Caramel Crush Read online

  Mel glanced past him at Angie and they exchanged a nod. They linked their arms through Marty’s, forming a small but no less meaningful human chain.

  “Over our dead bodies,” Mel said.

  “Really?” Marty said. “That’s your word choice at the moment?”

  She patted his arm. “Don’t you worry. We got this.”

  “Oh, boy,” Marty said.

  Recipes

  Caramel Breakup Cupcakes

  ½ cup butter, softened

  ½ cup packed dark brown sugar

  ½ cup granulated sugar

  2 eggs

  1 teaspoon vanilla extract

  1¾ cups all-purpose flour

  1¼ teaspoons baking powder

  ¼ teaspoon salt

  ¾ cup milk

  Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line cupcake pan with paper liners. In a large bowl, cream butter and sugars until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in vanilla. In a medium bowl, combine flour, baking powder, and salt; add to creamed mixture alternately with milk, beating well after each addition. Fill paper-lined muffin cups two-thirds full. Bake 18 to 22 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool completely. Makes 12 cupcakes.

  Dulce De Leche Icing

  ½ cup cream cheese (4-ounce package)

  ½ cup unsalted butter, room temperature

  4 cups powdered sugar

  ½ cup dulce de leche (found with sweetened condensed milk)

  In a medium-sized mixing bowl, beat cream cheese and butter on high speed for three minutes, until light and fluffy. Alternately, mix in powdered sugar and dulce de leche until fully combined. Spread or pipe on cooled cupcakes. Garnish with drizzled caramel, or, you know, a candy button that says, It’s not me, it’s you, if desired.

  Mocha Latte Cupcakes

  Chocolate coffee cupcake with chocolate coffee icing.

  1⅓ cups all-purpose flour

  ¼ teaspoon baking soda

  2 teaspoons baking powder

  ½ cup unsweetened cocoa powder

  ⅛ teaspoon salt

  3 tablespoons butter, softened

  1 cup white sugar

  2 eggs

  ¾ teaspoon vanilla extract

  ½ cup milk

  ½ cup cold coffee

  Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Sift together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, cocoa, and salt. Set aside. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until well blended. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well with each addition, then stir in the vanilla. Add the flour mixture alternately with the milk and coffee; beat well. Bake for 15 to 18 minutes. Makes 12.

  Mocha Latte Icing

  ½ cup butter, softened

  ½ cup cream cheese (4 ounces), softened

  1½ tablespoons instant espresso (powdered)

  2 teaspoons vanilla extract

  4 cups powdered sugar

  3 tablespoons milk

  In a medium-sized mixing bowl, beat butter and cream cheese on high speed for three minutes, until light and fluffy. Mix in instant espresso, vanilla extract, powdered sugar, and milk until it reaches desired consistency. Spread or pipe on cooled cupcakes. Garnish with a chocolate-covered espresso bean, if desired.

  Key Lime Cupcakes

  A golden cupcake flavored with lime zest and topped with a key lime buttercream.

  ¾ cup sugar

  1½ cups flour

  ¼ teaspoon salt

  2 teaspoons baking powder

  ¼ cup melted butter

  1 beaten egg

  1 cup milk

  1 tablespoon key lime zest

  2 tablespoons key lime juice

  Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Sift the dry ingredients together in a big bowl. Melt the butter and add the beaten egg to it. Add that to the dry ingredients, then stir in the milk until smooth. Zest half of a lime, and add it to the bowl. Squeeze in the juice of half the lime, mixing well. Bake for 15 to 18 minutes or until golden brown. Makes 12.

  Key Lime Buttercream

  ½ cup salted butter, softened

  ½ cup unsalted butter, softened

  2 tablespoons key lime juice

  1 tablespoon key lime zest

  ½ teaspoon vanilla extract

  4 cups powdered sugar

  In a medium-sized mixing bowl, beat butter on high speed, until light and fluffy. Mix in key lime juice, zest, and vanilla extract. Add in powdered sugar, mixing until it reaches desired consistency. Spread or pipe on cooled cupcakes. Garnish with a candied lime peel, if desired.

  Cherry Bomb Cupcakes

  A cherry chocolate cupcake with cherry cream cheese frosting.

  1½ cups all-purpose flour

  ¼ teaspoon baking soda

  2 teaspoons baking powder

  ¾ cup unsweetened cocoa powder

  ⅛ teaspoon salt

  ½ cup (1 stick) butter, softened

  1 cup sugar

  2 eggs

  ⅓ cup Maraschino cherry juice

  1 cup milk

  Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Put liners in muffin tin and set aside. Sift together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, cocoa, and salt. Set aside. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until well blended. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well with each addition, then stir in the cherry juice. Add the flour mixture alternately with the milk; beat well. Fill the cupcake liners evenly and bake for 18 to 20 minutes. Makes 12.

  Cherry Cream Cheese Frosting

  ½ cup cream cheese (4 ounces), softened

  ½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened

  ⅓ cup cherry pie filling

  ½ teaspoon almond extract

  ½ teaspoon vanilla extract

  4 cups powdered sugar

  2–3 tablespoons milk, if needed

  In a medium-sized mixing bowl, beat cream cheese and butter on high speed, until light and fluffy. Mix in cherry pie filling and the almond and vanilla extracts. Add in powdered sugar, mixing until it reaches desired consistency. Add in milk, if necessary. Spread or pipe on cooled cupcakes. Garnish with a maraschino cherry, if desired.

  Bananas Foster Cupcakes

  A banana rum cake with banana buttercream frosting and a rum caramel drizzle.

  1½ cups flour

  ½ teaspoon baking soda

  ½ teaspoon baking powder

  ¼ teaspoon salt

  ½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened

  ¾ cup sugar

  1½ teaspoons rum extract

  2 beaten eggs

  ½ cup milk

  2 medium bananas (1 cup), peeled and mashed

  Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Sift the dry ingredients together in a medium bowl. In a large bowl, mix the butter, sugar, rum extract, eggs, and milk. Add the dry ingredients, then mix in the bananas until batter is smooth. Bake for 15 to 18 minutes or until golden brown. Makes 12.

  Banana Buttercream

  ½ cup (1 stick) salted butter, softened

  ½ cup mashed banana

  ½ teaspoon lemon juice

  4 cups powdered sugar

  In a medium-sized mixing bowl, beat butter on high speed, until light and fluffy. Mix in bananas and lemon juice. Add in powdered sugar, mixing until it reaches desired consistency. Spread or pipe on cooled cupcakes. Garnish with rum caramel drizzle, if desired.

  Rum caramel drizzle: Melt one cup of caramels in a double boiler, adding one teaspoon of rum extract. Allow to cool and thicken, using a fork to drizzle over the cupcakes.

  Keep reading for an excerpt from Jenn McKinlay’s next Cupcake Bakery Mystery . . .

  WEDDING CAKE CRUMBLE

  Coming soon from Berkley Prime Crime!

  “Here comes the bride,” Melanie Cooper sang as she h
eld a bouquet of multicolored snapdragons in front of her as if she was walking down the aisle.

  “Practicing for your own wedding?” Angie DeLaura asked her.

  “No, just yours,” Mel said, then she smiled. “For now.”

  Best friends since they were twelve years old, it was no surprise that Mel was Angie’s maid of honor as Angie and their other childhood friend Tate Harper were tying the knot in just one week.

  Today, Mel and Angie had left Fairy Tale Cupcakes, the bakery they co-owned, in the capable hands of their helpers while they ran around town, finalizing payments to vendors and making sure everything was a go for Angie and Tate’s big day.

  “Annabelle? Hello!” Angie called. She rang the bell on the florist’s counter and peered at the back room. “What do you suppose is keeping her?”

  “No idea,” Mel said. She admired the petals on a huge sunflower. So pretty.

  “Okay, so after we meet with the florist, who’s next?” Angie asked.

  Mel put down the snapdragons and checked her smartphone where she kept her to-do list updated.

  “We need to pay the photographer and then the caterer.” She glanced at Angie. “Are you really having them make Jell-O? ‘Because crème brûlée can never be Jell-O.’”

  “‘I have to be Jell-O,’” Angie said. For emphasis, she tossed her long, curly brown hair over her shoulder.

  “My Best Friend’s Wedding,” they identified the movie quotes together and then laughed.

  Since middle school, the three friends, Mel, Angie, and Tate, had shared a love of sweets and movies. Now as adults they tried to stump one another with random movie quotes and in the case of Jell-O at their wedding, Angie chose it deliberately. She wanted Tate to know she was his comfort food, his Jell-O, which he loved much to Mel’s cordon bleu dismay.

  “Do you think we should leave and come back?” Angie asked Mel. “Maybe she’s on her coffee break and forgot to lock the door.”

  “Maybe.” Mel frowned. She didn’t want to admit she was starting to get a hinky feeling in the pit of her stomach.

  Annabelle Martin’s flower shop sat in the heart of Old Town Scottsdale. Despite the small size of the space, it was full to bursting with blooms, both real and silk, as Annabelle’s talents with flowers was legendary in this part of Arizona. A wedding was just not a wedding unless Annabelle did the flowers.

  “But even if Annabelle stepped out, why isn’t anyone else here? Doesn’t she have four assistants?” Mel asked.

  Angie nodded and Mel saw her big brown eyes get wide, and Mel knew she was thinking the same thing that Mel was. Angie swallowed and in a soft voice, she said, “Maybe something happened to her?”

  They stared at each other for a moment. Over the past few years, they had suffered the misfortune of stumbling upon several dead bodies. Given that Angie was one week from saying “I do” it would just figure if they found a body now.

  “This can’t be happening,” Angie said. “Not now.”

  “Don’t panic,” Mel said. She blew her blond bangs off of her forehead. Being a chef, she kept her hair nice and short to keep it out of the food, because nothing said “Ew” like finding a hair in your frosting.

  “Don’t panic?” Angie cried, her voice rising up a decibel with each syllable. “Why would I panic? It’s only a week until my wedding, you know, the most important day of my life to date.”

  “Breathe.” Mel squeezed Angie’s arm as she scooted past her and around the counter. “I’ll just check in back and make sure everything is okay.”

  A curtain was hanging in the doorway to the backroom. She knew from being here before that the backroom housed all of Annabelle’s supplies as well as a kitchenette and her office. It was a snug space and Mel had to turn sideways to maneuver through the packed shelves.

  Vases of glass, steel, and copper, baskets, ribbons, glass marbles, florist wire in all sizes and colors, all of it was stuffed onto the shelves until they looked as if they’d regurgitate the goods right onto the floor.

  Mel shimmied her way past until she cleared the shelves and reached the worktable in back. A couple dozen purple irises were scattered across a sheaf of floral paper as if someone had just left them out of water and gasping for air.

  Annabelle loved flowers; they were her passion. Mel couldn’t imagine that she’d have just left these here to rot. Mel felt the short cropped hair on the back of her neck prickle with unease.

  Where was Annabelle? What could have happened to her? Mel closed her eyes for a moment trying to dredge up the courage to circle the table and see if Annabelle was there, lying on the floor, unconscious, bludgeoned, bloody, bleeding out even as Mel stood here shaking like a fraidy-cat.

  “Hello? Annabelle? Are you here?” Mel called.

  There was no answer. She opened her eyes. She was just going to have to see for herself. She took a steadying breath and stepped around the worktable. She glanced at the floor. It was bare. The breath she’d been holding burst out of her lungs just as the sound of a toilet flushing broke through the quiet.

  Mel whipped around to face the back hallway just as Angie came barreling through the door from the front of the shop.

  “Any sign of her?” she asked.

  “Maybe,” Mel said. She stared down the hallway, listening to the water running in the bathroom. Please, please, please, let it be . . .

  “Well, doesn’t that just figure?” Annabelle asked as she strode toward them. “It’s quiet all morning and then the second you go to the bathroom someone shows up.”

  “You’re okay!” Mel cried. Impulsively, she threw herself at Annabelle’s big-boned frame and hugged her tight. “You’re not dead.”

  “Oh, honey, why would I be?” Annabelle hugged her back. “You need to calm down. Maybe take a vacation or something.”

  Mel let her go with a nervous laugh. “Ha, you’re right. I must be working too hard.”

  Annabelle fluffed her close cropped curls and then turned to Angie with a hug and a smile. “And how is our bride? Seven days to go! Are you ready?”

  “More than,” Angie said. “I’m excited for the wedding but I’m even more excited to have it over and be Mrs. Tate Harper.”

  Annabelle clasped her hands over her heart and sighed. “Of all the events I arrange flowers for, weddings are my favorite.” She scooped up the irises that had been on the table and dropped them into a nearby vase. “Come on, I’ll show you what I just got in.”

  Annabelle led them to the front of the shop where there were several glassed-in display cases that kept the flowers fresh. While she and Angie oohed and aahed over the blooms, Mel took a moment to get herself together. Clearly she had some issues if her first thought when Annabelle hadn’t been available was that she was dead. Seriously, what was wrong with her?

  She had been around an inordinate amount of dead bodies over the past few years. She wondered if perhaps it was her own fault. Maybe she found all of these bodies, maybe bad things happened all around her, because she went looking for them. The thought disturbed Mel on a lot of levels.

  “Did that daisy do something to offend you?” Annabelle asked.

  Mel looked at her in question and Annabelle pointed to Mel’s hands where just the stem and one petal was left of an orange gerbera daisy that Mel had been systematically stripping the petals off of without realizing it.

  Snatching off the last petal, Mel said, “He loves me. Phew!”

  Angie looked at her as if she thought Mel was drunk or crazy, or drunk and crazy. Mel shrugged. Annabelle gave her a concerned look, took the stem out of her hands, and threw it in the trash.

  While Angie paid Annabelle for her flowers, Mel paced up by the front of the shop. She didn’t trust herself not to destroy any of the lovely arrangements and kept her hands in her pockets just in case.

  With a wave, they left Annabelle and her flower
s to head to the photographer’s studio. It was across Scottsdale Road, on a small side street, nestled in amongst the trendy restaurants and art galleries.

  “Okay, what was that?” Angie asked as soon as the door shut behind them.

  “What?” Mel asked.

  Angie widened her eyes and said, “Come on, you know what. You started shredding flowers in there. What was that all about?”

  “Nothing. I just had this random thought,” Mel said. “It was silly.”

  “Good, then you won’t mind sharing.”

  Mel pursed her lips. Angie was a badger. There was no way she was getting out of this.

  “Fine, if you must know—”

  “I must.”

  They paused at the corner to wait for the crossing light.

  “I just thought it was weird that my first instinct when Annabelle wasn’t readily available was that she’d been murdered. I mean, that’s weird, right?”

  Angie squinted at her. “There’s more, isn’t there?”

  Mel blew out a breath. “Okay, it also occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, the fact that I am always looking for something bad to have happened is what makes it happen.”

  The light turned and the walking signal lit up. Angie opened her mouth to speak, closed it, then took Mel’s arm and pulled her across the street.

  Once they stepped onto the curb, she looked at Mel and said, “Now that is nuts.”

  “Is it?” Mel asked. “I mean, isn’t there a whole philosophy that says whatever energy you put out there comes back to you?”

  “So, you think that putting out thoughts of dead bodies or worse is what makes them happen?”

  “Yeah, maybe . . . no . . . I don’t know.”

  “Listen, we’ve definitely had some crazy stuff happen to us since we opened the bakery, but don’t you think that it’s because we work in a service industry with a whole lot of different people with all sorts of bad and good things happening in their lives?” Angie asked. “I mean, how many weddings, birthdays, retirement parties, etc, have we baked cupcakes for and nothing bad has happened? Quite the opposite, in fact, the person has had the greatest day ever.”