All this should have taken you 30 minutes. Even if you"re faster than I am, take your crust out of the freezer now; 10 minutes more or less won"t make a difference.

Pour the batter you just made on top of the chilled crust, set the pan on a cookie sheet to catch any drips (I use a cookie sheet with sides), and bake it at 350 degrees F. for 70 minutes. Remove the pan from the oven, but DON"T SHUT OFF THE OVEN.

Starting in the center, spoon the sour cream topping over the top of the cheesecake, spreading it out to within a half-inch of the rim. Return the pan to the oven and bake for an additional 15 minutes.

Cool the cheesecake in the pan on a wire rack. When the pan is cool enough to pick up with your bare hands, place it in the refrigerator and chill it, uncovered, for at least 8 hours.

To serve, run a knife around the inside rim of the pan, release the Springform catch, and lift off the rim. Place a piece of waxed paper on a flat plate and tip it upside down over the top of your cheesecake. Invert the cheesecake so that it rests on the paper.

Carefully pry off the bottom of the Springform pan and remove the paper from the bottom crust.

Invert a serving platter over the bottom crust of your cheesecake. Flip the cheesecake right side up, take off the top plate, and remove the waxed paper.

If you"d like to decorate your cheesecake, you can sprinkle on toasted coconut, place slices of fresh fruit around the edge, dot the top with berries in season, or sprinkle it with white chocolate or semi-sweet chocolate shavings. You could also melt either white chocolate or semi-sweet chocolate chips and drizzle them in threads across the top. Or... if you"re like Lisa and handy with a pastry bag, you could decorate the top of your cheesecake with whipped cream rosettes in a white-on-white design. Your choices are limited only by your own imagination.

"I"m dying to hear about Andrea"s lemon pie experience," Claire said once she"d flipped through the pie, cake, and frosting recipes.

"You said she followed your recipe?" Edna asked.

"That"s right."

"The same recipe we have in here?" Grandma Knudson asked.

"Exactly the same."

"But that"s the recipe you gave me to use down at the cafe," Rose said, looking confused. "And everybody loves your Lemon Meringue Pie."

Andrea gave a little groan. "Well, some of us can cook and some of us can"t. And I"m in the group that can"t. I thought I was following Hannah"s directions exactly, but I goofed. Tell them, Hannah. It"s okay."

Hannah began to smile. "It was a simple mistake for someone just learning how to cook. Andrea took everything literally. When the list of ingredients called for four whole eggs, she set four whole eggs out on the kitchen counter. And when the recipe read, Beat the egg yolks with the whole eggs in the top of the double boiler, Andrea did exactly that."

"But. . . what"s wrong with that?" Ellie asked.

Andrea started to laugh. "It"s like Hannah said, I took everything literally. I put the egg yolks in the top of the double boiler and then I added the four whole eggs."

"Oh, no!" Claire said, covering her face with her hands. "You didn"t!"

"She did," Hannah took up the story. "It was heartbreaking. Andrea was so proud of herself for baking a pie. It was Bill"s birthday and lemon meringue pie is his favorite. We all got together for dinner at my place and I served Andrea"s pie for dessert. I was impressed when I saw it. The meringue was absolutely perfect."

"If I"d known then what I know now, we would have just eaten the meringue and dumped the rest of the pie," Andrea commented.

"But we didn"t," Hannah continued, "and Andrea did a beautiful job of slicing it and putting it on the antique dessert plates Mother gave me."

Andrea chuckled. "And then they tasted it. And Mother asked me if I"d added some chopped nuts to the recipe."

"And Andrea said no, she"d followed my recipe exactly. But everyone agreed that there was something crunchy in the lemon filling."

"Then I said, No, that was probably the eggsh.e.l.ls," Andrea confessed, "And maybe I should have broken them up before I stirred the whole eggs into the lemon filling."

There was silence for a moment, and then everyone started to laugh. Andrea laughed the hardest of all, and Hannah was glad she was no longer embarra.s.sed about her baking mistake.

"I"ve got one, too. It"s the reason I haven"t tackled a cookie recipe again," Claire announced.

"What happened?" Lisa asked her.

"It was the first cookie recipe Grandma Knudson ever gave me," Claire told them, glancing over to smile at her new husband"s grandmother. "Bob was taking Grandma to the doctor and I promised them that I was going to bake cookies while they were gone.

"I read through the recipe, got out all the ingredients, and got ready to do the first step. It said, Cream the b.u.t.ter with the sugars, and that stopped me cold."

"But why?" Alice asked the question.

"Because it didn"t say how much cream to use!" Claire said.

Hannah started to laugh. She couldn"t help it. It was true that some baking terminology could be confusing.

"Did Grandma bake your cookies for today?" Carrie asked sympathetically.

Claire shook her head. "My friend Leigh sent me a recipe that"s so easy even I can make it. They"re called Lime b.a.l.l.s, and they"re really good."

"How about you, Andrea?" Carrie asked. "Did Hannah bake yours?"

"No, I did," Andrea looked proud. "You told me you really liked the lemon cookies I brought last year, the ones made from the cake mix, so I changed the recipe and experimented a little, and they"re called Double Chocolate Puffs."

As the ladies began to discuss the cookies they"d brought for the cookie exchange, Hannah poured more coffee while Lisa sliced the cheesecake and served it. It was really too bad their youngest sister, Mich.e.l.le, wasn"t here. She was crazy about cheesecake, and she baked like a dream. She"d told Hannah she would try to make it now that Macalester College was in recess for the holidays, but obviously something had come up and she hadn"t caught the early morning bus from Minneapolis.

Hannah turned around at the sound of footsteps on the stairs. "Mich.e.l.le!" she called out. "You"re just in time for Tapioca Cheesecake."

"Great! I could use a gallon of hot coffee, too. The bus got stuck just outside of Elk River and we had to wait for a replacement bus." Mich.e.l.le held up a large tote bag. "I"m lucky my cookies got here at all. We were still waiting for the second bus at lunchtime and I thought they"d suffer the same fate as some of the Donner party."

"Mich.e.l.le!" Delores chided her, but she was having trouble holding back a smile.

"Anyway. . . I need about a gallon of hot coffee and I"d love a piece of that cheesecake. And then I want to know what kind of cookies everyone brought."

Cookie Exchange List of New Cookies & Bar Cookies *Almond Fudge Cookies - Rose McDermott

*Bourbon Brownies - Bertie Straub

*Cranberry Pineapple Drop Cookies - Lisa Beeseman

*Chocolate Date Drops - Edna Ferguson

*Double Chocolate Puffs (Chocolate Whippersnappers)

- Andrea Todd

*Heavenly Eggnog Cookies - Alice Vogel

*Kiss My Grits Cookies - Hannah Swensen

*Leigh"s Lime b.a.l.l.s - Claire Rodgers Knudson

*Lemon Softies - Carrie Rhodes Flensburg

*Mincemeat Cookies - Grandma Knudson

*Minty Marvels - Florence Evans

*Norwegian Chocolate Pizza - Ellie Kuehne

*Raspberry Vanilla Swirls - Mich.e.l.le Swensen

ALL-NIGHTER COOKIES.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F., rack in the middle position.

Hannah"s Note: Florence didn"t have any bananas and I ended up taking one of Edna"s shortcuts in this recipe. If you don"t like shortcuts and want to do this the original way, use cup very ripe, almost all black on the outside, pureed bananas instead of the baby food bananas and banana pudding mix. The other change you have to make is to use 4 cups flour instead of 3 and . The dough will be stickier and you"ll have to chill it for at least 4 hours in order to make the dough b.a.l.l.s. I made these cookies both ways, and Mother was the only one who could tell the difference. (I still think it was a lucky guess.) 1 and cups melted b.u.t.ter (3 sticks, 12 ounces, pound)

1 cup white (granulated) sugar

1 cup firmly packed brown sugar

2 beaten eggs (just whip them up with a fork)

1 teaspoon baking soda