Toxic Toffee

by Amanda Flower

  Charlotte’s Toffee Pieces

  INGREDIENTS

  • Parchment paper

  • Candy thermometer

  • 1 tablespoon light corn syrup

  • 2 sticks of softened butter

  • ¼ teaspoon salt

  • 2 cups granulated sugar

  • 1 cup milk-chocolate chips

  • 1 cup chopped pecans or almonds

  DIRECTIONS

  1. Using parchment paper, line a 9-x-13-inch pan.

  2. Melt the butter, sugar, corn syrup, and salt in a saucepan, stirring continuously over medium heat until a candy thermometer reads 295°F.

  3. When mixture is at the desired temperature, pour into pan. Let stand at room temperature until cool, about thirty minutes.

  4. Using a saucepan of steaming water and a glass bowl, create a double boiler to melt the chocolate chips until smooth. Stir continuously and don’t let the bottom of the bowl touch the water in the pan.

  5. Pour melted chocolate over toffee.

  6. Sprinkle with pecans or almonds.

  7. Let cool completely.

  8. Break into pieces and enjoy!

  Please read on for a taste of Amanda Flower’s

  new Amish mystery series, coming soon!

  To Match A Killer

  AN AMISH MATCHMAKER MYSTERY

  by

  Amanda Flower

  If someone had told me that in this season of my life I would be living in a little ranch house all by myself with just a couple of ornery goats as company, I would have laughed, or I might have even been afraid. This life wasn’t the one that I had planned. Growing up in my Amish district as a young girl, I dreamed of love, of a husband, and of children. I had two of those, just not for as long as I would have wanted, and the third was not to be. But as the saying goes, “If you never taste the bitter, you won’t know what sweet is.”

  Even though I didn’t have children of my own, the Lord saw to it that I would help young people in a different way. He gave me the gift of recognizing love and affection. I knew, knew down to the very center of my bones, when two people were meant to be together. And I knew when they were not. My niece Edith Hochstetler had not yet found that love. She didn’t find it with her first husband, and I knew, as sure as I knew my dear Kip was waiting for me at heaven’s gate, that she had not found it in Zeke Miller.

  I brushed dirt from my garden gloves. The flowerbed that I had used to get my niece to come over and help me was going to be a lovely spot for me to enjoy all summer. I had collected a number of rocks from my brother’s quarry that I planned to nestle in among the plants. My mother always had a rock garden in her home, and so would I. Tradition was important to me.

  Edith ran Edy’s Greenhouse, a nursery that was just on the edge of the little village of Harvest. It was her father’s business, God rest his soul, and he’d named it after his youngest daughter, Edy as he liked to call her. No one else in the family had been able to get away with calling her that. She ran the greenhouse herself now. Her brother had chosen another life. It was the main reason that she shouldn’t marry Zeke Miller. The greenhouse did very well. Edith had a gift for plants and growing things. Zeke knew there was money there. If she married him, that business would become his. As her husband, he would be the head of it, not Edith.

  And that was why I had asked her to come help me plant my garden—so we could have a heart-to-heart talk away from the greenhouse.

  I wiped at my brow and knew I had a smudge of dirt now in the middle of my forehead. I didn’t bother to wipe it away. It added to the impression that I needed help putting the garden in. Edith wouldn’t be any the wiser.

  My two goats, Phillip and Peter, walked around me in a large circle. They were Boer goats—Phillip black and white and Peter brown and white. I’d adopted them when I moved back to Ohio after years in Michigan caring for an ill sister. I bought them to help me clear the overgrown land around my house. They did a good job of it, eating everything in sight, including the invasive multiflora roses that were the bane of any Ohio farmer.

  I found their circling suspicious and picked up my spade to encourage them to move away from freshly tilled ground.

  I shook my finger at the goats. “This will be my flower garden, and if I see either of you in it, I will send you packing!”

  Phillip and Peter shared a look.

  “I know what you are thinking, and the garden is off limits. You—”

  I would have said more, but just then there was the clip-clop of hooves and the rattle of a wagon on the other side of the house. Phillip and Peter took off. They loved to greet visitors. I jabbed the spade into the lawn and made my way around the side of the house.

  As I walked around my home, I went over in my head what I was going to say. Somehow, I needed to convince Edith that it was better to wait for love than grasp at the first man who showed interest. If that was the only lesson I taught all the young people who came to me for help, they would no longer need me. There was a reason I had never married again in the twenty years since I’d lost my Kip. I knew what true love was and would not accept anything short of it.

  I removed my garden gloves and tucked them into the front pocket of my apron and touched the top of my head just to check my prayer cap was on straight. I came around the side of the house just in time to see Phillip and Peter gallop like a couple of colts with their floppy ears flapping in the wind as they approached a petite blond Amish woman standing by a wagon. The back of the wagon was full of blooming plants.

  Edith stood on her tiptoes, which only gave her an inch more on her five feet flat height. “Aunt Millie!” she cried. “Your goats are attacking me!”

  “Phillip! Peter! You leave her alone! You rascals! Leave Edith be!”

  Peter stopped bouncing, but Phillip got in a couple more hops before he settled down on all four hooves. He was my more excitable goat.

  I snapped my fingers, which was a signal to the goats that I meant business, and they ran toward me and then began pulling weeds from the grass with their square teeth as if that had been their plan all along. I knew better.

  Edith got off her tiptoes and walked toward me, keeping her eye on the goats the entire time. When she reached me, she gave me a big hug. “It’s so gut to see you.”

  “You too, my dear.” I hugged her back. Of all my nieces, and I had many, Edith was my very favorite. When I lived in Michigan to care for my sister, she came and stayed with us for a summer to help out. She was the dearest, most considerate girl, and I saw her more as a daughter than a niece.

  When I heard that she was to marry Zeke Miller, it was like a knife in my heart because I knew it was a bad match and in the end, my sweet girl would be terribly unhappy. I couldn’t allow that if I could stop it.

  “And how are the children?” I asked.

  “They are gut, Aunt Millie, and growing like summer weeds.” She said this with a mother’s glow.

  I felt a twinge of regret as she spoke. The glow of motherhood was something I would never know. This regret didn’t come as often as it once had, but it was still there and still caught me by surprise.

  “And how is Zeke?” I asked tentatively.

  She licked her lips. “The wedding is next week.”

  That wasn’t what I’d asked, so my silver eyebrows went up. “I know that.”

  Zeke and Edith had only been betrothed for a season. We Amish do not have a long wait period between betrothal and marriage. When the decision is made, we get on with it. I knew things were much different in the Englisch world. My Englisch friends have had children who were engaged for a year. That would never do for the Amish.

  “I’ve been thinking about what you said the other day. That I should only marry again for love. The greenhouse can sustain the children and me until I find love again.”

  “And have you found love?” I asked, searching her dark brown eyes that were the same color as mine.

  She shook her head. “I don’t love Zeke. I—I don�
�t want to marry him.”

  I blinked. Had I heard her right? “But you said that you loved him.” Here I was, having tried to convince her not to marry Zeke for weeks, and now, I argued with her.

  “I believed I did, but I think I was just afraid of raising the children alone.” She took a shuddering breath. “I mean to tell him when he comes back from Millersburg today. He’s doing a roofing job there.”

  It would seem that my ploy to get her to help me work on the garden wasn’t necessary at all. I suppressed my smile. I knew this was difficult for her to admit, and it would be even more difficult talking to Zeke. “You are doing the right thing.”

  She nodded. “But it will be so hard to tell him, to tell everyone that I changed my mind.”

  “It is your mind; you have a right to change it. If it is not love, it is not Gotte’s will for you.”

  She nodded and squeezed my hand tight.

  “He will understand,” I patted her arm. “All will be well.”

  At the time, I honestly believed that was true.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  AMANDA FLOWER, a USA Today bestselling and Agatha Award–winning mystery author, started her writing career in elementary school when she read a story she wrote to her sixth grade class and had the class in stitches with her description of being stuck on the top of a Ferris wheel. She knew at that moment she’d found her calling of making people laugh with her words. She also writes mysteries as USA Today bestselling author Isabella Alan. In addition to being an author, Amanda is a former librarian living in Northeast Ohio.