Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder (Hannah Swensen #1)(104)

IBBY’S METAPHYSICAL ENGLISH TOFFEE




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

16-ounce box Club Crackers*** (Mine were made by Keebler)

1 cup butter (2 sticks, ? pound)

1 cup brown sugar (tightly packed)

2 cups milk chocolate chips (12-ounce bag)

2 cups chopped pecans (salted or unsalted, it really doesn’t matter)



Line a 10-inch by 15-inch cookie sheet with foil. If you have a jellyroll pan, that’s perfect. If you don’t, turn up the edges of the foil to form sides.



Spray the foil with Pam or other nonstick cooking spray. (You want to be able to peel it off later, after the candy hardens.)



Line the pan completely with Club crackers, salt side up. Cover the whole bottom. (You can break the crackers in pieces to make them fit if you have to.) Set the cracker-lined jellyroll pan or cookie sheet aside while you cook the toffee mixture.



Hannah’s 1st Note: You don’t need a candy thermometer to make this candy.



Combine the butter with the brown sugar in a saucepan. Bring it to a boil over medium high heat on the stovetop, stirring constantly. Boil it for exactly five minutes, stirring it constantly. If it sputters too much, you can reduce the heat. If it starts to lose the boil, you can increase the heat. Just don’t stop stirring.



Pour the mixture over the crackers as evenly as you can.



Hannah’s 2nd Note: I start by pouring the mixture in lines from top to bottom over the length of the pan. Then I turn it and pour more lines over the width of the pan. Once the whole pan is crosshatched with the hot toffee mixture, I pour any that’s left where it’s needed. If it doesn’t cover the crackers completely, don’t worry—it’ll spread out quite a bit in the oven.



Slide the pan into the oven and bake the toffee at 350 degrees F. for 10 minutes.



Remove the pan from the oven and sprinkle the milk chocolate chips over the top. Give the chips a minute or two to melt and then spread them out as evenly as you can with a heat-resistant spatula, a wooden paddle, or a frosting knife.



Sprinkle the chopped pecans over the top of the chocolate and refrigerate the pan.



When the toffee has thoroughly chilled, peel it from the foil and break it into random-sized pieces.



Hannah’s 3rd Note: Ibby used her toffee as a reward for high quiz scores. Once you taste it, you’ll know why I can still recite at least one stanza from each of the Metaphysical Poets.





Chapter Five




The headlights of Hannah’s cookie truck glared against the row of single-pane windows marching across the front of the squat red brick building that housed the Winnetka County Sheriff’s Department. It was a fairly new structure, built with county money, and the windows, one to each office, didn’t open. This made it more energy efficient, according to county government guidelines. Regardless of the season or the outdoor temperature, the inside was maintained at a politically correct sixty-eight degrees.

There were eight head-in parking spots that were earmarked for visitors, and Hannah had her pick of all eight of them. Since her mother hadn’t raised a fool, she took the one closest to the front door. Grabbing the sample box of toffee she’d prepared before she’d left her condo, and armed with three bags of day-old cookies that would be speedily devoured by anyone on duty inside, she made a hasty exit from her truck and hurried to the front door.

Hannah pushed open the first door and stepped into the enclosure that served as a cloakroom. It was narrow, more like a hallway than a room, and it contained a rack for boots and a series of hooks for hanging parkas and scarves. The door to the inside of the sheriff’s station was at the end, and the enclosure also served as a buffer between the frigid winter air and the deputy who manned the front desk.

Hannah couldn’t help grinning as she slipped out of her boots and hung her parka on a hook. The county board had spent thousands of dollars to research the energy-saving inner door and outer door plan, something any Minnesotan who had an enclosed front or back porch could have told them for free.

Just as Hannah was reaching for the inner door to let herself in, it opened and Bill appeared. “Come on in, Hannah. I was in the office and I saw you pull up.”

“Hi, Bill,” Hannah greeted him, handing over the plate of toffee.

“What’s this?”

“English Toffee. I made it last night. And I brought cookies, too. Do you have time for coffee? I need to talk to you about something.”

“I’ve got nothing but time. It’s been dead as a doornail all night.” Bill stopped and frowned slightly. “I wonder what that means anyway.”

“What what means?”

“‘Dead as a doornail.’ I’ve been saying it all my life and I don’t know what it means.”

“It dates back to the thirteen hundreds. Shakespeare even used it in Henry IV. Most scholars think it came from clinching a nail.”

“What’s that?”

“Driving in a long nail and hammering the end over on the inside, so it can’t be removed. That’s what they used to do before they had screws to lend extra strength to things like doors. The doornails were called ‘dead’ because they were bent and they couldn’t be pulled out and used again.” Hannah stopped talking when she noticed that Bill was staring at her in amazement. “What?” Hannah said.