Raspberry Danish Murder (Hannah Swensen #22)(87)

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 large egg, beaten (just whip it up in a glass with a fork)

? cup whole milk

? cup vegetable oil (I used Wesson Vegetable Oil)

6 Tablespoons orange marmalade





Prepare a 12-cup muffin tin by spraying the cups with Pam or another nonstick cooking spray, or lining them with cupcake papers.





Place the flour in a large bowl.





Add the rolled oats and mix them into the flour with a fork from your silverware drawer.





Add the white sugar and mix it in thoroughly.





Use the fork to mix in the salt and the baking powder.





In another bowl, combine beaten egg, whole milk, and vegetable oil. Mix them together thoroughly. (I used a whisk to do this.)





Add the wet ingredients (egg, milk, vegetable oil) in the second bowl to the dry ingredients (flour, oats, sugar, salt, baking powder) in the first bowl.





Stir until the dry ingredients are moistened. Don’t over-stir! This will make the muffins tough!





Drop 1 Tablespoon of batter into each muffin cup and spread it out with a rubber spatula to cover the bottom of the cup.





Drop ? Tablespoon of orange marmalade on top of the batter. Try to drop it in the center of the cup so that it is surrounded by the batter you spread on the bottom.





When you have done this in every muffin cup, fill each cup with batter, distributing it as evenly as you can. (Lisa and I do this with a scooper down at The Cookie Jar.)





Gently run the blade of a table knife around the edge of the batter in each muffin cup to seal the orange marmalade in the center of the muffin. There may be some leakage, but as long as you used cupcake papers, you will be able to get the muffins out of the tin.





Bake your Orange Marmalade Filled Oatmeal Muffins at 400 degrees F. for approximately 20 minutes or until they are a nice golden shade of brown on top.





These muffins are best served warm. You can also bake them, store them, and reheat them in the microwave to warm them later.





Make sure you have plenty of softened, salted butter for those who want it and lots of coffee or cold milk.





Yield: 12 delicious muffins. If you invite Mike for breakfast, you’d better mix up 2 batches!





Chapter Twenty-six


Twenty minutes later, after the consumption of a total of a dozen muffins by Michelle, Hannah, Mike, and Lonnie, the two sisters were in their respective cars on their way to The Cookie Jar to pack up the cookies and cookie bars they’d baked for Sally’s Holiday Gift Convention.

“Looks like Lisa’s here already,” Hannah said, gesturing toward the sporty red car that Lisa’s husband, Herb, had given her the previous year as a surprise Christmas gift.

“Marge and Aunt Nancy are here early, too,” Michelle told her. “I went around the block and I noticed that their cars were parked in front. I wonder what time they all got here.”

Hannah unlocked the back kitchen door, and the two sisters stepped into the warmth. Once they’d hung their parkas on hooks by the back door and walked into the main part of the kitchen, they stopped and stared in disbelief.

“Good heavens!” Hannah breathed, staring at the racks of cookies and cookie bars that filled the two bakers racks. Additional baked goods were spread over every flat surface in the kitchen and, as they watched, Marge and Lisa carried racks of cooled cookies into the coffee shop.

“Hi, girls!” Aunt Nancy greeted them.

“Hello, Aunt Nancy,” Hannah managed to say, and then she pointed to the filled bakers racks. “What’s all this?”

“The cookies and cookie bars you’re going to take to the convention hall.”

“But . . . what time did you get here?” Michelle asked.

“We all met in the kitchen at three-thirty. We talked about it on the phone last night and we decided to give you two a good send-off. You’ll be working hard all day, and since you had some dough mixed up, we decided to bake it for you.”

Hannah looked at the bakers racks again. “But it looks like you baked a lot more than we mixed up before we left last night.”

Aunt Nancy laughed. “Of course we did! There were a couple of recipes we wanted to bake and one new recipe we needed to try.”

“Which recipe is new?” Michelle asked.

“We’re calling it Chocolate Caramel Bar Cookies, and it’s based on my friend Lyn Jackson’s Salted Caramel Bar Cookies. We got the idea the last time we made Lyn’s recipe and Lisa was unwrapping the caramels. She said there used to be a couple of chocolate caramels in with the rest of the plain caramels and her mother saved those for her.”

“So you decided to make up a recipe with chocolate caramels?” Hannah asked the obvious question.

“Yes. All three of us worked on it, and that’s why we wanted to try it this morning. Will you test it for us to see if you like it?”

“Of course!” Michelle said quickly.

Hannah nodded. “We’ve already had breakfast so one of the new bars can be dessert.”