Red Velvet Cupcake Murder (Hannah Swensen, #16)(54)

Hannah turned on the coffee machine and sat down in a chair at the Formica-topped kitchen table that was already considered an antique. The basket of muffins sat in the center of the table and there was a stack of paper napkins and a jar of soft butter next to it. There was even a table knife to spread the butter. Michelle had thought of everything.

Unable to resist at least a peek, Hannah lifted the napkin that covered the muffins. There were six nestled inside, their tops puffed and golden. Jamboree Muffins must be one of Michelle’s new recipes. Hannah had never tasted a Jamboree Muffin before.

She told herself she should wait for her coffee to be ready, but the aroma of freshly baked muffins was too compelling to deny. Hannah took one out of the basket, broke it open, and began to smile. Jamboree was a perfect name for these muffins since there was a spoonful of strawberry jam in the center.

She ate the first half of the muffin without butter. It was delicious. She spread butter on the second half and that was delicious, too. She wasn’t quite sure which way was best so she got up to pour herself a cup of coffee, and decided that in the interests of research, she really ought to run another trial.

It was back to the muffin basket to choose another muffin. There was no way to tell what was inside each muffin so she chose one at random and hoped it would be a strawberry again, or another kind of jam she liked. That brought up the question of whether there was any jam or jelly she didn’t like, and Hannah took a moment to think about it. “Mint jelly,” she said to Moishe, who’d just come into the kitchen. Andrea had once made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with mint jelly and they had been simply awful.

Moishe was looking at her expectantly, so she got up and filled his food bowl and gave him fresh water even though Michelle might have fed him earlier. Then she washed her hands and went back to the table to run the second trial.

The second muffin was filled with a spoonful of peach jam. Norman would love muffins with peach jam. She’d remember to get the recipe from Michelle so that she could bake them for him. She probably should have saved this one for him, but she’d already broken it open and it was too late now.

Four cups of coffee and a third trial with another muffin, one with grape jelly inside, and Hannah decided she couldn’t decide if the muffins were better with or without butter. She also concluded that she couldn’t conclude which jam or jelly she liked best. She had the terrible urge to break the remaining muffins open to see which kind of jam or jelly was inside each one, but she remembered how upset Delores had been with her years ago when Hannah had scraped some chocolate off the bottom of each piece of candy in the box so that she could identify her favorite one. It’s not polite, Delores had told a four-year-old Hannah. You touched them all and now no one else will want to eat them.

Hannah gave a little laugh at the memory. She hadn’t realized it at the time, but her mother had taught her an important lesson that day. If you wanted to eat an entire box of candy and not share it with anyone else, all you had to do was touch each piece. She had the childish urge to touch the remaining three muffins so that they would be hers, all hers, but she told herself that doing so would be childish, and she went off to take her morning shower instead.
JAMBOREE MUFFINS

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F., rack in the middle position.

1 large egg, beaten

? cup whole milk

? cup vegetable oil

cup white (granulated) sugar

2 cups all-purpose flour (pack it down when you

measure it)

3 teaspoons (one Tablespoon) baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

Approximately 1/4 cup jam of your choice

Hannah’s 1st Note: This is a great recipe for using up all those jars of jam with little dibs and dabs in the bottom that are taking up too much room on your refrigerator shelf!

Grease or spray the bottoms of 12 muffin cups with Pam or another nonstick cooking spray. Alternatively, you can use paper cupcake liners. Use a muffin pan or a cupcake pan that has cups approximately 2 and ? inches across the top and are 1 and ? inches deep. (That’s a standard size.)

Hannah’s 2nd Note: Don’t use an electric mixer to mix up these muffins. Just stir everything up by hand. The muffin batter should be a little lumpy, like brownie batter, and not over-mixed.

In a medium-sized bowl, beat the egg with the milk until they are well combined.

Stir in the vegetable oil and the white sugar.

Measure out the flour in another bowl. Stir in the baking powder and the salt with a fork.

Add the flour mixture to the egg mixture in half-cup increments, stirring after each increment, but only until the flour is moistened. The resulting muffin batter will be lumpy. That’s okay. It’s supposed to be.

Fill the muffin cups half-full with batter.

Get out your jam jars. You can use all one kind, or several different kinds of jam. It’s totally up to you.

Use a teaspoon measure or a small-sized spoon from your silverware drawer to drop 1 teaspoon of jam into the center of each muffin.

Hannah’s 3rd Note: I hope Mother never reads this recipe because I use one of the antique silver collector’s spoons she gave me to dish out the jam and drop it into the center of the muffin batter.

Cover the jam with muffin batter until the muffin cups are ? full.

Bake at 400 degrees F. for approximately 20 minutes, or until the muffins are golden brown.

Let the Jamboree Muffins cool in the pan for 10 minutes and then serve them with plenty of butter. They’re good warm and they’re good cold. They also reheat well in the microwave.