“Use it a lot?”
“To crush ice,” she said, resting a hand against her breastbone in faux outrage.
“Okay, cher.” I didn’t bother to try to hide my smile. This woman charmed me. Over and over again. “Make a rectangle about a half an inch thick. I’ll get started on the oil.”
I opened the cabinet beside an oven with a top warming section that had me rethinking the layout of my kitchen. Whoever did Charlotte’s was good. There was a heavy Dutch oven that would work perfectly. I set it on the burner, turned on the gas, and poured a couple of inches of oil into the pan.
“You can do that on the stove? I thought you needed a deep fryer or something.”
“Watch and learn, grasshopper.”
“We’re supposed to be too good forthat’s what she said, butKung Fureferences are fine?” She pushed the hair out of her eyes with the back of her hand, leaving a smudge of flour behind.
“Always.” I reached up to brush the flour away and had the pleasure of watching her eyes widen as my fingertips skimmed her forehead. She leaned into my touch, and for a fraction of a second, I weighed the cost of cupping her face in my hand. Of closing the distance between us.
“Are these thin enough?” she asked, coming to her senses first and turning back to the dough on the counter in front of her.
“Perfect.” I was grateful for the bit of control having a task to do provided. I clearly couldn’t trust myself to hold things together on my own. “Now we cut them into rectangles. Like this.” I took a paring knife and cut a strip of dough about two inches wide, dividing it into three-inch pieces.
She took the knife from me, her hand warm against mine, and made quick work of cutting the rest of the dough into beignet-sized rectangles. I carefully held my hand over the open pot, feeling the warmth coming off the oil. I still wasn’t sure what that step accomplished—aside from a double dog dare kind of recklessness—but mymemehad done it that way, so I did it too. I pulled a plastic bag with a few cubes of bread from the bag of things I’d brought and held one out to Charlotte.
“We’re taking communion now?” She arched an expertly groomed brow at me.
“Not unless you’re ordained in something I don’t know about. Lord knows, I’m not holy enough to handle the Host.” I gave her my best wicked smile, made wider by the mischievous look in her eye.
Charlotte might have her own corruption fantasies. Definitely something worth exploring the next time we got together. When I was allowed to touch her the way I ached to.
“It’s to test the temperature of the oil. Drop it in and we’ll see how long it takes to turn golden brown. Too long and it means the oil is too cool and will make greasy beignets. Too fast and they’ll burn before they’re cooked.”
She dropped the cube of bread into the oil and peered carefully into the pot. It hit the bottom and bobbed once or twice before rising to the surface surrounded by a thin ring ofbubbles.
“How long should it take?”
“Not this long.” I fished the oil-soaked, anemic-looking crouton from the pan and dropped it onto the stack of paper towels I’d laid out. “Let’s give it a couple more minutes. Do you want another café au lait?”
“More coffee? Always,” she said, repeating my word back to me. “I can do it this time. You watch the oil.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I kept half my attention on the pot and half on Charlotte.
She went through the steps like a pro, making short work of the coffee. In a few minutes, I had a fresh cup on the counter beside me and another cube of bread in my hand.
“Want to try again?” I held my hand out to her and she took the bread from me in a gesture thatwasoddly reminiscent of communion. It was no wonder that’s the direction her mind took earlier.
“Ready?” She held the cube over the pot of hot oil, waiting for me to nod my agreement before dropping it in.
This time it barely touched the bottom before bobbing to the surface with a ring of bubbles dancing furiously around it. We watched for a few moments, side by side and shoulders touching, as the bread floated on the surface, slowly going from pale gold to toasty brown.
“Perfect,” I said, skimming the cube from the oil and dropping it beside its rejected cousin. “Now we’re ready for the real thing. Just a couple at a time so we don’t crowd the pan and drop the temperature of the oil.”
I picked up one of the squares of dough and slid it carefully into the hot oil. Almost immediately, it puffed up to double its size, making a pillow.
“That’s magic. Pastry voodoo.” Charlotte peered into the pan.
I turned the pillows of dough over so they could brown on the other side, using the strainer to pull them out of the oil as soon as they were ready. Charlotte had another batch of beignets ready to go into the oil, and for a few moments, we worked in tandem, slipping the dough into the hot oil, waiting for them to cook and then pulling them out to drain when they were the perfect color. Once we had a mountain of the pastries, I turned off the gas and went to the cupboard for small white plates. Piling three beignets on each plate, I handed Charlotte a shaker full of powdered sugar.
“Dust them while they’re still warm and don’t hold back.”
“Don’t hold back is kind of your thing, isn’t it?” She smiled, not waiting for an answer before shaking a snowy peak of powdered sugar onto the pastry. “These look fantastic.” She took her coffee and one of the plates to the barstools, motioning for me to join her.
