by Nancy Warren
What could I reply? My coven sister’s familiar arrived and led me to a group of angry bird-watchers?
“I needed some fresh air. I went for a walk. Hamish had to come and find me,” I said sheepishly.
Florence raised a groomed brow. “After standing up for hours slaving over an electric mixer, I should have thought a nice sit-down would be in order.” She waved a wooden spoon in my direction. “I’ve spent enough weekends with you to know that when you suddenly disappear into thin air, bad things happen. You need to be more careful.”
I gulped. It was unlike Florence to be so serious. I was touched that she didn’t want me to mess this up. I was her competition, after all.
“You’re right. I’m back, refreshed. Bring on the next cake.”
Florence chuckled. “That’s more like it. Now, try hard but not too hard: I want to win this thing.”
Don’t we all, hon, don’t we all.
Robbie came over to fix a glitch with my microphone.
“Thanks, Robbie,” I said. “Sometimes I forget this thing is on me—which we were warned about right at the beginning of the contest.”
“Right.” He leaned in. “No snide remarks—we hear it all.”
I cringed. Oh man, had I been muttering to myself when I was baking earlier? I did it all the time in my own kitchen, especially when Gateau was around and I could pretend I was talking to her. I tried to remember if I’d said anything unkind about another baker but didn’t think I had. I’d probably just talked myself through the steps. Embarrassing but not mean.
Robbie grinned. “All done.”
I thanked him and took a swig from my water bottle before the cameras rolled again. Gina rushed over to touch up my makeup.
“Why are you always late back to the tent, huh?” she asked, sweeping gloss across my lips.
I shook my head. “Long story.”
“It always is with you.” She gave my nose and forehead a quick powder and tucked a few strands of hair back into my bun. “You’ll do,” she said with a smile. “Keep up the good work, and don’t let yourself get distracted. You’ve got that look in your eye.”
“What look?”
“That quizzical putting-the-world-to-rights look you get. Whatever it is, keep your head in the game.”
I nodded, remembering that everything I said was now on record, and turned my attention to reorganizing my utensils. One more bake for today and then I would go and find out what the Somerset wild bird people had said to the earl at lunchtime. I hoped they’d made it clear to him that hawks would be protected.
Arty took center stage and announced that today’s challenge was one of Jonathon’s all-time favorite cakes. I felt like groaning. Why did they always do this to us? Was there any cake that wasn’t Elspeth and Jonathon’s All-Time Favorite?
“Now this may come as a surprise to some of you, but Jonathon has got a bit of a sweet tooth, and he is a sucker for the American classic.”
I felt my eyes widen. Please let it be––
“…known as angel food cake.”
“Oh, no!” Amara cried across the room. “What’s that?”
Elspeth nodded at Jonathon in that mom-like way she sometimes handled him with, and Jonathon cleared his throat. “Well, angel food cake is different from other sponge cakes because it contains no egg yolks or butter.”
“What’s the point, then?” Arty interrupted, and a few people laughed.
“The point is that the sponge is light as a cloud…so light, in fact, that it can float on a cloud so the angels can devour it. We can’t let the devils have all the fun with their heavy devilish chocolate cake.”
I couldn’t help it—a smile spread across my face. Angel food cake was something I used to make with my mom back when we lived in Seattle. We had our own recipe, which was light and fluffy. We ate it with a raspberry sauce, not unlike the one Daniel made for his chocolate cake earlier.
“And we’ll be asking you to make a passion-fruit curd to crown your angel food cakes.”
Mmm. Delicious.
We were given pared-down recipes with basic ingredients we needed to include and told that we’d have two and a half hours to complete this challenge.
I set about getting my ingredients in order. From the afternoons I’d spent with Mom in the kitchen, I knew that the key to a good angel food cake was getting the egg whites whipped to the perfect meringue-like consistency. This took patience and diligence. A lot of it was judging by eye rather than following a strict recipe. I wondered how the perfectionists among us (me so not included) would deal with this.
While I’d been busy musing, Jonathon and Arty had arrived at my workstation. Great. I knew they’d come to the American first. But I was ready to wow them with my historical food knowledge.
“So, Poppy,” Arty began, “I imagine you’ve had a few angel food cakes in your time.”
“My mom used to make these when I was small,” I said, weighing out my flour. “Sometimes, she liked to whip the egg whites by hand, rather than use an electric mixer, so that she could get more of a feel for the peaks.”
“Are you about to go all food historian on us, Poppy?” Arty asked.
I smiled. “In fact, I do know that one of the first examples of an angel food cake appeared in The Kentucky Housewife in the eighteen hundreds.”
“I think you know more than me, Poppy.” Jonathon laughed, his blue eyes twinkling.
I giggled. As if I knew more about baking than the great Jonathon Pine. Even if he did have to rehearse his lines.
With my flour sifted and sugar added, I set my bowl aside. It was time to get on with those egg whites. Jonathon and Arty moved on to Hamish, who was still studying the recipe and trying to work out whether to grease the ten-inch tube pan we’d been given. It had a cone-shaped kind of chimney in the center—like a Bundt pan but taller—and I could see that Hamish had never come across one before. My heart went out to him. I stopped separating my yolks and whites. “Don’t grease it,” I called out. “If you do, the batter can’t cling to the surface of the pan and won’t rise as high as it needs to.”
“You lifesaver,” Hamish said, his face softening as the panic left his body.
I smiled. I wasn’t very good at this whole I’m in competition with everyone thing. But I couldn’t watch poor Hamish flounder. I didn’t want him to make a mistake before he’d even started. If he’d greased that pan, the cake wouldn’t bake evenly, and the center would be raw when the outside edges were done. And no one wanted that.
I set to whisking the egg whites, watching until they became frothy, and then added lemon zest, lemon juice, cream of tartar, and a pinch of salt before whisking until soft peaks formed. But as I stared into the mix, I found my focus drifting. Where was the hawk? Was he safe? Why, in fact, did I assume the hawk was a he? I shook my head at my own assumptions.
I raised my head and looked out of the tent and into the sky. Patches of blue sky and a few puffy clouds, which, now that I thought about it, looked a lot like my egg whites. No hawk. Focus, Pops. This bit is crucial.
I increased the speed and added the remaining sugar one tablespoon at a time to form firm but not stiff peaks. Next, I sprinkled one-third of the flour mixture into the bowl and folded it in very gently. This was a delicate process. If I was too heavy-handed, then the batter wouldn’t be light enough and would fail to rise. I kept going with the rest of the flour, making sure to keep as much air in the mix as humanly possible.
Whew, the last bit of flour had disappeared into the batter. Now it was time to transfer it to the angel food cake pan—another delicate procedure. No butterfingers need apply.
I lifted my head and surveyed the room. The atmosphere had changed, the way it often did during the technical challenge. Our signature bakes were about our personalities and recipes that had been tried and tested, some that had been handed down through the generations. But with the technical challenge, there was little room for our personalities to shine through. It was about precis
ion, technique, and less about intuition. And it was the reason why everyone was looking so stressed. Including the unflappable Florence, and Maggie, the kindly grandma, whose stern expressions of concentration would have made me laugh if I hadn’t known mine was exactly the same.
I gently ran a knife through the center of the batter to remove any pockets of air and then delivered the cake to the oven, wishing it well, and left it to cook for the next forty-five or so minutes. I took a moment and looked out into the skies again, closing my eyes for a second to channel my energy towards the hawk. My body began to fizz with electricity. I’d have to be careful not to short-circuit the ovens!
“Everyone should take a leaf out of Poppy’s book,” Arty said, bursting my energy surge. “She’s so confident, she’s having a quick standing kip.”
I opened my eyes and felt my cheeks flame.
“Just gathering my thoughts before making the passion-fruit curd,” I said sheepishly, hurrying back to my workstation.
And nearly jumped. Gerry was bent over in front of my oven. I’d all but walked through him. “Are you keeping a proper eye on this, Pops?” the world’s most annoying ghost asked.
Reminding myself that everything I said could be heard by the sound techs, I kept going, feeling the cold as I walked through Gerry.
“Hey, watch it!” he said, turning to me in outrage. “It’s different for the others. They can’t help walking through me, but you did it deliberately.”
I made eyes at him and a shooing motion with my hand when I thought no one was looking.
Gerry looked deeply hurt. “I’m only trying to help, and based on that pasty white mess in the oven, you need all the help you can get,” he said. “Besides, I was bored.”
“Go away,” I mouthed the words.
He floated up to sit on top of my oven and pout. Just what I needed. A ghost with hurt feelings.
I turned to my workstation, but before I could start on the passion fruit, another commotion erupted outside the tent. And by now I knew exactly whose loud voice that was: Marlene Applebaum.
Once again, Fiona yelled, “Cut!”
Filming stopped. The crew and the rest of the cast all looked furious. But not as mad as Fiona. Even as she stomped toward the troublemaking bird-watcher, I was kind of impressed by Marlene’s audacity. She and her colleagues were on a mission to teach the earl a lesson, and they were going to see it through to the bitter end. Of course they didn’t care about a baking contest; they cared about protecting nature. I couldn’t get mad about that. But I could get curious.
I joined the others crowded around the entrance to the tent. From the looks of it, all of us bakers were relieved to have a moment’s respite from baking. The pressure was getting to us. But to my surprise, the source of the noise was twofold. Marlene was arguing with Martin, the security guard, who was trying to walk her and her group away from the tent.
“We’re leaving, young man,” Marlene said, drawing herself up to her full height. “No need to be rude.”
“But you’re causing a racket again. How many times must I remind you that the public throughway has been rerouted?”
“I could be your grandmother. Surely you could find it within yourself to talk to me with a little more respect,” Marlene shot back, completely ignoring Martin’s comment.
“Right,” Fiona said, brushing past me. The bird-watchers stomped off so Fiona had no one to vent her wrath on but the security guard.
She approached Martin, who visibly shrank as he clocked the impending lecture coming his way.
“I don’t know what’s more frustrating,” she began, “that I have to keep repeating myself or that my security continues to fail in his one objective—to keep the grounds quiet during filming.”
“But—”
“You yelling at that crazy old woman isn’t helping.”
“Ooh, burn,” Florence whispered.
Suddenly, Marlene turned back. Instead of continuing her tirade, she said, “It wasn’t the lad’s fault.”
Fiona looked skyward and blew out a breath. “I know why you’re here, and I appreciate your position, but we can’t afford to have filming interrupted. It’s a tight schedule and a tight budget, and there’s no room for error.”
Marlene looked somewhat abashed. “All right. We’re leaving now. Along the ancient rights of way.” She motioned to the group, who rallied round her, and then she led them away from the tent. I watched with a smile as she walked along the old rights of way triumphantly, her placard held up like a winning trophy.
Florence let out a short whistle. “I’ve got to say, I love that woman’s sass. I hope I grow up to be like her—with better outfits, of course.”
I laughed. “Marlene is pretty cool.”
Florence raised a brow. “Honestly, how do you know everyone’s name around here?”
“Let’s just say I’m professionally nosy,” I replied. “Let’s get back to our bakes.”
Florence linked her arm in mine, and we parted at our adjacent workstations.
When the cameras started rolling again, Jilly promptly began rapid-fire questions, and I could hear Hamish’s voice boom across the tent as he explained his process. It tickled me how he still thought he had to speak louder when the cameras were on him.
Jonathon and Arty approached Florence. Good.
I tuned them out and tried to turn my concentration back to baking.
I mixed the ingredients for the curd together in a large pan and let it cook over a low heat, stirring every so often with a wooden spoon. It smelled incredible—zesty and fruity and sweet. It was a perfect accompaniment to the cake. Five minutes later, with the mixture now glossy and thick enough to coat the back of my spoon, I took it off the heat, spooned in the butter and then sieved the whole lot.
Phew. I was on a mission of my own.
Next up: the cream topping.
“Poppy! The cake,” came an agitated voice.
I nearly strangled myself with my cry of panic.
I rushed over to the ovens, where Gerry was jumping up and down. “Thank you,” I mouthed to him as I bent to peek through the window. Thankfully it had risen to great heights and had a pale golden appearance. Perfect.
Once the camera operator had filmed me taking my cake out of the oven, I speared the sponge with a skewer—it was clean—and then took the cake back to my workstation just in the nick of time.
Get it together, Pops. No time for a foggy brain.
I didn’t even get mad when Gerry draped himself over my workstation, reminding me that he’d saved my butt. He had, but I’d thank him later.
To make sure that the cake didn’t sink, it needed to cool upside down on a wire rack. I carefully turned it out and wished it well while it was cooling. At this point, every little bit helped.
Now I could start on the cream topping. I mixed in a teaspoon of vanilla essence and switched my trusty electric whisk on. I kept my head down and tried to ignore Gerry, plus keep my thoughts from straying back onto the whereabouts of the hawk or from wondering if our protection spell last night had accidentally called the bird-watchers onto the grounds. They were seriously stubborn. Was that natural or magic-made? I was desperate to ask Elspeth what she thought, but not with the cameras rolling.
I went through the rest of the recipe on autopilot, and before long, my sponge had cooled and I was smoothing the cream topping across its fluffy top. With less than five minutes to go, I cut a couple of fresh passion fruits in half, scooped out the seeds, and drizzled them over my cake. With a few seconds to spare, I was done when Arty called out, “Time’s up, bakers. Put your equipment down and bring your cakes to the judging table.”
I looked down at my cake, pleased with the results. Despite my wandering thoughts, I’d managed to keep on top of each step and finish in the allotted time. And for once, Gerry had done me a solid.
I picked up the plate and walked with the others back to the dreaded judging table. And then I got a shock. I must have had my head
down during this challenge because I wasn’t prepared for the variety of cakes in front of me. Had we not gotten the memo that this was the technical bake? We’d followed the same recipe and had the same utensils, but several of the cakes were so far from angel food cakes, it was like the devil himself had made them. Some had sunk. One had huge cracks the cream couldn’t cover. Another hadn’t cooled enough, and the cream topping was sliding down its sides. And by their faces, I knew that these struggling cakes belonged to Amara, Maggie, and Daniel, whose frowns and woeful expressions were being cruelly captured by the cameras. Again, I was surprised that Amara and Maggie had trouble with the recipe. It was simple enough, but you did need to know a few tricks to keep the batter light and airy. I felt for all of them and was almost ashamed of my insider knowledge as an American. For now, mine looked perfect—but would it taste the same way?
I braced myself as Jonathon and Elspeth commented on the look of each cake and then began the taste test. I winced as they sliced through each one, listening to their critiques of cakes that weren’t airy enough or were downright dense; passion fruit that was overly sweet; cream that hadn’t been whisked to stiff enough peaks. It was enough to make a girl cry—and they hadn’t even gotten to my cake yet.
Finally, it was time to put me out of my misery. I held my breath as Elspeth delivered her verdict. She swallowed a mouthful of cake, but instead of a smile, her face became blank—almost as if she’d instructed her true reaction to disappear. Had she magicked away a grimace?
“It’s a beautiful-looking cake,” Elspeth began. “There’s no denying it. But unfortunately, I think Poppy may have made a mistake with her measurements.”
I gasped. What? Surely I hadn’t been careless? The cake had risen perfectly. What could I have missed?
As if she could read my frantic thoughts, Elspeth quickly said, “I know this recipe inside out, and I’m certain it only has half the sugar it calls for. It’s simply not sweet enough.”
“Agreed,” Jonathon said simply. “What a shame. The curd is superb, however.”
