Sea Glass Sunrise

by Donna Kauffman

  Stir in the milk.

  Cook over low heat until the mixture thickens, approximately 5 minutes.

  Stir in the 2 egg yolks.

  Cook and stir for 3 minutes more until the custard is smooth and creamy.

  Allow to cool completely before spreading over one room-temperature nine-inch layer cake. (For faster cooling: pour into bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and set in the fridge. Can be stored up to forty-eight hours.)

  Carefully stack the other completely cooled layer cake on top.

  Press down slightly if you like your custard to fill out past the edge of the cake.

  Chocolate Ganache Glaze

  cup heavy or whipping cream

  7 ounces semi-sweet or bittersweet chocolate, chopped (I like to use Ghirardelli bittersweet baking chips for faster, smoother blending and rich dark chocolate taste.)

  Directions

  In a small, heavy saucepan, add the cream and bring just to a boil, immediately removing it from the heat.

  Add the chopped chocolate, stirring with a whisk until the chocolate is melted and the mixture is completely smooth.

  While still warm, spread or pour the chocolate ganache over the top cake layer and allow to drizzle down the sides of the cake, coating as much or as little of the sides as you like.

  Allow to cool, then slice the cake as you would a pie, and serve in wedges.

  Wedding Cake Tips!

  If you’re interested in making this a wedding cake, you have several alternatives, depending on the number of guests who will be indulging. For a small wedding, if you want something a little more impressive, you can make four nine-inch cakes and stack the cake taller, creating a four layer, with cream between three layers, then serve chilled, so the cake can be sliced into thinner sliver portions. For a larger gathering, you can tier the cake using plastic bases and posts/columns available at most craft stores to stack the cake recipe above into multiple sections (with columns in between). Or you can go the fun route and make individual-serving-sized Boston cream cupcakes and create your own tiered cupcake wedding cake display. (I’ve done this for a variety of occasions and it’s always a big hit!) You can also bring this recipe to your wedding planner/baker, who would have industrial-size round pans for an even wider range of possibilities!

  Happy baking! Enjoy!

  Don’t miss the next heartwarming story

  in Donna Kauffman’s

  Brides of Blueberry Cove series,

  Snowflake Bay,

  coming this October!

  There’s no place like seaside Blueberry Cove, Maine, at Christmas—and there’s nothing like a wedding, the warmth of the holidays, and an old crush, to create the perfect new start . . .

  Interior designer Fiona McCrae has left fast-paced Manhattan to move back home to peaceful Blueberry Cove. But she’s barely arrived before she’s hooked into planning her big sister Hannah’s Christmas wedding—in less than seven weeks. The last thing she needs is for her first love, Ben Campbell, to return to neighboring Snowflake Bay . . .

  As kids, Fiona was the bratty little sister Ben mercilessly teased—while pining after Hannah. But Fi never once thought of Ben like a brother. And that hasn’t changed. Except Fi is all grown up. Will Ben notice her now? More importantly, with her life in a jumble, should he? Or might the romance of the occasion, the spirit of the season, and the gifts of time ignite a long-held flame for many Christmases to come . . .

  Something old might just become something new . . .

  There should be a rulebook, she decided. Or at the very least, a tastefully done pamphlet. The Bridesmaid Rules. Fiona McCrae zipped along the Cove road, too distracted to even glance across Pelican Bay at the lighthouse perched majestically out on the tip of Pelican Point. Too much to do. Too much to plan. What on earth had she been thinking, taking this on?

  “A list of basic, common-sense rules,” she said, warming to the subject as she made the turn toward the Point. She’d have been quite happy to draw up a list, if anyone asked. She could think of a half dozen without even trying.

  Bridesmaid Rule No. 1: No one should have to be a bridesmaid twice in one year. “Especially if said bridesmaid has yet to become a bride herself.” She smiled wryly. “And the single ladies crowd goes wild.” She made the universal hordes-cheering sound, and held on to her amused smile as she wove her way ever closer to home base. Hmm. Bridesmaid Rule No. 2 . . . “No bridesmaid should ever be expected, asked, or guilted into also filling the role of wedding planner.” Actually, that should probably be Rule No. 1.

  If there were such a rulebook, being a bridesmaid twice in six months and the planner for both weddings would be in serious breach of the bridesmaid code. On top of that, this time she was also the maid of honor. And she had been honored when her older sister had asked her to play that most special role in her big day. She’d done the big, sloppy cry, in fact. They both had. And there hadn’t even been adult beverages involved.

  At the time, Fiona had blamed still being joy-buzzed from watching her big brother tie the knot barely three months earlier. And now, suddenly—too suddenly to her mind—it was Hannah’s turn to walk down the aisle.

  Weddings were a happy thing. A thing she should be thrilled about. Downright joyful. So what if her family was falling in love all around her while her own life was falling apart?

  Okay, so maybe falling apart was being a bit melodramatic. Except selling off her award-winning interior design business in Manhattan to move, lock, stock, and fabric sample binders, back to her hometown of Blueberry Cove, Maine—all without exactly firming up her new business model—pretty much felt exactly like that. She still couldn’t believe she’d really made the leap, taken the plunge. “Jumped off the cliff,” she added as she pulled in between her sister-in-law Alex’s ancient truck and the shiny red pickup parked in the small lot outside her childhood home.

  Fiona gasped as she cracked the car door open and the icy coastal breeze snatched her breath away. She wedged her booted foot out first to keep the door propped open, trying not to bang it into the truck as she climbed out, lugging the heavy satchel behind her. It was filled with an assortment of samples, swatches, wedding books, and magazines she’d carefully selected, along with a stack of planners she’d already begun assembling, the combined weight of which felt as if she’d packed up the proverbial kitchen sink.

  She edged her way out between the vehicles, but didn’t give the truck much notice otherwise, assuming it belonged to yet another of Alex’s long list of subcontractors. The renovation work on the old lightkeeper’s cottage was the last piece of the Pelican Point restoration project that Alex had been working on for close to two years now. Fiona did glance out at the Point then and took a moment to admire the beautifully restored stack of two-hundred-year-old stone and steel that was the McCrae family lighthouse. But only a moment.

  No time for dawdling! There’s a wedding to plan! “In seven freaking weeks,” she muttered under her breath. Seriously. There should be rules. Fiona hauled the oversized canvas tote up higher onto her shoulder and dipped her chin down, tucking it into the scarf she’d wrapped repeatedly around her neck. It was a vain attempt to keep the wind that clipped relentlessly over the rocky promontory from whipping her cheeks to an even more chapped pink than they already were. In all of her daydreaming about moving back home to the Cove, how was it she’d managed to so utterly forget what the cold weather did to her fair skin?

  She needed to get a tube of rehydrating cream to keep in her purse. And one for her car. And every other bag she carried. If she applied it a dozen times a day, she might have a slim chance of not resembling a cherry-cheeked elf at her sister’s December wedding. And that was another thing. Who gets married at Christmas? Who wants to have their wedding anniversary compete with Santa?

  “More to the point, who makes the big decision to get married at Christmas, when it’s already only two freaking weeks to Thanksgiving?” She’d tucked her chin so far down behind the heavily wrapped scarf that
speaking out loud caused the wool fibers to laminate themselves to her heavily balmed lips. Lovely. Just lovely. Bridesmaid Rule No. 3: It has to be at least above freezing to have a wedding. And while she was at it, No. 4: There should be at least a six-month minimum wedding planning window. Better yet, nine. Hell, make it a year. “But seven weeks from saying yes to saying I do? Insanity.” She spluttered at the wool fibers now sticking to her teeth and tongue, too, as she clambered up the wide, stone steps.

  It wasn’t sour grapes, either. These were salient, perfectly rational points, all of which Fiona planned to put forth to her sister. And she would. Just as soon as she divested herself of the luggage-sized satchel she was grappling with, and scraped the scarf off her face. She’d be completely nonconfrontational, of course. She’d merely explain, in a calm, rational, don’t-piss-off-the-starry-eyed-bride manner, that it would make so much more sense to have a lovely spring wedding. Coastal Maine was beautiful in spring. Well, if you overlooked the mud that resulted from all the snow melting. Followed by all the heavy seasonal rains. Not to mention the occasional crippling late snowstorm. Okay, so maybe she’d go with the nine-month minimum wedding planning rule after all. All the better, really. A summer wedding would be perfect. Just as it had been for Logan and Alex.

  Plotting how she’d open the delicate-but-has-to-happen conversation, she banged her way to the side door off the wraparound porch hugging the gabled, shake-shingled house that had been home to generations of McCraes. Surely she could make Hannah see reason. “Knock, knock!” she called out as she let herself in. She shoved her body and the tote into the small mudroom, then heard a loud thump overhead, mixed with muffled voices, followed by laughter.

  “Alex?” she shouted through the scarf, which was still half draped over the lower part of her face as she tried to maneuver herself around to reach for the door that led to the kitchen. There was another thump overhead and more laughter. Good. She’d recruit Alex into change-the-date mission. Strength in numbers.

  “You better not be upstairs having crazy, naked newlywed sex with my brother,” she called out as she finally managed to nudge the kitchen door open. Grunting, she pushed harder when she and her bag got wedged in the narrower kitchen doorway. “Because that is an image I do not need to have burned into my corneas today.”

  She should have put her satchel down and taken off her scarf and coat in the mudroom before trying to jam herself inside. Me? Plan ahead? Why start now? She made one last determined push, sucking in air, as if it would somehow make even the satchel thinner, and finally popped through the door like a parka-clad spitball. She made a loud oof sound as the center work island broke her staggering trajectory. “Hannah?” she half shouted, half wheezed, as she slumped over the canvas tote she’d slung onto the new marble countertop before it slung her back onto her ass.

  She needed to start working out again. All right, ever. And she would. That was part of why she’d come home after all. Okay, so perhaps not specifically to get into shape, but at the slower pace of life that was Blueberry Cove, surely she would have time for things like jogging and yoga.

  Things she also had sworn she’d do when she’d moved to the big city, she reminded herself, recalling her gilded visions of getting all lithe and lean on her daily runs through Central Park, topped only by the fabulous friendships she’d surely make with her newfound fellow artist gal pals in her thrice-weekly yoga classes in the Village. Yeah, somehow those items had never made their way onto her daily agenda.

  Of course, she was older now, wiser, with her priorities clearly straight, which was proven by her recent exit from a stressed-out city piled high with even more toxic clientele, returning to her healthy, serene, simple-life roots. She tried to feel cheery at the thought of shopping for a yoga mat and cute running shoes.

  Then again, she thought, it was winter. And in Maine that meant it was dark. A lot. And pretty damn cold. Jogging in the cold and dark seemed unwise. In fact, it seemed wrong, really, to have to work out like that at all in the winter. Ask any Mainer and they’d tell you that surviving a New England winter was pretty much the equivalent of participating in a full-contact sport in and of itself. Yeah. So, technically, she was already working out. She would be like a—a boxer, punching her way through a tough coastal winter, while simultaneously focusing her creative mind and spirit on plotting out the best way to apply her well-honed design skills to suit the needs of the sure-to-be sweeter, kinder, gentler clientele she’d find in the Cove.

  Come spring, she’d be all bulletproof from winterizing herself, her new business model would be successfully created and implemented, and she would happily jog herself skinny, all while feeding her inner creative soul in a local yoga class. When you looked at it that way, it was all simply part of a bigger training regimen, really.

  Feeling somewhat better about herself now, if not technically athletic, she disentangled herself from the satchel strap, then began mentally rehearsing a summer-weddings-are-so-beautiful speech while she looked around for something to scrape the wool scarf out of her mouth. Deciding to get herself unwrapped first, she fished out the end of the scarf. She could already feel her fair skin chapping even as she stood there with the warmth of the kitchen creating something of a sting in her thawing cheeks. The struggle with the scarf started almost immediately. It was as if her curls had begun actively weaving themselves into the knitting, becoming one with every loop and knot.

  So, she was more wrestling with the scarf than unwrapping it, really, swearing somewhat creatively, possibly a wee bit passionately even, by the time a deep male voice that was quite decidedly not her big brother’s baritone spoke from far too close behind her.

  “I’ve got bolt cutters in my truck. We could just cut you out.”

  Fiona froze. Stock still. And not because of anything having to do with the coastal winter weather or being out of shape. She wasn’t breathing hard. In fact, she might never draw breath again. It had been, what, ten years? Longer. She’d lost track. Or, more truthfully, you’ve blocked it from your memory banks. Blocked it back when the owner of that voice left Blueberry Cove for college in Boston, excited to get started on fulfilling his dreams—none of which included coming back to his hometown. At the time, that had seemed the only way she’d ever survive not having him in her daily orbit.

  She felt his big, broad palms cup her shoulders, turning her slowly around to face him, and stupidly squeezed her eyes shut, as if that would change this sudden new reality. All it did was delay the inevitable.

  “Fireplug?” he said, as the top half of her face became visible when he pushed the curls from her forehead and the scarf from where it was now haphazardly draped diagonally across her face. There was sincere surprise in his voice. “Is that you inside all that sheep’s clothing?”

  Fireplug. All of the air came back into her lungs in one big, sucking gasp. Emphasis on the sucking. Her cheeks burned again, only the sting of remembered humiliation, coupled with the memories of her pathetic, unrequited crush on her older sister’s first serious boyfriend, far, far outstripped anything a Maine winter could do to her fair skin.

  They were both many years older now, she reminded herself, and that meant wiser as well. Although she didn’t feel wiser at the moment. At the moment, she felt instantly thirteen again, pining after a guy who’d barely noticed her, and when he did, saw her as nothing more than the nuisance kid sister of the girl he was trying to impress.

  Of course, that girl was now engaged to another man, and for all Fiona knew, her childhood crush was married himself, with a bundle of kids stashed somewhere. Hell, for all he knew, so was she. Which meant, yeah . . . the distant past was just that. Distant. And past.

  She prided herself on taking an extra moment to steady herself, let her breath ease out, then slowly back in again, before opening her eyes. Okay, so she was still half tangled in a woolen neck scarf and she wasn’t exactly making eye contact with him, but it was a start. A mature, grown-up start. Between two, mature, grown-up
people.

  So why is your heart racing like it’s the first time a man has ever touched you? More to the point, why are all your other more mature body parts clamoring for him to touch a whole lot more than your shoulders? You’re both potentially married with kids, remember?

  Only she wasn’t married. Didn’t have kids. Not even the dimmest of prospects of either on the horizon. A horizon that, at the moment, was completely consumed with a big, tall, rugged reminder of all that she didn’t have. Had never had. A reminder, it should be noted, who still had his hands on her . . .

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  Copyright © 2015 by Donna Kauffman

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