak table on the second floor of their mother’s shop.
“It’s this.” Delores pulled out a leather tote bag that was decorated with the initials V.B.
“Tori Bascomb’s tote?” Andrea guessed.
“That’s right. And wait until I show you what’s inside!” Delores drew out a black leather book with the word Appointments written on the outside in fancy gold script.
Hannah was almost afraid to ask, but she did. “Did Tori have anything written for the night she was killed?”
“Yes.” Delores turned to the proper page. “The page is divided into time slots from eight in the morning until five at night. And Becky Summers was written in for a five o’clock appointment. After that, there’s a space for evening appointments, but there are no indications of time.”
“Becky?” Hannah was surprised. “I didn’t know Becky had an interest in acting.”
“She doesn’t,” Delores told them. “Becky was helping with the props for the Jordan High class play. Her son has the lead. Tori told me all about it. They need all sorts of old-fashioned props that are difficult to find so Becky’s helping the class locate some period pieces.”
“And you’re helping Becky.” Hannah came to the obvious conclusion.
“That’s right. I’ve already found an old hand pump and I’m currently working on the rest of the rigging for a well. Let me tell you, that’s not easy. Most of the farms around here did away with their old wells fifty or more years ago.”