“Yes, and this is the second time she's done it. You missed the part where the first tower was knocked over.”
We applauded when the timer was up.
Holly took a long swig out of a bottle of amber liquor. She looked wrung out. I wanted to pick her up, take her up to my condo, and ease the tension in her forehead. Unfortunately, there was a long night of Christmas Bake-off judging between me and my desire.
The first contestant was a girl who had hot chocolate as her fan-favorite dish. She had made a deep-fried hot chocolate ice cream. It was weird, though.
“Did you roll this in bread?” I asked, confused.
“It kept falling apart,” she explained. “I needed to keep the shape.”
“The fudge is nice,” Nick said, picking at the breading around the ice cream.
“Next up, we have Amber,” Anastasia said. “Her fan-choice dish was peppermint bark.”
Amber handed each of us a peppermint tart. I took a bite and didn’t know if I wanted to sneeze or spit it out. My mouth burned.
Nick wasn’t so polite. He spat it back on the plate. “Seriously, did you just pour peppermint essential oils into this? It's way too much.”
“I wanted the peppermint flavor,” Amber said. “You know, peppermint is good for a lot of things—if you have a cold or nausea or if you want to make sex with your man interesting.” She looked pointedly at me.
The bite of tart was still burning my mouth. I spat it into a napkin one of the production assistants handed me.
“I don’t want that anywhere near my junk,” I said.
We all gulped water while the next dessert was brought out.
“Honestly, anything has to be better than what we just ate,” Nick said, blowing his nose.
Thankfully, Fiona’s dish was fruity and refreshing.
“My fan-choice dish was Christmas punch,” she said. “I made a pomegranate-cranberry sorbet with an orange-and-apricot-and-brandy sponge cake. Also on the plate is a fizzy cranberry-ginger raindrop cake as well as a pomegranate-and-cognac reduction.”
“Amazing!” Nick said. “There's only one issue.” He removed the sprig of mint garnish. “Let's not.”
Holly was next.
“I must say I’m impressed that you managed to pull through,” Anu said.
“She worked in one of my restaurants,” Nick said with a laugh. “That means she excels under pressure.”
Holly smiled tipsily. She wavered slightly in her heels as she described her dessert. It was even more impressive up close. If that was what she did with just flour, eggs, and sugar in such a short time, I had no doubt that her plans for theTechBizcompetition were going to be brilliant.
“I think you might have needed a little more time,” Anu said, inspecting the tower, “but still, this was very ambitious, and you can see each of these elements was executed flawlessly.”
I took a bite of one of the cream puffs. Holly was clearly trying not to laugh.
“What?”
“Nothing,” she said, giggling.
“She’s drunk,” Anu said.
“The makings of a great chef,” Nick added.
*
Anu and Nickdecided to give the win to Fiona. Holly was runner-up this round. I knew she was disappointed, but she was whisked away for a postcompetition interview before I could talk to her.
