I reached over and cranked the oven up.
“No!” Merrie screeched. “It’s going to burn.” She grabbed at my fingers on the oven dial.
“We’ll just scrape the burned bits off. Better than raw. Right?”
She pursed her mouth then pulled her hand back.
Two minutes later the top of the cake was black.
“You turned on the broiler!” Merrie screeched at me as she wrenched open the oven door and fanned at the billowing black smoke that was pouring out.
“And it looks like with only a few minutes to spare, Matt and Merrie are having a kerfuffle at their baking station,” Anastasia narrated to the cameras.
“It’s a fucking bonfire,” I muttered as Merrie fanned the open oven with a kitchen towel. The influx of oxygen lit up the cake, and a fireball flew out of the oven.
I wrapped an arm around Merrie and hauled her backward. The front of her skirt was singed.
“I’m going to find where you live,” she said, grabbing oven mitts and yanking the cake out, “and dump this in your bed.” Her hair was snarled, and her eye was twitching.
I was suddenly concerned she was going to throw that piping hot cheesecake at me.
I gingerly took it from her, wrapping a dish towel around the sides. The peppermint bark was already arranged on a wood platter. We had a couple of minutes left, enough time to plate the cake. I had watched enough baking shows with Hensley that I knew how this went.
“Don’t forget,” I told Merrie lightly. “Janet and her disgusting box cake monstrosity are also in the competition. No way is this cake worse than hers.” Then I tipped the cheesecake over and dumped it out on the wood platter.
“See,” I said, patting down part of the graham cracker crust on top. “Looks great.”
“It’s upside down,” she shrieked. “It’s upside down! You put a cheesecake upside down on the platter. Oh my god.”
“Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do?” I asked, confused. “Then all the cake gravy on the bottom of the cake drips down and keeps it from drying out.”
Merrie trembled in fury.
“Or not?”
“You—”
“And that’s time! Hands up, contestants,” Anastasia said.
Merrie covered her mouth with her hands, shaking her head.
I inspected the oozing cake. “Certainly not your best work, Merrie.”
“I don’t thinkthis cake is cooked...” Anu, one of the judges, said slowly as she poked the cake.
“Mine’s cooked,” said another judge, Nick Mazur. “I mean it’s just a mass of chocolate, but it is, to be fair, not raw.”
“I must have gotten an edge piece,” said Meghan Loring, the mayor of Harrogate and a judge, “because I got some chocolate and cheesecake.”
“The chocolate bark is good,” Anu said, scraping off the raw, runny bits of cheesecake.
“I told her to put pretzels in it,” I said unhelpfully.
“The part of the cheesecake that isn’t burnt or raw is a bit grainy,” Nick said. “And interesting choice serving it upside down.”
“That was my idea,” I said while Merrie steamed beside me.
“Did you have any questions for us?” Meg asked, eating another piece of chocolate bark.
