Punch, Pastries, and Poison by Harper Lin (ebook reader for pc and android .txt) 📕

course. I had a great recipe that had been passed down from my mom and was always fruity and bubbly and delicious. We’d have some non-alcoholic for the kids, but we could spike another bowl for the grown-ups.

And desserts! I could make so many desserts. Maybe I could even enlist Sammy and the girls at the café to help me out so we could have more options. I’d have cookies and miniature pies and tarts. And I could use puff pastry shells for the tarts. I loved puff pastry! I hardly ever made it because of how labor-intensive it was, but for a double birthday celebration, it would be perfect. And with the party date I’d chosen still over a week out, I’d have plenty of time to make as much as I thought I could possibly need.

I started jotting down in my phone all the different things I could possibly make with puff pastry. Aside from tarts, I could make cream horns and mille-feuille and pigs in blankets and brie en croute. And those were just to start. Aside from the buttery, flaky deliciousness of the pastry, my favorite thing about it was how versatile it was. I could make a million different things with it, either sweet or savory. And they’d all have that perfect, delicious crust.

The more I thought about it, the more excited I got. Not just about the food, although I found that pretty exciting, but also about the prospect of gathering all our friends together and celebrating. I started mentally running through who I’d want to invite. Sammy and everyone from the café of course, as well as their significant others and families. I’d even invite Ephy. I barely knew her, but I didn’t want her to feel left out. Especially not when the more I thought about it, the more people I wanted to invite. Matt may have only had a few guys he hung out with on a regular basis, but I knew there were many more people that he was friendly with who he’d enjoy having there.

I stopped to take a look at the list of people I’d added to my phone. It was getting long. I looked around Matt’s house. It wasn’t big, and mine wasn’t any bigger. They were both built in the post-war suburban housing explosion and were simple mirror-image Cape Cod-style bungalows. We could have the party there, but I’d have to cut the guest list dramatically.

I sighed. Half the fun of the party would be having everyone there. The only way to invite everyone would be to rent someplace out, and Cape Bay wasn’t big enough to have a lot of party venues available, especially not when I’d want it to have a full kitchen so I could do my final prep there. Maybe I could charm one of the local restaurants into letting us have it there and allowing me to use the kitchen. Maybe Fiesta Mexicana? Or—

Matt glanced at me out of the corner of his eye as I smacked my forehead.

“Never mind,” I muttered, waving him off. I couldn’t believe I’d overlooked the most perfect, most obvious solution. We’d have the party at the café.

Chapter 6

By the time the day of the party arrived, an aching sensation had become my feet’s default state. Aside from the hours I worked in the café, I’d stayed late every night, working on the food for the party. I’d prepared everything I could beforehand and finished almost everything earlier that day. A few things would still have to be popped in the oven closer to party time, but everything else was done except for the punch and one last batch of puff pastry mini-tartlets I’d decided to make at the last minute. Unfortunately, I’d already gone through all the puff pastry I’d prepared, so I had to prep another batch. I’d considered whether I really wanted to go to all that trouble, but ever since the idea of lemon tartlets had crossed my mind, my mouth had been watering in anticipation of them.

I had the basic dough prepped and chilled, but that was the easy part. I got a one-pound slab of butter out of the freezer—freezing the butter made it so much easier to make puff pastry—and took it over to the granite countertop, where I had a sheet tray loaded with ice sitting. It was a trick my grandmother had taught me years and years ago—chill the countertop where you’d be working, and you’d buy yourself a little extra time with your dough before it needed to go back in the fridge.

I slid the baking sheet aside and layered the hunk of butter between a couple sheets of plastic wrap. Then, I grabbed my rolling pin and went to town, beating the two-inch by four-inch butter into a flat, six-by-six square.

“What’s going on?” Sammy asked, looking concerned as she came into the kitchen.

“What?” I paused my butter-beating so I could hear her.

“What are you doing? It sounds like you’re trying to break down a wall or something.”

“Oh! Sorry!” I held up the rolling pin and gestured at the butter before I realized that I’d made all the puff pastry after hours, and Sammy had never been there to witness the process. She’d tasted some of the finished product, but she hadn’t seen how all those buttery, flaky layers came about. “I have to pound out the butter to make the next batch of puff pastry.”

She looked skeptical, raising her eyebrows. “Will it take much longer? The customers look kind of concerned.”

I grimaced. I had been so set on making more puff pastry, I hadn’t really thought about how loud it would be out in the café. I looked down at the butter. It was getting close, but it still needed to be beaten a little thinner. I looked at Sammy. “Maybe another thirty seconds? Or a minute?” It didn’t sound like much time, but I knew it would probably seem like an eternity to