Cinnamon Roll Murder (Hannah Swensen, #15)(23)

Let the cake sit out on the wire rack or cold burner for at least 10 minutes so that the Butter Sauce has time to soak into the holes you poked.



Refrigerate your Butterama Cake for at least 2 hours. At the end of that time, just leave the cake in the refrigerator and start the Brown Butter Icing.



Brown Butter Icing:





? cup butter (? stick, 2 ounces, pound)

2 cups powdered sugar (confectioner’s sugar—pack it down in the cup when you measure it)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract (you could also use Ken- tucky Bourbon)

2 Tablespoons heavy cream (that’s whipping cream, but you could also use half and half which is light cream)

? cup chopped pecans or walnuts (optional—to sprinkle over the top of the cake after you frost it.)





To make the frosting:



Put the ? cup butter into a medium-size saucepan. (You already have one sitting on a cold burner if you made the Butter Sauce on the stovetop. If you used the microwave instead, make sure that the saucepan you choose is not colored black or brown inside. (I made that mistake and I couldn’t see when the butter had browned.)



Place the saucepan on the stovetop and heat it at MEDIUM-HIGH heat. The butter will melt and then it will brown. Continue to heat it until it has browned.



When the butter is a nice caramel color, (this took about 5 minutes for me), remove it from the heat and shut off the burner.



Stir in the 2 cups of powdered sugar.



Stir in the vanilla extract.



Put the 2 Tablespoons of heavy cream in a small cup and drizzle them in, stirring as you go until the frosting is smooth and spreadable.



This is another one of those wonderful no-fail frostings. If it turns out to be too runny, add a bit more powdered sugar. If it turns out to be too thick and stiff, add a bit more cream. Continue to adjust these two ingredients until the frosting is the right consistency.



Take the Butterama Cake out of the refrigerator and frost it with Brown Butter Icing. If you like, you can sprinkle some chopped pecans or walnuts over the top to decorate your cake.



Return the cake to the refrigerator until you’re ready to serve it. Like revenge, this dish is best served cold.





Chapter Eight


When the alarm went off the next morning, Hannah woke up to discover that she ached all over. In other circumstances she might have thought that this had something to do with the fact that two pillow-hogging cats, who seemed to morph into much bigger creatures in the dark of night, had shared her bed. But in this case, she was almost certain her soreness and stiffness was caused by last night’s trek through the ditch with Michelle, when they’d waded through the deep snow to get to the band bus.

“Come on, you lazybones. It’s time to get up,” Hannah said to the two cats who were stretched out sideways on her mattress, taking up much more than half the bed. They didn’t move. They didn’t even flicker a whisker in her direction, so Hannah tried again. “Daylight in the swamp. Time to get up and chase all the mice that came in during the night.”

Moishe opened one yellow eye and looked at her. His mouth remained closed, but Hannah could have sworn she heard him say, Good try Hannah, but there’s no mice in here. All I smell is the leftovers from the Hamburger Bake you made for Mike. Let us sleep for gosh sakes! Just because you have to get up before the crack of dawn doesn’t mean that Cuddles and I have to lose sleep.

“All right. You can sleep,” Hannah said, bowing to that penetrating one-eyed stare. “I’ll fill your automatic feeder before I go.”

She needed coffee. She’d probably die without it. Hannah thrust her feet into her moccasin slippers, thrust her arms into the faded chenille robe she’d purchased at Lake Eden’s only thrift store, Helping Hands, and shuffled down the hall.

The door to the guest room was closed. Michelle must still be sleeping. She certainly couldn’t blame her! Lonnie and Mike hadn’t left until almost two in the morning.

As she entered the living room, she saw that the light was on in the kitchen. She must have been so tired that she’d forgotten to turn it off before she’d gone to bed. It was a good thing that her mother didn’t know, or Delores would tell her best friend, Carrie. Norman’s mother was “green” through and through, and she would be terribly worried about the number of kilowatts that Hannah had wasted. Carrie was concerned about pollution, global warming, the state of the economy, and the size of the global footprint that everyone but her was leaving. Delores had called Hannah on Christmas morning to tell her that Carrie had given her a goat. This wasn’t a real goat, Delores had rushed to explain. It was a goat that an international organization shipped to an impoverished family in a country neither Hannah nor her mother had ever heard of, so that they could have milk for their children to drink.

Carrie was a nice woman. Hannah liked her a lot. She had an abundance of good qualities, but she was a little crazy. It was wonderful that her new husband, Earl Flensburg, thought her eccentricities were charming.

Coffee. She needed it so much she could almost smell it. Hannah padded across the living room carpet and stepped into her white-walled kitchen. She put her hands over her eyes for a moment. The banks of florescent lights overhead seemed as bright as the sun in a cloudless sky.