I live in Ohio’s Amish Country. For me, that is strange to say. I am an NYC chocolatier who left my fast-paced life behind to help my grandmother with her Amish candy shop after my grandfather died. Losing Daadi was terrible for everyone, but I can see that it was hardest for my grandmother. He was her constant companion for over sixty years. She misses him desperately, and I can’t say that with my high-heeled boots and city attitude I make a great replacement. Even so, I am doing the very best that I can.

One way that I am helping out will be by participating in the Amish Confectionery Competition in my grandfather’s place. It’s a big deal. It’s a national competition for all Amish candy shops; the winner gets bragging rights and the respect of the Amish world. It’s not like the chocolatier competitions back in New York with big prize money on the line, but it was important to my grandfather, so I planned to do my very best.

That evening just a week before the competition, I was testing one my recipes in the candy shop’s big industrial kitchen. I was one hundred percent confident when it came to my chocolate-making. Taffy was another story.

Taffy is tricky dessert. The ingredients are mixed over a double boiler and then poured onto wax paper. That was the easy part. The tough part was pulling the taffy. It was fun with two people but challenging to do alone.

I had chosen to make green apple taffy to honor all the apple trees in the village of Harvest. I hoped that judges would notice my nod to the village.

I had already mixed the taffy, and it cooled on the wax paper. I had a taffy pull hook clamped to the edge of the large island in the middle of the kitchen. When the taffy was cool enough, I washed my hands, covered them with butter, and picked up the warm candy glob.

Just as I was about to loop the taffy around the hook, the kitchen door opened, and Deputy Aiden Brody stepped inside. I wasn’t surprised to see him. Aiden and his mother were old family friends of my grandmother’s and visited the shop often.

“Clara told me you were in here, and I just wanted to pop in to say hello,” Aiden said.

I held the glob of bright green taffy in my hands. It looked like slime. My face flushed red just as it always did whenever the handsome deputy came around.

“Do you need help with that?” he asked.

I looked down at the glob. I wanted to say “no,” but I could really use the help. “Sure.”

Aiden washed his hands and smeared them with butter just like I had.

“You’ve done this before?” I asked.

He grinned. “I used to help your grandfather out in the candy shop when I was a kid.” He took one end of the taffy glob, and I took the other.

It was a long process of stretching the taffy ends away from each other, folding the taffy, and then repeating.

By pulling the taffy, we added air to it. As this happened, the consistency and color of the taffy changed from a brightly colored sticky mess to a satiny light shade of green. When the taffy was the right consistency, I asked Aiden to set it on the wax paper.

“Thanks for your help,” I said with a smile.

Aiden smiled back. “I’m happy to help any time, Bailey. All you need to do is ask. I want to get to know you if you will let me.”

The most frightening part of his statement was, I knew he was telling the truth, but I wasn’t ready to hear it.

You can read more about Bailey in Lethal Licorice, the second book in the “Amish Candy Shop” mystery series. The first book in the series is Assaulted Caramel.

Too many sweets spoil the murder . . .

Harvest, Ohio, is a long way from New York City, where Bailey King left a coveted job as a head chocolatier to take over Swissmen Sweets, her Amish grandparents’ candy shop. Now, while caring for her recently widowed grandmother, she plans to honor her grandfather’s memory by entering the annual Amish Confectionery Competition. But between lavender blueberry fudge and chocolate cherry ganache truffles, Bailey may have bitten off more than she can chew when the search for a missing pot-bellied pig turns up a body suffering from sugar overload—the fatal kind . . .

A candy maker from a neighboring town who wanted Englischer Bailey disqualified for being an outsider, Josephine Weaver died from an allergy to an essential licorice ingredient. The suspects include: Josephine’s niece, a young woman going through her rumspringa, or running around time, and Bailey herself. Now it falls to Bailey, who’s sweet on the local sheriff’s deputy, to clear their names and entice a killer with a cast-iron stomach for cold-blooded murder . . .

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About the author
Amanda Flower, a national 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 librarian in Northeast Ohio. Her latest release is Lethal Licorice.

All comments are welcomed.