After a while, Sylvia’s voice barked across the space. “Five minutes, everyone, five minutes.”
Henry finally attached the last of his premade flowers. He had to go in with a leaf tip, now, fill in all the gaps so none of the buttercream peeked through where it wasn’t supposed to. He glanced at Tristan and... Damn, he was fast. He’d finished all the embossing and outlining. Now he was placing dragées into each vertex, driving home that quilted appearance.
Henry’s hands didn’t shake as he squeezed out his piping. Better than he could say for his knees or his confidence, as he rushed up and down the step stool. He finished as the clock hit thirty seconds. A quick check for anything that needed cleaning up revealed nothing. So he sat and waited and relished in the camera zooming on him. It would be great footage, make him seem a lot more relaxed and competent than he actually was. Hopefully.
“And that’s time, everyone!” Sylvia’s voice cut across again. “Spatulas down, piping bags to the side, and gird your loins!”
Henry looked at his cake. It was fucking pretty. Any blushing bride would love it, aside from it probably upstaging her dress. He looked around and behind him, and nothing held up in the same way. There were nice cakes. Beautiful cakes. Intricate cakes. But his was the only one that stood out in that classic, virginal-white style. He couldn’t say for sure if that was what the judges wanted, but if so, he had clearly delivered the best.
Then there was Tristan’s cake. Crayon-colored, clean-lined, and easily as tall as Henry’s, with silver dragées sparkling. It was a breathtaking cake in its own way.And if I’m honest, give me those flavors any day.Gentle, more-nuanced flavors weren’t bad, but those candy tastes had been a bold decision, whether they worked out or not. Henry appreciated boldness.
The cameras resituated, production assistants appeared from backstage, and Sylvia stood with the judges in preparation for the final presentation. After a few minutes moving around and adjusting, Rita started it off. “Hezzie, why don’t you come on up, now?”
There was very specific wording during these sections. No one could say anything that denoted time or order. That way the judging could be effectively cut together in any order to maximize drama. At least the show staff was honest about their needs instead of shooting a million times to get things right.
Hezekiah carried her three-tiered naked cake up with the help of a couple of assistants. Henry failed to avoid rolling his eyes. Who knew when they’d decide to cutthatinto the episode, but come on. A naked cake in five hours?Hopefully she didn’t strain herself.Henryhatedthe stupid naked-cake trend. He hadn’t learned to perfectly ice, cover, and decorate cakes so he could show off his goddamn crumb coat.
She got her critique: A mixed bag. Hezzie had good flavors, but the judges agreed she could have done more with her five hours. Then they went down the line. Nina, with the long red hair, and Finn had solid flavors and good decorations, but nothing that seemed to blow the judges away. Dorian, a Black guy with short hair and a slightly hawkish nose, and Willa were strong contenders all the way around. Dexter and Ritabothwent in for a second bite of Willa’s maple and whiskey cake.
Then it was Bertha’s turn. She was approaching seventy, if not over—Henry wasn’t about to ask—so she didn’t carry her own cake up. The two production assistants lifted it... but one lifted onthreeand one lifted ongo, and her cake tipped at a forty-five degree angle. Henry had never seen so many people simultaneously gasp and clench their assholes. Well, he couldn’t be sure that every asshole in the room clamped tight, but his sure did until they got that cake back on the counter again. It made it up to the café table intact, got middle-of-the-road critiques from the judges, then was returned without issue, but any small faith Henry’d had in the production crew had evaporated.
Those same assistants now headed toward Tristan’s station. That had to be a damn heavy cake, and a nice one. Too nice to fall on the floor. Henry couldn’t live with himself if he let that happen.Am I insane?He only debated that for a moment. Then he marched up and grabbed the other side of Tristan’s cake base before the black-clad production folks could get in there. “Ready?”
“What are you doing?”
That’s a hell of a question.“If you’re anything like me, you trust a baker to carry your cake more than a backstage assistant.” Plus Henry had come here to compete, to prove himself; he didn’t come to win because the crew didn’t know how to transport a cake. “Ready?”
Tristan scoffed, hesitated, then nodded and slipped his hands under the other side. “Ready.”
Slowly, they lifted it, and the thing was definitely heavy. Heavy and not evenly balanced, and Henry had ended up with the heaviest side.
They got Tristan’s cake up to the table. He nodded once to Henry, his mouth set in a tight line. “Thanks.”
Henry didn’t respond, just headed back to his station. The cameras tracked him all the way until he sat.Maybe my nice-guy persona will get me a little extra time here.
Dexter broke the silence first. “It’s certainly striking. Remind me of your flavors in this one.”
Tristan pointed from the top down in turn. “Peppermint, butterscotch, and cotton candy.”
“First-grade dream, then, right?” Dexter chuckled at his own joke. “Well, the quilting is nice and even. You’ve managed to get all the dragées in place, nothing missed. More than I can say for some of the quilted cakes I’ve seen.” He tapped a shiny, pearlescent dragée with his fingertip. “Here, I would have punched in with a coning tool. It would press in the lines to better imitate puckering on fabric. But that’s the nitpickiest nitpick I could possibly come up with. It’s not even a problem, merely something to consider.” He winked at Tristan, then glanced back at Eli. “Anything?”
“They are incredible colors. You don’t miss this cake. You can’t miss this cake.” Eli sighed. “And personally, I want to cut into it. Rita?”
She pulled out a fresh knife and sliced a thin section of each layer. Then she laughed. “You really went for your color choices, didn’t you?”
The color of the fondant carried through the layer of buttercream and into the cakes themselves. Green for peppermint, orange for butterscotch, blue for the cotton candy. Henry let himself smile this time—it was clever and striking and the sexy little bastard was good. That fact was considerably less annoying than Henry might have expected. It was almost... admirable.
Rita commented on the flavors first. “Everything is exactly what you said it was. They’re flavors that can easily be heavy and sickly, but I think you’ve skirted around that. The mint is subtle and bright, the butterscotch is slightly burnt, and the cotton candy has that signature lightness to it.”
“It does.” Dexter narrowed his eyes at Tristan. “Genoise?”
Tristan shook his head. “I don’t know about you, but I can’t think of a genoise that would support a cake this size. It’s my basic chiffon.”
“It’s an amazingly light chiffon, then. Nicely done.”
Eli stepped in next. “Your buttercream carries the flavors exceptionally. The cake itself is not terribly sweet on its own, which helps you get the balance right. I definitely wouldn’t eat this buttercream straight out of a tub... which I may have done before. But it controls the balance on the sugar when you put it with these cakes. Especially this cotton candy one. That’ssoimpressive.”
Henry chewed on his lower lip. It was going well. Theonlycritical comment to be had was that small suggestion on “puckered fabric.” Henry couldn’t say there was anything else he saw on the cake, either. Flavor he couldn’t judge yet, but he doubted very much that Tristan had screwed that up.
