Raspberry Danish Murder (Hannah Swensen #22)(23)

Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and chill the cookie dough for at least one hour in the refrigerator. It’s a little too sticky to form into balls without chilling it first.





Hannah’s 2nd Note: Lisa and I mix up this dough before we leave The Cookie Jar for the night and bake it when we come in to work the next morning.





When your cookie dough has chilled and you’re ready to bake, preheat your oven to 350 degrees F., and make sure the rack is in the middle position. DO NOT take your chilled cookie dough out of the refrigerator until after your oven has reached the proper temperature.





While your oven is preheating, prepare your cookie sheets by spraying them with Pam or another nonstick baking spray, or lining them with parchment paper.





Place the powdered sugar in a small, shallow bowl. You will be dropping cookie dough into this bowl to form dough balls and coating them with the powdered sugar.





When your oven is ready, take your dough out of the refrigerator. Using a teaspoon from your silverware drawer, drop the dough by rounded teaspoonful into the bowl with the powdered sugar. Roll the dough around with your fingers to form powdered sugar coated cookie dough balls.





Hannah’s 3rd Note: If you coat your fingers with powdered sugar first and then try to form the cookie dough into balls, it’s a lot easier to accomplish.





Place the coated cookie dough balls on your prepared cookie sheets, no more than 12 cookies to a standard-size sheet.





Hannah’s 4th Note: Work with only one cookie dough ball at a time. If you drop more than one in the bowl of powdered sugar, they’ll stick together. Also, make only as many cookie dough balls as you can bake at one time. Cover the remaining dough and return it to the refrigerator until you’re ready to bake more.





If you decide you want to decorate your cookies, press half of a maraschino cherry, rounded side up, on top of each cookie before you bake them.





Bake your Pineapple Raisin Whippersnapper Cookies at 350 degrees F., for 10 minutes. Let them cool on the cookie sheet for 2 minutes, and then move them to a wire rack to cool completely. (This is a lot easier if you line your cookie sheets with parchment paper—then you don’t need to lift the cookies one by one. All you have to do is grab one end of the parchment paper and pull it, cookies and all, onto the wire rack.)





Once the cookies are completely cool, store them between sheets of waxed paper in a cool, dry place. (Your refrigerator is cool, but it’s definitely not dry!)





Yield: 3 to 4 dozen soft, delicious spice and fruit cookies, depending on cookie size.





Chapter Eight


Hannah glanced at the bakers racks standing by the oven. They were almost empty, and that meant it was time to bake again. Lisa was telling her story about P.K., and customers were lining up to hear it. Some of them, like Grandma Knudson, the first lady of Holy Redeemer Lutheran Church, had been in the coffee shop for three performances. Grandma’s granddaughter-in-law, Claire Rodgers Knudson, had come in several minutes ago from her dress shop, and it looked as if Grandma would be staying for a fourth performance.

Once Hannah had explained what she wanted Andrea to do and Andrea had left with Michelle, Hannah had checked with Lisa, Aunt Nancy, and Marge. All three had agreed that Hannah should accept Sally’s offer and Hannah had called Sally back with the good news. She’d thought about returning Cyril’s call, but she decided that it could wait and that she would work on replenishing their cookie supply first.

Nothing in their thick volume of tried and true cookie recipes appealed to Hannah, and she decided to come up with a recipe for a new cookie. Their customers loved lemon, and there was no reason why she couldn’t combine their recipe for lemon cookies with their recipe for oatmeal cookies. A quick check of the pantry and cooler assured her that she had all the ingredients she needed on hand. This was good, because she really didn’t have time to run out for missing ingredients. She collected everything she needed, quickly mixed up the cookie dough, and now she was waiting for her Oatmeal Lemon Cookies to come out of the oven.

There was a knock on the back kitchen door and Hannah glanced at the timer. There was one minute to go and she hurried to answer the door.

“Hi, Norman,” she greeted him and motioned him in. “I have just enough time to get you a cup of coffee before my new cookies come out of the oven.”

Norman hung his parka on a hook by the back door and took his usual seat at the work station. Hannah had just delivered his mug of coffee when the timer began to buzz. “Thanks, Hannah. You have perfect timing,” he told her.

“So do you. I was going to call you, but now you’re here. Hold on a second while I take the cookies out of the oven and brush on the topping.”

“Take your time,” Norman said as he picked up his mug of coffee.

When Hannah opened the oven door, the scent that rolled out caused her to smile. She breathed in deeply and took the first pan of golden brown cookies from the oven shelf.

The warm cookies had to be glazed immediately, and Hannah had already mixed up the glaze. She brushed the glaze on each pan of cookies before she slid the cookie sheets onto the bakers rack.