Carrot Cake Murder (Hannah Swensen, #10)(66)

Delores shook her head. “Ava said it was canceled, not stolen. The lady she talked to told her they canceled his account because the bill hadn’t been paid.”

“That doesn’t sound good,” Hannah said, taking a moment to digest the information she’d been given. Then she turned to her mother again. “Will you go out to the Inn tomorrow morning and see if Gus’s charges for the brunch were accepted on his credit card? Sally must have called them in by now.”

“Of course,” Delores agreed.

“Great.” Hannah turned to Michelle. “Will you ask Lonnie if Gus’s Rolex was real? Mike told me he was pretty sure it wasn’t, especially when the guys in robbery said the diamond in the pinkie ring he was wearing was paste.”

“I’ll do it right now,” Michelle said, pulling out her cell phone and ducking into the kitchen to place the call.

Andrea began to frown. “What’s going on here, Hannah? Do you know yet?”

“Not yet,” Hannah told her, wishing her answer could be more definitive. “All I know is that Gus wasn’t what he said he was.”

“Fake,” Michelle said, poking her head through the doorway. “Lonnie got a call from the jeweler today. I’ll be with you in a minute, okay?”

“Do you think Gus was deliberately trying to defraud his friends and relatives?” Delores asked Hannah.

“I don’t know. I didn’t know him when he was growing up, but you did. What do you think?”

Delores thought about that for a long moment and then she sighed. “It’s possible,” she said. “I don’t really want to believe it, but it’s definitely possible.”

SCANDINAVIAN ALMOND CAKE

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F., rack in the middle position.

Before you start to mix up this recipe, grease (or spray with Pam or another nonstick cooking spray) a 4-inch by 8-inch loaf pan. (Mine was Pyrex and I measured the bottom.)

Cut a strip of parchment paper (or wax paper if you don’t have parchment) 8 inches wide and 16 inches long. Lay it in the pan so that the bottom is covered and the strip sticks out in little “ears” on the long sides of the pan. (This makes for easy removal after your cake is baked.) This will leave the two short sides of the pan uncovered, but that’s okay. Press the paper down and then spray it again with Pam or another nonstick cooking spray.

1 stick (? cup, ? pound, 4 ounces) salted butter

1 ? cups white (granulated) sugar

1 egg (I used an extra large egg)

? teaspoon baking powder

1? teaspoons almond extract

2/3 cup cream (you can also use what Grandma Ingrid used to call “top milk” or what we now call Half ’n Half)

1? cups flour

? cup sliced almonds (optional—they make your cakes look pretty)

If you decided to use the sliced almonds, sprinkle a few in the very bottom of your paper-lined loaf pan. (This cake is like a pineapple upside down cake—the bottom will be the top when you serve it.)

Hannah’s 1stNote: Now don’t let this next step scare you. It’s extremely easy and it will keep your cakes from turning too brown around the edges.

Place the stick of butter in a one-cup Pyrex measuring cup or in another small microwave-safe bowl. Zap it for 40 seconds on HIGH, or until it’s melted. (You can also do this in a small saucepan on the stove.) Now pour that melted butter through a fine-mesh strainer, the kind you’d use for tea, (or a larger mesh strainer lined with a double thickness of cheesecloth.) After the melted butter has dripped through, dump the milk solids that have gathered in the strainer in the garbage (or throw away the cheesecloth, if you’ve used that method.) What you have left is clarified butter.

Set your clarified butter on the counter to cool while you…

Mix the white sugar with the egg in a medium sized bowl, or in the bowl of an electric mixer. Beat them together until they’re light and fluffy.

Add the baking powder and the almond extract. Mix well.

Cup your hands around the bowl with the clarified butter. If you can hold it comfortably and it’s not so hot that it might cook the egg, add it to your bowl now and mix it in. If it’s still too hot, wait until it’s cooler and then mix it in.

Hannah’s 2ndNote: In the following steps, you’re going to add half of the cream, and then half the flour. You don’t have to be precise and measure exactly half. Just dump in what you think is approximately half and it’ll be just fine.

Add half of the cream and mix it in.

Add half of the flour and mix it in.

Now add the rest of the cream, and mix.

And then add the rest of the flour, and mix thoroughly.

Pour the batter into the loaf pan you’ve prepared and smooth the top with a spatula.

Bake the cake at 350 degrees F., for 50 to 60 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Let the loaf pan sit on a wire rack or a cold burner for 15 minutes. Then loosen the cake from the short sides of the pan (the non-papered sides) with a metal spatula or a knife.

Tip the cake out on a pretty platter, and remove the parchment paper. Let it cool and then dust the top with powdered sugar if you wish.

Hannah’s 3rdNote: Mother’s friends, Joyce and Nancy, have special half-round loaf pans especially for baking Scandinavian Almond Cake. Joyce’s cake bakes for the same length of time as mine does. Nancy’s pan has a dark nonstick surface. It’s heavier than Joyce’s pan and the dark surface makes it bake faster. Nancy bakes her cake for 35 to 40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.