Spooky Spice Cake Curse
Page 21
No. I shake my head up at the sky because I refuse to believe it.
This isn’t over. It’s not over by a long shot.
Grief mixed with rage wails from me.
And I pray Everett and I aren’t over by a long shot as well.
Let the world burn to rubble. Just give me Everett.
From behind, I hear the whisperings of those in the crowd as they hiss in unison like a chorus—the Hearst curse strikes again.
And I howl with grief at the top of my lungs because I happen to know it’s true.
*Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed Lottie’s latests adventure. You will not want to miss the next book in the series! Click here—> Pecan Pie Predicament (Murder in the Mix 27) and read today! It’s Thanksgiving and someone is carving up murder. Warning, lots of fun up ahead!
My name is Lottie Lemon, and I see dead people. Okay, so I rarely see dead people, mostly I see furry creatures of the dearly departed variety, who have come back from the other side to warn me of their previous owner’s impending doom.
It's Thanksgiving in Honey Hollow and there will be cooking, lots and lots of baking, and of course plenty of murder to go around. Not only do I stumble upon a new body but I have so much aftermath to deal with after the biggest Halloween fiasco the town has ever seen. Autumn has descended full force, and all I want to do is curl up by the fire with fuzzy socks, a good book, and my sweet cats—but there's a killer on the loose who has far more nefarious plans for me.
PICK IT UP TODAY! You will not want to miss this book , Pecan Pie Predicament (Murder in the Mix 27). I promise! Be sure to grab it NOW!
Recipe
From the kitchen of the Cutie Pie Bakery and Cakery
Lottie’s Spooky Spice Cake
Hello, friends! Fall is one of my favorite times of year, and it’s no surprise that’s when I love to do some serious baking. Trust me when I say there is nothing better than spice cake to fill your home with the scents of this glorious season. Happy baking!
Ingredients
2 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 ½ tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground nutmeg
1 tsp ground ginger
½ tsp allspice
¼ tsp ground cloves
1 ¾ cups firmly packed light-brown sugar
½ cup vegetable oil
3/4 cup unsweetened applesauce
4 large eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup buttermilk
Cream Cheese Frosting
12 oz cream cheese, room temperature
½ cup unsalted butter, room temperature
3 ½ cups powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
Chocolate webbing
¼ cup butter
½ tablespoon semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 cup confectioners’ sugar
¼ teaspoon vanilla
*When Keelie makes this recipe, she likes to use a premade chocolate frosting for this part. That works, too!
Instructions
Preheat oven to 350°
Grease two 9-inch round baking pans (butter or nonstick spray works great)
In a large mixing bowl combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, allspice and cloves.
In a stand mixer add brown sugar into the bowl.
Add vegetable oil and applesauce, mix until well combined.
Add in eggs and vanilla.
Slowly add in half of the flour mixture and mix on low speed until combined, then blend in buttermilk, then add remaining half of the flour mixture until well combined.
Pour half mixture into the two greased baking pans.
*Bake 30 minutes in preheated oven until toothpick inserted into center comes out clean.
Cool 10 minutes then place on a wire rack until room temperature.
Frosting
Add cream cheese and butter into a stand mixer and blend until smooth.
Mix in powdered sugar and vanilla and mix until silky.
Frost with cream cheese frosting
Chocolate webbing
Melt chocolate and butter in the microwave, or double boiler.
In a medium mixing bowl, combine confectioners' sugar, vanilla and half of the milk.
Add and blend into the melted chocolate mixture.
Add remaining milk, a tiny bit at a time, until the consistency is silky enough to spread.
Place into a piping bag with a narrow tip. Or place into a sandwich bag and cut a tiny piece off of the corner.
Start in the center of the cake and create a tight spiral that covers the entire surface. Then, with either a toothpick, or a butterknife, gently score the chocolate spiral into four equal parts, starting from the center of the spiral working your way out to the edge in a straight line. Continue to score into even slices, being careful not to penetrate the cake.
There you have it! I just love curling up next to the fireplace with my sweet cats, Pancake and Waffles, while indulging in this perfect fall treat.
Enjoy your spooky spice cake!
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Cozy Mysteries
Meow for Murder
An Awful Cat-titude
A Dreadful Meow-ment
A Claw-some Affair
A Haunted Hallow-whiskers
A Candy Cane Cat-astrophe
A Purr-fect Storm
Country Cottage Mysteries
Kittyzen’s Arrest
Dog Days of Murder
Santa Claws Calamity
Bow Wow Big House
Murder Bites
Felines and Fatalities
A Killer Tail
Cat Scratch Cleaver
Just Buried
Butchered After Bark
A Frightening Fangs-giving
A Christmas to Dismember
Sealed with a Hiss
Country Cottage Boxed Set 1
Country Cottage Boxed Set 2
Murder in the Mix Mysteries
Cutie Pies and Deadly Lies
Bobbing for Bodies
Pumpkin Spice Sacrifice
Gingerbread & Deadly Dread
Seven-Layer Slayer
Red Velvet Vengeance
Bloodbaths and Banana Cake
New York Cheesecake Chaos
Lethal Lemon Bars
Macaron Massacre
Wedding Cake Carnage
Donut Disaster
Toxic Apple Turnovers
Killer Cupcakes
Pumpkin Pie Parting
Yule Log Eulogy
Pancake Panic
Sugar Cookie Slaughter
Devil’s Food Cake Doom
Snickerdoodle Secrets
Strawberry Shortcake Sins
Cake Pop Casualties
Flag Cake Felonies
Peach Cobbler Confessions
Poison Apple Crisp
Spooky Spice Cake Curse
Pecan Pie Predicament
Eggnog Trifle Trouble
Waffles at the Wake
Christmas Fudge Fatality
Murder in the Mix Boxed Set (Books 1-3)
Murder in the Mix Boxed Set (Books 4-6)
Murder in the Mix Boxed Set (Books 7-9)
Murder in the Mix Boxed Set (Books 10-12)
Murder in the Mix Boxed Set (Books 13-15)
Murder in the Mix Boxed Set (Books 16-18)
Murder in the Mix Boxe
d Set (Books 19-21)
Mystery
Little Girl Lost
Never Say Sorry
The First Wife’s Secret
Romance
Just Add Mistletoe
3:AM Kisses (3:AM Kisses 1)
Winter Kisses (3:AM Kisses 2)
Sugar Kisses (3:AM Kisses 3)
Whiskey Kisses (3:AM Kisses 4)
Rock Candy Kisses (3:AM Kisses 5)
Velvet Kisses (3:AM Kisses 6)
Wild Kisses (3:AM Kisses 7)
Country Kisses (3:AM Kisses 8)
Forbidden Kisses (3:AM Kisses 9)
Dirty Kisses (3:AM Kisses 10)
Stolen Kisses (3:AM Kisses 11)
Lucky Kisses (3:AM Kisses 12)
Tender Kisses (3:AM Kisses 13)
Revenge Kisses (3:AM Kisses 14)
Red Hot Kisses (3:AM Kisses 15)
Reckless Kisses (3:AM Kisses 16)
Hot Honey Kisses (3:AM Kisses 17)
Shameless Kisses (3:AM Kisses 18)
The Social Experiment (The Social Experiment 1)
Bitter Exes (The Social Experiment 2)
Chemical Attraction (The Social Experiment 3)
Low Down & Dirty (3:AM Kisses, Hollow Brook1)
Dirty Disaster (3:AM Kisses, Hollow Brook 2)
Dirty Deeds (3:AM Kisses, Hollow Brook 3)
Naughty By Nature
Heartless (Breakers Canyon Billionaires 1)
Wicked Heart (Breakers Canyon Billionaires 2)
Stone Cold Heart (Breakers Canyon Billionaires 3)
Beautiful Oblivion (Lake Loveless 1)
Beautiful Illusions (Lake Loveless 2)
Beautiful Elixir (Lake Loveless 3)
Beautiful Deception (Lake Loveless 4)
The Solitude of Passion
Someone to Love (Someone to Love 1)
Someone Like You (Someone to Love 2)
Someone For Me (Someone to Love 3)
Young Adult Romance
Melt With You (A Totally ’80s Romance 1)
Tainted Love (A Totally ’80s Romance 2)
Hold Me Now (A Totally ’80s Romance 3)
Paranormal Romance
(Celestra Book World in Order)
Ethereal (Celestra Series Book 1)
Tremble (Celestra Series Book 2)
Burn (Celestra Series Book 3)
Wicked (Celestra Series Book 4)
Vex (Celestra Series Book 5)
Expel (Celestra Series Book 6)
Toxic Part One (Celestra Series Book 7)
Toxic Part Two (Celestra Series Book 8)
Elysian (Celestra Series Book 9)
Perfect Love (A Celestra Novella)
Ephemeral (Ephemeral Academy 1)
Evanescent (Ephemeral Academy 2)
Entropy (Ephemeral Academy 3)
Ethereal Knights (Celestra Knights)
Season of the Witch (A Celestra Companion)
Celestra Forever After (Celestra Forever After 1)
The Dragon and the Rose (Celestra Forever After 2)
The Serpentine Butterfly (Celestra Forever After 3)
Crown of Ashes (Celestra Forever After 4)
Throne of Fire (Celestra Forever After 5)
All Hail the King (Celestra Forever After 6)
Roar of the Lion (Celestra Forever After 7) Soon
Acknowledgments
Big thanks to YOU the reader! I hope you had a wonderful time. I can’t thank you enough for spending time in Honey Hollow with me. I hope you enjoyed this bumpy ride with Lottie and all of her Honey Hollow peeps as much as I did. The MURDER IN THE MIX mysteries are super special to me, and I hope they are to you as well. If you’d like to be in the know on upcoming releases, please be sure to follow me at Bookbub and Amazon. Simply click the links on the next page. I am SUPER excited to share the next book with you! So much happens and so much changes. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for taking this wild roller coaster ride with me. I really do love you!
A very big thank you to Kaila Eileen Turingan-Ramos, and Jodie Tarleton for being awesome.
A special thank you to my sweet betas, Lisa Markson, Ashley Marie Daniels, Stacie Bucholtz, and Margaret Lapointe for looking after the book with their amazing beautiful eyes. And a shout out to Lou Harper for designing the world’s most beautiful cover.
A mighty BIG thank you to Paige Maroney Smith for being so amazing.
And last, but never least, thank you to Him who sits on the throne. Worthy is the Lamb! Glory and honor and power are yours. I owe you everything.
New Series Preview!
***Love Janet Evanovich? You’ll have a blast with Meow for Murder. Enjoy the sneak peek!
Pick it up NOW! —> An Awful Cat-titude
A highly inaccurate psychic. A grumpy writer. And a corpse. Welcome to Starry Falls. Running from the mob can be murder.
Confession. I’m no psychic. But I can sort of see the future—albeit not accurately. And you better believe, I’ve never let that little detail stop me from prognosticating my way into a pickle. So when I ticked off the mob, the feds, and my wily ex, I decided to take my Uncle Vinny’s advice and start over with a new name and new hair color while relying on my old shtick—getting my psychic wires crossed and putting myself in danger.
Chapter 1
“I don’t want to die!” The words rip from my throat as if they were being pulled out with barbed wire.
My name is Stella Santini. I’ve got long black hair, light brown eyes, stand at an average height of five-foot-five, and I can see the future.
Okay, fine.
Confession: I’m no psychic. Nor have I ever come close to predicting what the future might hold—not with any accuracy anyway.
You see, ever since I was a little girl, I had what my Nana Rose liked to call the shakes. Technically, it’s more of a shiver, and when you get down to it, there’s a warm, fuzzy feeling involved that makes me want to forget about the world around me for a moment and retreat to the dark recesses of my mind where a thought plays out like a movie and I see things.
And trust me when I say, I have been wrong about interpreting the things I see on more than one occasion.
Take now for instance. This morning when a scene from the West End Woods flashed through my mind and I saw myself running for my life—I thought maybe I might be running from a serial killer looking for his next victim on this odd jaunt through the woods or running from a bear looking for his first meal post-hibernation, thus the solemn decision I came to during my second cup of coffee to stay the heck away from the West End Woods for the duration of my supernatural life.
But in a twist that only fate could provide, here I am, a mere hour later, panting, ducking evergreen trees and their prickly branches that threaten to poke my eyes out as if my life were on the line, and, oddly enough, I think it is.
“Don’t kill me!” I howl once again, ducking and jiving my way through the forest as my Uncle Vinnie chases me through the woods with a bona fide weapon in his hand.
“I’m not gonna kill you for God’s sake!” he riots right back.
“Then why are you holding a gun?”
Let’s backtrack for a minute. After I enjoyed my third cup of coffee this morning, Uncle Vinnie called and said I had fifteen minutes to get dressed because we had things to discuss and he was picking me up pronto.
He sounded serious, morbid even. And I know him well enough to realize he meant business. I had an inkling about the subject he was going to prick. I happen to be what the mob likes to call a dead girl walking. Less than twenty-four hours ago, in what I and any sane person would call a very unfortunate chain of events, I managed to tick off the mob, the federal government, and break up with my idiot boyfriend of two years, Johnny Rizzo, all within a fifteen-minute span. And judging by this mad dash through the West End Woods, you could toss my Uncle Vinnie on that ticked-off list, too.
My foot catches on a buckling root system and I trip, slowing myself down enough for me to know I’ve just wide
ned that bullseye on my back.
“Don’t shoot!” I cry out, jogging to a finish as I spin around.
Uncle Vinnie stops within feet of me, panting, the veins on his neck throbbing like a couple of angry garden snakes about to wiggle their way into his brain.
Uncle Vinnie is tall, with black hair, dark eyes, and bushy eyebrows that hover over his face, giving him that perpetually angry look he’s got going for him in life. But, by and large, he’s a good guy who stepped up to the plate once my father was put away five years ago on RICO charges. He treated my brother, sister, and me as if we were his own children while my mother got a quickie divorce and began to chase men far younger straight into her bedroom.
“Please,” I beg. “Put down the gun.”
“What?” He squints over at me. “What the heck are you talking about? This ain’t no gun.” He shoves something toward me and I turn my head in horror.
It’s not unusual for a man of my uncle’s standing within the organization to take care of his own once word gets out that their proverbial number is up. And by take care of, I mean bump off the planet in a far more humane method than the fate that awaits them otherwise. And that’s exactly why I suspect my Uncle Vinnie has dragged me out to this isolated strip of nature just outside of Hastings, New Jersey, the town in which I was born and raised.