The only mystery that baker Poppy McAllister is interested in solving this holiday season is the one regarding the engagement ring in a velvet box that was left at her Butterfly Wings bed and breakfast over Thanksgiving. None of the men in the lives of herself or her nearest and dearest have owned up to losing it, so she, her Aunt Ginny, her mother-in-law, Georgina; and her best friend, Sawyer, are hatching a plan to figure out who it belongs to–and who’ll be getting proposed to in due time. It’s the best kind of sleuthing, even if the widowed Poppy is taken aback to discover that her own feelings about tying the knot with her boyfriend, Gia, are not entirely what she expected.

Alas for Poppy, a police detective comes calling soon enough, bearing news of a corpse. Worse, the dead man has a note saying “Get Poppy” taped to him. As if that weren’t bad enough, the body and note were found in the walk-in freezer of her ex’s restaurant, Maxine’s. To Poppy’s further surprise, it’s not just the police who want her to go undercover there. Her ex Tim wants her involved so that she can help clear his name too.

Tim and Poppy had not parted on the best of terms. Gigi–his new girlfriend and her former rival for his affections–is hardly thrilled that Poppy’s back either, especially since Gigi has closed her own restaurant in order to merge her business with Tim’s. It becomes quickly obvious to Poppy that Tim and Gigi don’t have the best relationship, especially when Gigi uses every opportunity she can to take out her frustrations on Poppy. While Poppy really wants to help both the police and Tim, she’s honestly not sure how much of Gigi’s abuse she can take.

But Poppy’s always been a people pleaser. Between this, the mystery of the engagement ring, an old family diary she’s still trying to decipher, and running the B&B, she has a whole lot on her plate. What will she do, though, when an unexpected guest shows up at the inn to turn her entire world upside down?

There is a lot going on in this ninth Poppy McAllister Mystery! If you’re new to the series, you can absolutely dive in here, but I really do recommend going back and starting from the very beginning with Class Reunions Are Murder. Each of these books is always much denser than the usual culinary cozy, packing a ton of plot, emotion, and humor into the proceedings. Being familiar with who everyone is and how they’re connected makes for a much richer reading experience of an already terrific novel.

Libby Klein also includes a wealth of gluten-free recipes in each book, with seven yummy treats in this one. I decided to try out the following:

Chocolate-Orange Scones

Yield: 12 scones

Ingredients

3 cups gluten-free flour

1 Tbsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

½ cup sugar

Zest of 1 orange

8 Tbsp of cold butter

1 ½ tsp vanilla extract

1 ¼ cups of heavy whipping cream

6 oz dark chocolate, roughly chopped

For the orange glaze

1 cup powdered sugar

Juice from ½ of the orange

Instructions

Preheat oven to 425°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment.

Into a food processor bowl, combine gluten-free flour, baking powder, salt, sugar, and orange zest. Pulse until well combined.

Add cold butter by the tablespoon, and pulse until combined.

Add the vanilla extract to the heavy cream. Pour in a little at a time while pulsing. Add in ¾ of the chopped chocolate pieces. I like to reserve the smaller pieces to add after the dough is made.

You should form a lovely cohesive dough–not sticky, but no flour left in the bottom of the bowl either. Lightly dust your counter with gluten-free flour. Turn the dough out, and let it rest for a minute.

Form the dough into a ball, and flatten it with your hands. Press it into the remaining ¼ of chopped chocolate pieces. Roll out to a thickness of about ¾-inch thick. Cut into rounds with a biscuit cutter.

Place rounds on prepared baking sheet close together, but not touching. As they rise, they will help each other rise.

Brush the tops with heavy cream.

Bake for 15 minutes and check for doneness. If they need a little more time, put the pan back in the oven for 5 minutes. If the tops are getting too brown, turn the oven down to 350°F for the last 5 minutes.

Remove from the oven and let cool. Make your glaze by putting the powdered sugar in a small mixing bowl. Add the orange juice a little at a time and stir, until you have a thick paste that will still run off a spoon.

Drizzle the glaze over the top of the cool scones.

This is one of the best scone recipes I’ve ever tried, and I have tried a lot of scone recipes as this column can attest to! I can ordinarily take or leave the combination of orange and chocolate, but it’s so perfectly balanced in this recipe as to make these baked goods eminently craveable. The richness of the dark chocolate meets its match in the fresh orange flavor, with the texture of the scones themselves adding a wonderful fluffiness to the mix.

I also really appreciated that I could put the dough together in a food processor. Another bonus is that you don’t have to use gluten-free flour if you don’t have any handy. In continuation of my lazy ways, I used dark chocolate chips instead of chopping up a chocolate bar, which worked beautifully in this easy recipe.

Next week, we travel into space to mix up a few beverages while solving a murder that threatens to ruin a honeymoon. Do join me!

See also: Cooking the Books: Death of a Gingerbread Man by Lee Hollis