Devil's Food Cake Murder (Hannah Swensen, #14)(14)

1 cup strong brewed coffee, cooled to room temperature





16 ounces (6 cups) of dairy topping (I used Cool Whip Real Whipped Cream)





? cup coffee liqueur (I used Starbucks Cappuccino)





2 Tablespoons (1/8 cup) chocolate liqueur (I used Godiva)





2 six-ounce containers of chocolate yogurt***





? cup mini chocolate chips





? cup chopped pecans





*** - I couldn’t find chocolate yogurt in my store so I used two 6-ounce containers of vanilla yogurt and mixed it with 1/8 cup chocolate syrup. It worked just fine.

Hannah’s 2nd Note: If you would prefer to whip your own sweetened whipped cream, that’s fine. Just make sure you end up with 6 cups. To do this, start with 3 cups of chilled whipping cream, whip it up, and when it begins to hold a peak, continue beating and slowly sprinkle in a half-cup of white, granulated sugar. Continue to beat until the sugar has dissolved. (You can tell by shutting off the mixer and rubbing a bit of whipped cream between your finger and thumb. If it’s gritty, it’s not dissolved yet.)

Cut the sponge cake into cubes roughly twice the size of those little cheese cubes with fancy toothpicks that they serve at parties. You don’t have to be exact. Nobody’s going to measure.

Place the cake cubes in a bowl and add the strong coffee. Toss the cake cubes around a little so they all get soaked with coffee.

Combine the dairy topping, yogurt, and liqueurs in a small bowl. Set the bowl aside.

In another small bowl, toss the mini chocolate chips with the chopped pecans. Set that bowl aside.

Get out a pretty bowl that will hold 12 cups, and set it on the counter. You’re ready to assemble your trifle.

Place a third of the coffee-soaked cake cubes in the bottom of the bowl.

Top the coffee-soaked cake with a third of the whipped topping mixture.

Sprinkle a third of the chip and nut mixture over that.

Repeat these layers two more times, ending with the last of the nut and mini chocolate chip mixture.

Hannah’s 3rd Note: Linda tops her trifle off with a few espresso coffee beans, but Sally uses chocolate curls at the Lake Eden Inn. Even though all you have to do to make chocolate curls is run the blade of a sharp knife down the side of a thick chocolate bar, I sometimes don’t have time to do it. Then I just sprinkle on a few seasonal berries or more mini chocolate chips for decoration.

This dessert must chill for at least 3 hours before serving. If you have all the ingredients, you can make it in the morning in about fifteen minutes, stick it in the refrigerator while you go about your busy day, and serve it to company for dinner that night.

Yield: This trifle serves 12 unless you invite Mike. I watched him eat three helpings at the Lake Eden Inn.





Chapter Five

“So what are you going to do?” Andrea asked.

“I couldn’t think of a good excuse that fast, so I said I’d go. What else could I do?”

“You could have listened to the message I left on your answering machine at a quarter to five last night. I called to warn you that Mike invited Bill to her birthday party and Bill accepted for both of us.”

Hannah groaned. She’d seen the red light blinking, but she’d fixed Moishe’s dinner first. And she’d fully intended to listen to her message right after she got dressed for her dinner with Mike, but her hair had been impossible after her shower, sticking up in wiry red corkscrew curls all over her head. It had taken what seemed like forever to brush it into some semblance of normalcy. Then Mike had arrived and she’d forgotten all about the message she hadn’t retrieved. And when he had brought her home, she’d gone straight to bed without even glancing at her answering machine.

“You’ve got to start checking your messages, Hannah, especially when your cell phone is off.”

“My cell phone’s off?” Hannah rummaged around in the bottom of her purse until she found it. The moment she did, she remembered why she’d silenced it. “I turned it off when I catered Mother’s Regency Romance Club meeting, but I’m almost sure I turned it back on.”

Andrea shrugged. “It’s either off, or dead. All I know is I called you and it went straight to voicemail. You probably haven’t checked your voicemail in a while, either. If you don’t leave any way for people to contact you, they can’t tell you what you need to know.”

“That’s true,” Hannah admitted, pressing the button to turn on her phone and holding it down. But even though she held it for double the time it usually took, there was no burst of sound and the display remained blank. “There’s something wrong with my phone. It won’t turn on.”

“Then you probably forgot to charge it. Where’s your charger?” Andrea held out her hand for the phone. “I’ll go plug it in.”

“It’s at home. I don’t have one at work.”

Andrea just shook her head. “Really, Hannah! They’re not expensive, and you should have a charger in both places. I’m going to the phone store anyway, and I’ll pick up a second one for you. I’ve got one in my office, one at home, and one in my car. It’s very important to keep your phone charged.”