Page 27 of Holly Jolly Cake Fight
“But you need a gadget to cut a bit of ribbon?”
What stood out most from his glance was six jars of rock candy, four in a range from lightest to darkest purple, plus a pale yellow and a slightly brighter green. There were all sorts of things she could do with that, but Laurin had a feeling she was making a geode cake.
Smart girl. The trend was resurging right now. Laurin had made one last month. He would also be doing jewel tones on his cake but had chosen a less literal route. Their cakes would complement each other but would be unique.
“Well, I’m cutting a bit more than a bit,” he quipped as he got back to rolling his emerald fondant into an even, thick sheet.
“Going for a striped cake? Or a plaid one? You seem to favor the print.”
“Not particularly.” It gave him a moment’s pause to wonder about what she was really like outside of the competition. He liked today’s dress. It spoke of a woman very unlike the Candace the world knew, but whom he suspected was tucked safely inside for when she wasn’t trying to live up to her TV personality. He imagined she was more casual and comfortable in her daily life, but he hoped that she occasionally dusted this dress off for an evening out. More and more, he was thinking she wasn’t anything like the woman the camera showed, but it would have been good for her to find a middle ground between her real life and her on-screen persona.
“Oh? I hated the hipster lumberjack look when it was the thing, but it looks good on you.” He could hear the whimsy in her tone, the mindless rambling that could only mean she was so engrossed in her current work she was speaking without thinking. “Have you tried a beard before? It would suit you.”
He touched his jaw absently, lamenting his usual growth’s absence. Itdidsuit him, in fact, but he’d shaved at the network’s insistence. Frustration bubbled inside him, and it should have been about the ridiculous time frame they’d been given for these cakes, but nope. It was definitely because he’d felt the network had done him a solid when Candace made the comment aboutthe plaid looking good on him, only for it to be dashed over the clean shave.
Not that it mattered if Candace found him attractive or not.
It didn’t matter.
He cringed at the knowledge that it did matter, that despite her terrible attitude, he was attracted to her and not just on a physical level.
And from Candace’s perspective, it must have looked like he was cringing about the notion of a beard. “Okay, then,” he mumbled, thanking the gods above when one of the crew popped up with the fondant cutter, rescuing him from this awkward moment.
Good grief, Candace thought as she carved a ditch into her cake. Yeah, she’d jabbed at Laurin for needing a fancy tool, but she’d attempted banter with him and even enjoyed the half second of it before she’d somehow made it uncomfortable. She knew that, despite his mostly Southern accent, that extra warmth and fluidity to his voice came from growing up in the UK; were British people offended by beards?
Did he think she was flirting with him?
Hadshe been flirting with him? She was sure a woman could compliment a man and offer suggestions in a purely platonic way. The problem was she and Laurin weren’t platonic. Candace was doing everything she could to make it clear they weren’tgoing to be friends, that she didn’t want to be friends with him or anyone else. So why had she said all that?
She huffed and returned to her cake. At least this was something she understood.
Theoretically. She’d never made a geode cake before, but it was more of a trick than any incredible skill — or so she thought. By the time there was only an hour left to finish these cakes, it was all falling apart.
She never should have tried out an untested technique. This was a lesson she hadn’t learned in her seven previous seasons of Bake-Off, and she doubted she was going to learn it in her eighth season, either. Everyone fell victim to it occasionally — odd fillings that didn’t set, strange ingredients that ruined the bake, chocolate that didn’t temper. Today’s disaster was the stupid rock candy not sticking to the fondant-covered crevice she’d carved into the bottom and middle tiers. She hadn’t even started on the divot in the top cake, and now she thought she never would.
Her current attempt at adhering rock candy was with a paste made from fondant and water. She brushed the leftovers from the last attempt out of the crevice, swiped the paste in with a paintbrush, gloved up, and jammed a handful of the darkest purple rock candy into the space. A thirty-second count, she decided, and let her eyes wander up to Laurin’s space while the numbers spun in her mind.
He wasn’t there. He was probably at one of the shared equipment stations, where infrequently-used tools like chilled ice cream slabs were kept. But Candace was too worried about her own cake to see where he’d run off to, so she kept her eyes on his station.
His cake looked nice. She could admit that. The tiers were square, the top two iced in buttercream and squared off cleanly as folded paper. The faintest shade of ivory, just enough color to take off the bite of white, and brushed lightly with silver shimmer to neutralize the color.
The bottom tier, by contrast, was marbled fondant. Streaks of emerald, sapphire, and amethyst swirled together, blended just to the point of union with none of the muddying of overly-mixed spots. The shimmer was highlighted here too, in wide swaths of silver leaf.
Already the cake was wedding-ready, and it wasn’t even decorated yet. An array of fondant strips, each no more than a half inch wide, was looped and resting on their sides to harden. Candace had no idea what they’d become, but those jewel-tones would pop on the ivory layers.
This was a good thing, really. Laurin hadn’t gotten a fair chance to prove himself. This cake was going to do it. Even better, it was going to propel him to the top of today’s rankings. She wouldn’t have to kick herself for helping him last week. He wasn’t the one who’d be at the bottom with her.
The thought was a curse, a promise that she was going to jeopardize her own chances of staying in the competition.
She didn’t think her hand had shifted, but her entire cake started to slide off the turntable.
Candace made a screeching sound as all her ridiculous stress culminated in one of those textbook panicked-idiot moves, the hydroplaning-oversteering of the decorator world. She grabbed for the cake to pull it back, but instead of grabbing the board, she stuck her hand right into the bottom tier of cake.
Something shattered to the right of her, but the chaos within her own bubble was gaining momentum. In trying to remove her hand from the cake, she snagged one of the support pillars holding the rest of the cake up. It buckled as the top two tiers began to tip.
She could already see the replay. It would be in the opening sequence, the previews, the recaps. Two full minutes of airtime would be devoted to this from all the cameras quick enough to catch it and everyone’s reaction. She’d get pulled into the interview booth and asked the same questions repeatedly until they gleaned the most heartbreaking, damp-eyed responses from her.
This would replace Lucas feeling her up in the contestant recaps in later seasons.
