Chocolate Cream Pie Murder (Hannah Swensen #24)(43)

Smooth the batter out with your impeccably clean hands and then press it down evenly with the back of a metal spatula. Make sure the batter gets into the corners of the pan.



Bake your White Chocolate Brownies in your preheated oven at 350 degrees F. for exactly 23 minutes. DO NOT OVERBAKE! If you do, you’ll end up with dry brownies.



When you take your brownies out of the oven, set them on a cold stove burner or a wire rack to cool.



When the White Chocolate Brownies are cool, frost them with White Chocolate Fudge Frosting. (Recipe follows.)





WHITE CHOCOLATE FUDGE FROSTING

This recipe is made in the microwave.



2 Tablespoons (1 ounce, ? stick) salted butter 2 cups white chocolate chips or vanilla baking chips (I used Nestlé)

1 can (14 ounces) sweetened condensed milk (NOT evaporated milk—I used Eagle Brand)





Place the butter in the bottom of a microwave-safe bowl. (I used a quart Pyrex measuring cup.)



Place the white chocolate chips on top of the butter.



Pour in the 14-ounce can of sweetened condensed milk.



Heat on HIGH for 1 minute. Then remove from the microwave and stir with a heat-resistant rubber spatula.



Return the bowl to the microwave and heat for another minute.



Let the bowl sit in the microwave for 1 minute and then take it out (careful—it may be hot!) and set it on the counter. Attempt to stir it smooth with the heat-resistant spatula.



If you can stir the mixture smooth, you’re done. If you can’t stir it smooth, return the bowl to the microwave and heat on HIGH in 30-second intervals followed by 1 minute standing time, until you can stir it smooth.



To frost your White Chocolate Brownies, simply pour the frosting over the top of your brownies, using the heat-resistant rubber spatula to smooth the frosting into the corners.



Let the frosted brownies cool to room temperature until the frosting is “set”. Then cover with a sheet of foil and store them in a cool place.



When you’re ready to serve, cut the White Chocolate Brownies into brownie-size pieces. They are rich so serve them with icy cold glasses of milk or cups of strong coffee.



Lisa’s Note: We always make these brownies and Double Fudge Brownies for Valentine’s Day. We like to decorate these with maraschino cherries cut in half lengthwise. We cut them BEFORE we make the frosting so that we’re ready to push them into the frosting before it “sets”.





Chapter Eleven


“Hannah!”

The call came at five o’clock, just as Hannah, Lisa, and Michelle were preparing to mix up the cookie dough for the following day. “Yes, Ross,” she answered, motioning to Mike, who was sitting at the work station with them.

“Did you get the money?”

“No,” Hannah answered quickly. “The bank doesn’t carry that much cash on hand, but Doug said you could write a check to your wife so that she could deposit it and the bank would honor it immediately.”

“I can’t do that,” Ross said, and his words were clipped. “I can’t believe you could be that stupid, Hannah!” Ross gave a laugh that was both derisive and humorless. “Did you and Doug really believe that I’d fall for something like that?”

Hannah was so angry, she came very close to losing it and giving Ross a piece of her mind. How dare he call her stupid! She wasn’t the stupid one. He was for thinking that she’d fall for his lies again.

And then Mike reached out to squeeze her shoulder and she gave a reluctant nod. She knew she had to go along with Doug and Mike’s plan so she repeated one of her great-grandmother Elsa’s favorite sayings to herself. You’ll catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. It took a moment or two, but it worked and that was when she realized that she should react as if she were the injured party, the tearful wronged woman who was still in love with the man she’d thought was her husband, the woman who would do anything to have him back. “But . . . Ross,” she did her best to sound upset, which wasn’t difficult, and heartbroken, which was. Ross was a rat and she knew she was better off without him.

She took a deep breath and managed to put a little quaver in her voice when she continued. “You told me that you needed to give that money to your wife so that she would get a divorce. And then you said you loved me and when the divorce was final, you’d marry me all over again. Did you mean it, Ross? Or were you . . . lying to me?”

“Of course I meant it, Cookie. I’d never lie to you. You have to believe that. But I can’t write a check to my wife.”

“Why not?” Hannah felt Mike’s hand pat her back. He obviously approved of the effort she was making.

“Because she doesn’t have a checking account. No, Cookie. You have to get that money somehow. Go see Doug again and tell him that it won’t work for me to write a check and I need that money now.”

He was beginning to sound desperate again and Hannah knew that she had to be careful. “I . . . I could do that, but it won’t work. The bank doesn’t keep that much cash on hand and Doug has to request the cash. Doug told me that the earliest it could be delivered by armored truck would be right before the bank opened on Monday.”