Diane Davidson - The Cereal Murders

Sweetheart Sandwiches

Cookies: ź pound (1 stick) unsalted butter 1 ź cups sugar 2 large eggs 1 teaspoon vanilla extract ˝ cup unsweetened cocoa (recommended brands: Hershey’s Premium European-style, Droste, Ghirardelli) 2 cups flour ˝ teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon baking powder ˝ teaspoon baking soda

Filling: 4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 4 cups confectioners’ sugar whipping cream

To make the cookies, cream the butter with the sugar in a large bowl until light. Beat in eggs and vanilla; set aside. Sift the cocoa powder, flour, salt, baking powder, and baking soda together. Stir the dry ingredients thoroughly into the butter mixture. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 2 or 3 hours. Preheat the oven to 375 and butter 2 cookie sheets. Using a teaspoon measure, roll level teaspoons of the dough into galls and place them 2 inches apart on the sheets. Bake for 10 to 15 minutes, until cookies are puffed and surfaces slightly dry and cracked. Cool on racks.

To make the filling, cream the butter until light. Beat in the vanilla and confectioners’ sugar, adding whipping cream and continuing to beat until the consistency is like creamy frosting.

When the cookies are completely cool, spread about ˝ tablespoon of filling on the bottom of one cookie, then top with the bottom side of another cookie. Makes about 3 dozen sandwiches.

Variation: For half a batch of vanilla-filled and half a batch of peppermint-filled cookies, add 1/8 teaspoon peppermint extract to half the filling. Tint the peppermint filling pink or green before filling half the sandwiches.

in Business, but there was a cadre of people in front of the shelf, reading up on making millions in utilities stocks. I tried for a safer area.

The staffperson in Cookbooks recognized me from the previous week. She was delighted at my request to see the latest in culinary writing.

“Oh, but you have to go see our window display!” she exclaimed with a laugh. “It’s a new display Audrey and I put together: ‘What’s new in food and cooking’! You must go admire what she did.”

She directed me out the door to First Avenue, where I turned right and then faced a stage set behind plate glass that was designed to make people run – not walk – to the nearest restaurant. From every cranny of the big display window, photographs of food jumped out: splashy posters of Jarlsberg, Gorgonzola, and Gouda rounds vied with brilliant photos of jewelred peppers, beets, and squashes, tangles of colored pasta, blackened fish and thick succulent steaks, loaves of shiny bread, creamy cheesecakes, gleaming raspberry tarts, dark chocolate souffles. Stacked on tables placed in the visual display were at least a hundred cookbooks, thick and thin – Julia Child, Jane Brody, the Silver Palate people, the Cajun crowd, you-name-it. Hanging like flags here and there above the small stage were aprons, kitchen towels, and tablecloths. Hmm. I wondered if the woman could be persuaded to put a Goldilocks’ Catering apron in there? The worst that could happen was that a negative response would be accompanied by the judgment that I was crassly, irredeemably commercial. Which I was. It was worth a try. None of us, I reflected as I trudged inside, is above bribery.

She would be happy to put the apron in, she told me cheerily. I accompanied her to the interior side of the window. There she slid expertly between the photographs, took down a red and white apron, and hung up my spare, the GOLDILOCKS’ CATERING facing the street. Inspired, I sidled up to the front of the window and surreptitiously slipped the grade book underneath the latest Paul Prudhomme. It was, after all, hot.

“Watch your step,” the woman warned as I accidentally backed into a pile of cookbooks.

“Not to worry,” I assured her. I scooted off the platform in front of the window, where several street-side onlookers stood salivating over the photo display, thanked the cookbook person, and ran up the stairs to the third floor. The store staff was already setting up chairs, and Audrey had made the coffee and concocted the apple juice from concentrate. Her face was set in a studied frown.

“Carl bothering you again?” I ventured. “No,” she said after a moment. “It’s Heather. She’s having some problems with her classmates. Now she wants me to drive her home after this. And she said Carl called, just had to talk to me about some new crisis.”

What else was new, I wanted to ask her. I refrained. However, after spending a few silent minutes stacking plastic cups in the tiny kitchenette, Audrey faced me gloomily. “Heather’s classmates told her they wanted her to figure the class rank because she’s so marvelous with numbers. They were going to supply her with their midterm grades, which supposedly came out Tuesday. But she’s tried for the past three days and she can’t get some of the top people, like Brad Marensky or Greer Dawson, to give her their grades in French. Now, I know they both have team practices, but why not answer Heather’s messages? I mean, they all said they wanted her to do this.”

“I certainly don’t know, Audrey. If you send Heather to Bennington, she won’t have any grades.”

Audrey tsked and shouldered a fruit and cheese tray. In the outer room, Miss Kaplan’s microphone-enhanced voice introduced the evening’s speaker, a Mr. Rathgore. I carried out the first tray of cups, returned to pick up the wine and apple juice, and scuttled back in time to see the troubled Heather deep in intense conversation with her mother, whose eyebrows were raised in perplexity.

Julian sat between Egon Schlichtmaier and Macguire Perkins. The three were chuckling over some private joke as Mr. Rathgore, a bald fellow in a shiny rayon suit, launched into his opening.

“We all hate to be tested,” he said. A chorus of groans greeted this.

I stole a glance at the headmaster, who was nodding absentmindedly. Perkins appeared even more exhausted than he had that morning. The Marenskys and Dawsons had prudently decided to sit on opposite sides of the room. Brad Marensky wore a Johns Hopkins sweatshirt; Greer Dawson was again swathed in forest-green watered silk. A steely-eyed staring contest seemed to be taking place between the Dawsons and Audrey, who was seated in a couch to the side of the speaker. But after a moment Heather touched her mother’s arm and Audrey looked away from the Dawsons.

“Worse, we can get caught up in the nerve-racking process of identifying with our children as they are tested,” continued Mr. Rathgore. “Old patterns recapitulate. Parents take their children’s poor performance much more seriously than the children themselves do… .”

No kidding. People began to shift uncomfortably in their seats, which I put down to the speech hitting a little too close to home. As I was setting out the paper cups one by one, I could see out of the corner of my eye that a few folks were standing up, stretching, milling about. Maybe they just couldn’t take any more reminders of their last chance at success. I turned an attentive face to Mr. Rathgore, but instead met with the gray visage of Headmaster Perkins, who had crossed the room to me.

“Goldy,” he stage-whispered, “I’m more exhausted than Perry when he finished traversing Antarctica.” He favored me with a chilly half-grin. Apparently he’d forgiven me for bringing up the mess with Pamela Samuelson and her grading. “Please tell me this isn’t decaf.”

“It isn’t,” I assured him as I poured the dark liquid into the first cup. “Unadulterated caffeine, I promise. And have a Valentine’s Day cookie, they’re called Sweetheart Sandwiches.”

His expressive brow furrowed. “Valentine’s Day cookies? We haven’t even endured Thanksgiving! Somewhat too early, wouldn’t you say?”