Death of a Cupcake Queen
Page 20
I held out my glass so Mona could top it off one more time as the band played the Marching Song and the graduates filed into the gym.
I’m happy to report that I wasn’t a complete mess either as my daughter walked across the stage to accept her diploma. But everyone else was. I passed out tissues left and right to Randy, Sergio, Mona, and Liddy, who were all bawling. We applauded and cheered as Gemma accepted her diploma and turned to give us a bright smile and a big thumbs up.
After the ceremony, we all headed to the cafeteria, where everyone was invited to have snacks that the parents brought and to take lots of pictures of the proud and happy graduates.
I had been feeling a little nostalgic lately with everything that had been going on, so I decided to make Ivy’s famous vanilla cupcakes with bright pink frosting, which had always been her favorite color, to bring to the festivities. They just seemed to scream party, and I know she would have loved it.
As my daughter and her best friend Carrie ran up to us, I finally got the opportunity to get a few pictures of the girls together.
As I lifted the camera up to snap a few photos, I suddenly felt the years melting away as I looked at the two smiling girls in front of me with their arms around each other, laughing into the camera, their futures still so bright, their whole lives ahead of them. For a split second I could see Ivy and Nykki smiling into a camera twenty years ago, feeling the exact same way and it made me smile.
It was a bittersweet moment, of course, but justice had been served. I said a quick prayer to myself for my old classmates, and returned my thoughts to the present because it was now time to enjoy this special day for the Class of 2015! I love you, Gemma! Mama’s so proud!
She will hate that I included that last part.
Pink Lemonade Cocktail
Ingredients:
2 ounces pink lemonade
2 ounces cranberry juice
Splash of Triple Sec
Pour ingredients in an ice filled mixer glass, shake until chilled. Strain into a chilled glass and enjoy with friends.
Ivy’s Famous Pink Frosted Cupcakes
Ingredients:
2¼ cups flour
1¾ cups sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
½ teaspoon kosher salt
1 stick room temperature butter
¾ cup milk
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
Add all your dry ingredients to a mixing bowl and mix together.
Then add the butter, milk, eggs, and vanilla to the dry ingredients and blend until all mixed together.
Line two muffin tins with cupcake liners and divide the batter into 18 cupcakes.
Bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for 20 minutes or until cupcakes spring back when touched on top.
Remove from oven and cool completely.
Pink Butter Cream Frosting
Ingredients:
3 sticks room temperature butter
2 cups confectionary sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla
pink food coloring
Add all ingredients to a bowl and beat until creamy. Add a few drops of pink food coloring and mix together. You can add more or less food coloring to get your desired pink color. Frost the cooled cupcakes and share with your friends!
Dear Reader:
We hope you’ve enjoyed Hayley Powell’s latest mystery, Death of a Cupcake Queen. And be sure to try out all those sweet and tasty dessert recipes Hayley wrote about in her columns.
Up next, Hayley shifts gears from sweets to mouth watering bacon recipes in her sizzling new adventure Death of a Bacon Heiress, coming soon from Kensington.
When we return to the picturesque coastal town of Bar Harbor, Maine, food columnist and amateur sleuth Hayley Powell is thrilled over receiving a call from a New York-based television producer who wants to fly her to New York to do a cooking demonstration on a nationally broadcast talk show.
While in the Big Apple, Hayley runs into Olivia Redmond, a billionaire heiress to Redmond Meats, known around the world for their top selling bacon products. Olivia summers in Bar Harbor with her handsome polo playing Argentinean husband at the seaside estate her family has owned for decades. Olivia is a rather eccentric character and is famous with the locals for walking her pet, a pot-bellied pig named Pork Chop, around town on a leash. She and Hayley become fast friends bonding over Hayley’s Bacon Wrapped Jalapeno Stuffed Chicken Thighs that she prepared for her TV show segment and Olivia offers her a part time job on the spot blogging her bacon recipes for the Redmond Meats website.
But before Hayley can post her first recipe, Bacon Stripped Pancakes, Olivia turns up dead in the gardens of her summer estate, her grieving pet pig by her side. And she didn’t die from eating too much greasy bacon. Someone snapped her neck, killing her instantly! Hayley immediately starts looking into Olivia’s wealthy background. Did her ne’er-do-well Latin husband tire of catering to her every whim? Was it her bitter actor wannabe son who she cut off when he didn’t go into the family business? Or maybe his scheming gold-digging girlfriend who is a Downton Abbey fan and desperate to become the lady of the manor? Could it have been someone on the company’s board of directors who wanted to get rid of her tie-breaking vote? With the list of suspects growing, Hayley Powell is on the case.
Be sure to visit our website www.LeeHollisMysteries.com and follow us on our Facebook page by typing in Lee Hollis.
Your Author in Crime,
Lee Hollis
KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
119 West 40th Street
New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2015 by Rick Copp and Holly Simason
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the Publisher and neither the Author nor the Publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”
Kensington and the K logo Reg. U.S. Pat & TM Off.
ISBN: 978-0-7582-9453-1
ISBN-10: 0-7582-9453-0
First Kensington Mass Market Edition: June 2015
eISBN-13: 978-0-7582-9454-8
eISBN-10: 0-7582-9454-9
First Kensington Electronic Edition: June 2015