2 Tablespoons flour (that’s 1/8 cup) approximately 30 Hershey’s Kisses, unwrapped (or any other small chocolate candy)

Separate the egg whites and let them come up to room temperature. This will give you more volume when you beat them.

Prepare your baking sheets by lining them with parchment paper (works best) or brown parcel-wrapping paper. Spray the paper with Pam or other nonstick cooking spray and dust it lightly with flour.

Hannah’s note: These are a lot easier to make with an electric mixer, but you can also do them by hand with a copper bowl and a whisk.

Beat the egg whites with the cream of tartar, vanilla, and salt until they are stiff enough to hold a soft peak. Add the cup of sugar gradually, sprinkling it in by quarter cups and beating hard for ten seconds or so after each sprinkling. Sprinkle in the flour and mix it in at low speed, or fold it in with an angel food cake whisk.

Drop little mounds of dough on your paper-lined cookie sheet. If you place four mounds in a row and you have four rows, you’ll end up with 16 cookies per sheet.

Place one Hershey’s Kiss, point up, in the center of each mound. Push the candies down, but not all the way to the bottom. (You don’t want the chocolate to actually touch the parchment paper.) Drop another little mound of meringue on top of the candy to cover it up.

Bake at 275 degrees F. for approximately 40 minutes, or until the meringue part of the cookie is slightly golden and dry to the touch.

Cool on the paper-lined cookie sheet by setting it on a wire rack. When the cookies are completely cool, peel them carefully from the paper and store them in an airtight container in a dry place. (A cupboard shelf is fine, just NOT the refrigerator!)

Yield: 3 to 4 dozen cookies with a nice chocolate surprise in the center.

Chapter

Chapter

Twenty-Eight

It was a noon meeting of the sisters and it was taking place in the small coffee room at Bertie Straub’s Cut ’n Curl beauty parlor. Thankfully the owner, the biggest gossip in Lake Eden, was watching Honey apply Tracey’s makeup and the sisters had the coffee room all to themselves.

“Did you ever see so many flamingos in your life?” Andrea asked, glancing around at the flamingo lamp standing in a corner, the wastebasket with a rather rotund pink flamingo painted on the side, the wallpaper with bright pink flamingos flapping their wings and marching in parallel lines around the room, and the mirror peppered with flamingo decals in various hues of pink.

“Bertie said this place used to be called The Flamingo Hair Salon before she bought it,” Hannah explained. “She threw out a lot of the decorations, but she saved some for back here.”

“The seller didn’t want to take the decorations with her?”