Going, Going, Ganache Read online

  Brigit moved forward, leaving Mel no choice but to back out of her own office or risk being run over by the shorter woman. Then Brigit shut the door in Mel’s face. Before she turned away, Mel heard the distinct sound of a thump on the floor and suspected that Brigit had just cleared off her desk with all the tact, diplomacy, and finesse of a backhoe.

  Five

  Mel was just about to barge into her office and give Brigit a piece of her mind when the kitchen door opened and in came Justin with another woman, who looked the complete antithesis of Brigit MacLeod. She had a sturdy build with generous curves, she wore no makeup on her freckled face, and her curly red hair was held back by a wide black hair band. Instead of a snappy business suit, she wore jeans and a T-shirt. Mel liked her immediately.

  “Melanie Cooper,” the woman said with her hand outstretched. “I’m Bonnie Hummecker, the food director for SWS, and I’m a huge fan of your work. In fact, I’m the one who recommended you to Amy Pierson for the magazine.”

  “Oh, hi,” Mel said, and shook Bonnie’s hand. Her relief at finally meeting someone who wasn’t scary, mean, or impossibly gorgeous made her want to reach out and hug the woman. “It’s a pleasure, a real pleasure to meet you.”

  Bonnie smiled and her entire face lit up. Then she gave Mel a knowing look.

  “Let me guess,” she said. “Amy ignored you, Sam was mean to you, Brigit scared you and took over your office, Justin has been charming, and Sylvia isn’t here yet.”

  “Close,” Justin said. “You’re off by one.”

  “Wait,” Bonnie said. “Let me revise. Okay, Sylvia found a mirror somewhere and got lost in it.”

  “Actually, she’s trying to help my partner get her hair back,” Mel said.

  “Did it go somewhere?” Bonnie asked.

  “More like it’s in lockdown on her head,” Mel said.

  “That’s pretty nice of the beautiful one,” Bonnie said.

  “They have an Italian-sisterhood thing going,” Justin clarified.

  “Ah,” Bonnie said as if it all made sense now. “Well, since Brigit put me in charge of choosing the cupcakes, let’s check out your kitchen and see what we’re working with.”

  Bonnie put her purse on the steel table, then walked the room, taking in the walk-in refrigerator and the double sinks.

  “Oh, you have a Blodgett convection oven,” she cried, and clasped her hands in front of her. Then she checked out the steel counter that ran along the wall. “Oh, and a Hobart mixer! This is perfect. I named my two corgi dogs Blodgett and Hobart.”

  “You did not,” Mel said.

  “I did, too,” Bonnie said. “Look.”

  She pulled out her smartphone and, sure enough, the wallpaper on the phone’s display window showed two corgis with the tags Blodgett and Hobart.

  “That’s awesome!” Mel laughed. She had a feeling that she and Bonnie Hummecker were going to get along just fine.

  “Blodgett and Hobart are named for an oven and a mixer?” Justin asked. “Huh. And all this time I thought they were named for some unfortunate relatives.”

  Bonnie laughed and swatted his arm. “Justin, your knowledge base in the culinary arts is pitiful. Good thing you have a week to get up to scratch. Get it? Up to scratch?”

  Justin rolled his eyes, but Mel laughed. For the first time, cupcake boot camp looked like it might actually be a pleasure.

  The door to Mel’s office popped open, and Brigit stuck her perfectly coiffed head out. Her reading glasses were lowered on her nose, and she looked over the top of them at them.

  “Bonnie, have you planned our cupcakes yet?”

  “Working on it,” Bonnie said, completely unruffled by the censure in Brigit’s voice.

  “I want to hear your plan in thirty minutes. Justin, send Sam in to me.” The door banged shut.

  To Mel it felt as if she’d been slapped across the face, but Bonnie and Justin didn’t seem fazed in the least. Mel wondered if maybe she’d been her own boss too long and she just wasn’t adjusting well to being ordered around. Or maybe Brigit was just a rude shrew who could use some lessons in manners.

  Justin left the kitchen to get Sam while Bonnie sat down at the steel table and pulled a notepad and pen out of her voluminous purse.

  “Okay,” Bonnie said. “I guess we should start planning. We’ll come up with five flavors and designs that we don’t like very much, and then we’ll come up with five that we do like.”

  Mel sat beside her and gave her a questioning look.

  “Why do we need five that we don’t like?” she asked.

  “I’ve worked with Brigit for four years now, and I have come to learn that she always rejects the first few ideas offered, even if they are the best, because she wants her people to dig deeper and be more creative. So we will offer up the mediocre ones first and then hit her with our favorites after she’s rejected us. Win-win.”

  “I’m so glad you’re here,” Mel said. “I don’t think I could navigate all of this without you.”

  “Sure you could,” Bonnie said. “You’d just spend more time stressed out and crying than you will because I’m here.”

  “Is that how it was for you when you started at the magazine?” Mel asked.

  “Yep,” Bonnie said. “But I’m a lot tougher than my dimples and freckles would have you believe, and Sam actually coached me in how to handle Brigit.”

  “Sam?” Mel asked.

  “I know he doesn’t seem the type to help out anyone, but he was kind to me,” Bonnie said. “And then I paid it forward to Justin, who did the same for Sylvia.”

  “Who did the same for Amy?” Mel asked.

  A guilty look passed over Bonnie’s face and she let out a sigh.

  “No one. None of us can stand Amy,” Bonnie confessed. “That girl would prostitute her own grandmother for a promotion. She’s on her own.”

  Justin and Sam entered the kitchen. Sam went right into Mel’s tiny office while Justin joined them at the table.

  “Don’t forget,” Justin said. “We need to make gluten-free cupcakes for Margery Firestone.”

  “Who is Margery Firestone?” Mel asked.

  “She owns the next largest chunk of the magazine after Ian Hannigan,” Bonnie said. “She’s old money from New York and a real b—”

  “And she can only eat gluten-free food,” Justin interrupted, giving Bonnie a look.

  “What?” Bonnie asked. “I was going to say she is a real belle of the ball type.”

  “Oh,” Justin said. “Sorry to interrupt.”

  “I’m so sure,” Bonnie said. She gave him an annoyed look, but Mel saw a teasing twinkle in her eye. “Well, let’s get started before Brigit pitches a complete hissy fit.”

  “I have no idea what you want to do, but here are some of my books,” Mel said. She put the albums of special-order cupcakes in front of Bonnie, who dove into them with the sort of glee only another baker would show.

  “Okay, for the gluten-free, I think we should go with a simple chocolate cupcake recipe with a ganache icing,” Brigit said. “If we make it moist with an intense burst of chocolate in the cupcake, no one will care if it’s gluten-free or not.”

  “I use almond flour when I bake gluten-free. Will Margery Firestone be okay with that?” Mel asked.

  “Are you kidding? She has a chocolate weakness. If she can stuff four or five of those into her mouth, she’ll be thrilled,” Justin said.

  Mel wrote down gluten-free chocolate with ganache on the pad she’d put on the table earlier. Next she would break the list down into ingredients to see what she had and what they needed.

  “You know, while ganache is a delicious frosting, especially when you use dark chocolate, it’s the ugly stepsister in the decorating department,” Mel said. “It just doesn’t have any wow factor.”

  Bonnie nodded in agreement and Justin frowned.

  “Well, it’s autumn,” Justin said. “The obvious throwaway ideas are autumn leaves or pumpkins.”

  “Y
es, so we’ll offer those first,” Bonnie said. “Just so Brigit can have her initial rejections.”

  “How about scarecrows and haystacks,” Mel said. “Those are overdone and we can throw those away, too.”

  “Nice to see you getting into the spirit of things,” Justin said.

  “Still, we need a theme, to bring all of our cupcakes together,” Bonnie said. “That will make it easier to choose flavors.”

  “Harvest,” Mel said.

  Both Justin and Bonnie shook their heads.

  “No, hear me out,” Mel said. “I’m not proposing cupcakes with mini John Deere tractors on them, although for a kid’s birthday—”

  Both Justin and Bonnie stared at her.

  “Sorry, losing focus,” she said. “No, what I’m thinking is a real harvest of cupcakes. So, we’ll have a gluten-free chocolate cupcakes with ganache and top them with chocolate-dipped strawberries or pomegranate seeds. Then we can have an apple pie cupcake, so it could be a spice cake with apple pie filling in the middle and on the top we can pipe buttercream icing to look like a pie crust lattice.”

  “And what about pumpkin?” Justin asked. “If we’re doing a harvest, we have to have pumpkin something.”

  “A pumpkin pie cupcake with a dollop of whipped cream and sprinkled with nutmeg,” Bonnie said.

  “I like it,” Mel said, and she wrote it down. “Now, I’d like to do something unusual, too.”

  “Like what?” Justin asked warily.

  “Not everyone has a sweet tooth,” Mel said.

  “Shocking,” Bonnie joked.

  “I know. I really don’t know how they get up in the morning,” Mel said. “But I’m thinking corn, and also fig.”

  “Fig?” Justin asked and pursed his lips. “As in Fig Newton fig?”

  “Not exactly,” Mel said. “I was thinking more of a fig-and-pistachio cupcake.”

  “With a cream cheese frosting,” Bonnie added.

  “What about corn?” Justin asked. “I thought you said you wanted to do something with corn.”

  “How about a sweet corn cupcake with brown butter and honey icing?” Bonnie asked.

  “Oh, man, I think I just drooled on myself,” Justin said.

  Mel laughed and looked over her pad. “That’s five. I think we’ve got it.”

  “Excellent,” Bonnie said. “Let’s make up an ingredient list. I can have my assistant go to the store.”

  As Mel started to jot down the ingredients to make two hundred of each type of cupcake, the back door opened. Angie was back with Sylvia, and her hair was no longer a hard lump on her head but rather trailed down her back in a riot of lustrous black curls, very much like Sylvia’s, in fact.

  “Well?” Angie asked as she pointed to her head and spun around. “Go ahead. Lay the compliments on me.”

  “You are a vision,” Justin said.

  “Gorgeous,” Mel said.

  “Fabulous,” Bonnie said. “But I missed the before look.”

  “It was a total hair emergency,” Sylvia said. “Trust me.”

  “Ah,” Bonnie nodded.

  “Time’s up!” a voice called from the office.

  Mel’s office door banged open and Sam all but fell out of the room with Brigit right behind him.

  Six

  “How do you work in there?” Brigit demanded. “It’s like trying to work in a bathroom stall.”

  Mel opened her mouth to answer, but Sam gave her a sharp look and said, “She’s not really interested.”

  Mel and Angie exchanged a look, but no one else seemed taken aback by his rudeness.

  “So, what have you come up with that will dazzle me?” Brigit asked. “Wait, where’s Amy?”

  “She was on the phone out front,” Justin said.

  “Get her in here,” Brigit said to Sam. “This is an all-staff meeting. No excuses.”

  “Will do.” Sam disappeared through the swinging door.

  Angie and Sylvia took places at the large table. Brigit remained standing, and started paging through Mel’s books with a frown.

  Mel felt her hands get damp with sweat. Good grief. She realized she was actually nervous. How could this woman who really had nothing to do with her, except having taken over her office and her bakery for the next week, have such an effect upon her?

  Of course, there was the little problem of having Ian Hannigan expecting Mel to lead this ragtag band of prima donnas through a cupcake boot camp in the hopes that they would have more of teamlike mentality at the end of it. Yeah, from what Mel had seen, these people were the type to eat their own and were not likely to form any bonds of friendship, be it for a charity event or not.

  “What?” Amy snapped as she slammed through the kitchen door with Sam hot on her heels.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Brigit said. “Did we interrupt your very busy morning of kissing Hannigan’s behind?”

  The hot red flush that suffused Amy’s face gave away the fact that she had been doing exactly what Brigit suspected, talking to Ian Hannigan.

  Amy yanked on the lapels of her gray suit and tossed her straight dark brown hair over her shoulder. She looked as if she was eager for a confrontation.

  “I merely like to be in touch with my superiors,” she said.

  Bonnie and Justin immediately broke out in giggles.

  “Something funny?” Brigit asked.

  “Ahem.” Justin cleared his throat. “Sorry. Her word choice was amusing.”

  Brigit frowned. “Because she said ‘in touch’? Really? How old are you—twelve?”

  “That depends, are we talking actual years accrued or emotionally?” he asked.

  Brigit scowled.

  “I’d say twelve’s about right,” Justin said.

  “Listen,” Brigit said. “I am not in a good mood. I have a magazine to turn out, and spending a week as a cupcake baker is not on my itinerary.”

  “Now, let’s hear your ideas,” she said. She consulted the delicate gold Le Vian watch on her wrist. “You have five minutes.”

  “We were thinking cupcakes with falling leaves,” Bonnie said.

  “No,” Brigit said.

  “A huge cupcake haystack,” Justin offered. Mel noticed that his lips twitched; thankfully, Brigit had begun pacing and didn’t see him almost smile.

  “No,” Brigit said. “Honestly, people, could you be more trite?”

  “Cupcakes in Halloween costumes,” Amy said.

  “Apparently, you can,” Brigit said.

  “How about the cactus blossoms they were going to use for the photo shoot?” Sam asked.

  “At least those were original,” Brigit said. “But no.”

  Justin and Bonnie looked at Mel and nodded. Brigit had rejected at least five. Now was their chance to get her to like their idea.

  “A harvest theme,” Mel said. Her voice cracked, and she cleared her throat. She was not going to let Brigit’s laser-like scrutiny freak her out. Brigit knew her magazine, fine; Mel knew her cupcakes.

  “Explain,” Brigit said.

  “I see a large cornucopia with cupcakes made from ingredients that are just coming into season right now, such as pomegranate, fig, and pumpkin.”

  Brigit tapped her lips with her index finger while she considered. “Colors. What will they look like?”

  “Dark chocolate ganache with pomegranate, apple pie with a buttercream piped like a lattice pie crust, pumpkin with whipped cream sprinkled with nutmeg,” Mel said.

  “What else?” Brigit asked.

  “Fig and pistachio with cream cheese icing,” Bonnie said.

  “Corn with brown butter and honey frosting,” Justin added.

  “Sketch me what they’ll look like,” Brigit said to Bonnie. To Justin, she said, “Figure out how to make an enormous cornucopia to display them on. Sylvia can help you.”

  “Sam and I will be in the office,” she said, and then looked at Mel and Angie and added, “I’m assuming you two can coordinate the baking?”

  They both nodded. Me
l was surprised to find that Brigit’s powers of intimidation apparently worked on Angie as well. As far as she knew, she’d never seen Angie take orders so quietly before. Then again, maybe her new hairdo had mellowed her.

  “What about me?” Amy asked. “What am I supposed to do?”

  Brigit looked as her as if she were a gnat that was too quick to be killed.

  “Well, dear, why don’t you help the girls with the baking?”

  “What?” Amy argued. “I’m not some chunky foodie who dreams of being in a kitchen, stuffing her face.”

  “Really?” Brigit asked. She scanned Amy’s tight suit with a look that told everyone she was sure the girl was hiding a Twinkie somewhere. Then she turned and walked away.

  “I hate her!” Amy growled. “I absolutely hate her!”

  She stomped around the kitchen in her spiky heels, texting furiously on her phone. Mel had no doubt that she was tattling on Brigit to Ian Hannigan.

  Justin, Bonnie, and Sylvia hopped up from their seats and headed towards the bakery side of the shop where they could work at the tables.

  “We’ll just go work in there,” Bonnie said, “while you get your shopping list together, and then, you know, I’ll be happy to go and get supplies. No need to pester my assistant for this.”

  “Yeah, and I’ll come with you,” Justin said.

  “Count me in,” Sylvia said.

  “We’ll just see what she has to say when Ian gets here and sees that she’s assigned me to the kitchen,” Amy muttered under her breath. “Ha!”

  Amy continued to rant under her breath, and the rest of the cupcake boot campers cleared out as if an impending storm was about to blow the door down.

  “And they criticized our cupcake war with Olivia as being immature?” Angie asked Mel as they watched the magazine staffers scatter like cowardly roaches.

  “I know, right?” Mel asked. “Come on, let’s make a supply list, and then we have to get to work. We have one thousand cupcakes to bake and only four days to get this done.”