Page 100 of The Alpha and the Baker
Not surprising, but still a punch to the gut. We now only had a one-round lead, and it was time for cakes.
“What if my sweet cream has curdled?” Auntie Letitia muttered as she wrung her hands beside me. “What if the rhubarb filling has split?”
“It’ll be fine,” Felicia assured her. I was so happy she was here to help me offer comfort. Not that I resented doing it, but I knew from experience that it took a lot more positive voices to drown out that one internal negative one.
“And the winner of our cake round ties up the competition, with team nine winning for their amazing tres leches cake!”
Well, that wasn’t good.
I couldn’t believe it. It had come down to the final round. It was like something out of a movie, with the winner taking all.
However, to the credit of all the rest of the teammates, they seemed to be good sports about knowing that they were locked out of the competition. I hadn’t thought that two shifter teams would sweep so many categories, but perhaps our extraneous motivations had made that rather inevitable.
“Looks like it’s time for the showstopper,” Felicia said with a fierce and yet calm determination.
“There’s no way anyone can hold a candle to yours,” I said, trying to put as much conviction in my tone.
“Oh, I know. I went real old school for this. I guarantee you there isn’t a single other person here who would try to make a full croquembouche in the time we had allotted.”
What the hell was a crock in bush?
My answer came when Felicia returned with a tower of multicolored cream puffs held together with caramel and spun sugar. When she set it down, the expression of triumph on her face was something else.
“Believe it or not, this was really complicated to make, especially since I used five different flavors of pastry cream. That’s hard enough on its own, but I also made sure that each one was perfectly tempered.”
“Tempered? Like you have to do with chocolate?” I asked, racking my brain through all the knowledge I had picked up over the last couple of weeks. I knew that was a very specific process where chocolate was raised to a specific temperature, then cooled to another specific temp to make it… glossier, I thought?
“You remembered that?” Felicia beamed at me, and I almost forgot what we were talking about.
“I try to remember everything you tell me. Often with mixed success.”
“Oh, you sweetheart,” she said, giving me a lightning-quick kiss on the cheek. “In this case, tempering is a way to cook the pastry cream and make sure it’s as smooth as possible. If you try to mix the egg yolks into the hot milk without tempering, it can often scramble the yolks. Nasty. What you wanna do is stir in a little bit of the hot milk into your egg yolk mixture and raise the temperature slowly so that it can emulsify.”
I knew what most of those words meant, but I would ask for a more thorough explanation once everything was said and done. However, when I looked at the towering arrangement of tiny pastries, I had a feeling we were a shoo-in for victory.
And it was all thanks to Felicia. I didn’t know what I could possibly do to express my gratitude to her and make up for all the time and effort the whole thing had cost her, but I would happily spend the rest of my life doing so.
“Impressive,” Sal remarked, leaning over the table to look at our entry up and down. “Never seen one of those in person.”
“I ain’t neither,” Polly said with a nod of approval. “It’s a thing of beauty, ain’t it?”
“Sure is.” Maybe it was just my imagination, but Sal’s compliment seemed a bit chagrined. Still, his expression did have quite a bit of admiration as he met Felicia’s gaze. “May the best baker win.”
“Oh, they will.”
That’s my girl!
While the table was loaded with quite impressive fare, from towering cakes to sculptures made out of Rice Krispies and Baked Alaskas, I stood with pride and confidence as we waited. Unsurprisingly, since it was the big finale, the judges really took their time. By the time they got to us, all of us smelled like nerves, except Felicia.
“My, my, my,” the more stylish one said, clapping her hands together. “I dare say, is this a croquembouche? I haven’t seen one of these in ages.”
“It most certainly is,” Felicia answered.
“But it seems that you have put your own spin on this classic,” the severe governess said.
“Indeed I have. While I love the outer crunch of the cream puffs, as well as the rich filling within, I’ve always been of the opinion that they can get a little boring by the end of the croquembouche. So I decided to split the flavors into quarters.”
“Quarters, you say?”
