I’m trying to find a chapter book about a young boy and an older woman who search for a prize-winning cookie recipe.
They want to win a cookie baking competition, so the older woman searches the library in her house for her family’s best recipe. She either loses it or can’t find it. She had a pet named Peeves who might have been responsible somehow. She realizes that they can use the second-best recipe, which originally belonged to one of her female relatives, if they can find it in time. The search takes them to either a shack or an abandoned house on a hill where they find a recipe for aniseed cookies. There may have been ghosts or a graveyard involved. The old woman rushes home and bakes the cookies in time for the contest, where they win first prize.
The book was for middle readers; I think it was about the same length as an Encyclopedia Brown book. I read the book before the year 2000, and I’m fairly sure it was written after 1960.
I can’t find much of a description, so this is a bit of a long shot, but could it be The Bobbsey Twins and the Super-Duper Cookie Caper?
No, that’s not it. I actually have a book that I suspect is the right one, but I have to see it in person first. I will report back if it is.
It took a lot of patience, but I finally found the book on worldcat.org. It’s called The Hangman’s Ghost Trick by Scott Corbett. I had some of the details off, but I was able to find it using the information I had right. If anyone else is interested, here is the book’s page on Google Books: http://books.google.com/books?id=hwSlF1HhtxoC