Frosting Her Christmas Cookies - Alina Jacobs Page 0,105

dare do that show!”

“Too late. I already agreed,” I told them.

“Don’t be so flippant about it,” my mother said. “You’re going to ruin our reputation.”

“You’re already on thin ice as it is,” my father said coldly.

“None of those women up there are worth any of this, especially that emo girl,” my mother said, angling her head toward Morticia.

My blood ran cold. “Funny you should say that,” I said, “because she’s actually the smartest of the bunch. She doesn’t take shit from people, and she certainly wouldn’t from you.”

“Watch your tone,” my father demanded.

“Uh-huh,” I said. Then I stood up and buttoned my suit jacket before I could say something I was going to regret. “I need to go talk to the producers.”

“Starting to see the light?” Belle asked when I went back over to her. She was standing half in shadow with her arms crossed.

“They’re just out of their element,” I said, grasping for any excuse. All my excuses were flimsy, though, and deep down, I knew that. I just didn’t want to believe it yet.

“You always make excuses for them,” Belle told me, eyes narrowed.

“There’s the man I wanted to see!” Dorothy piped up behind me. “And the lady. When are the cocktails coming out?” she asked Belle.

“Not til the judging.”

“That’s all right,” Dorothy said, taking a liquor bottle out of her purse. “I brought my own. Shot?” She offered the bottle to me.

I declined. “I need to stay sharp to be around my parents.”

“You better be drinking when you bring all your good-looking billionaire friends by tomorrow. I want to talk business,” the old woman declared.

“Of course,” I said, trying to seem cool and professional and not like a little kid on Christmas. “We will be there tomorrow, whenever is convenient for you.”

“Anytime works for me,” she replied. “But Morticia isn’t a morning person, so she’d probably appreciate the afternoon.”

“Morticia?” I asked uncertainly.

“She has to be there to communicate my vision,” Dorothy insisted.

“Right, right.”

In my head, I was screaming, Oh shit. Greg did not know about any of these promises. He thought Morticia was a tool not a power player at the table.

“Now why are they not serving drinks?” Dorothy asked me.

57

Morticia

Jonathan’s parents were impressive. Both were tall. His mother was a brunette dressed in fashionable yet understated clothes. Jonathan had inherited his good looks from his father: platinum hair, strong jaw, broad shoulders, and ice-blue eyes. If that was what he was going to look like in twenty years, I had no complaints.

You seriously think you’re going to be with him twenty years from now? I scolded myself. I took another look at his parents. They were surveying the room, thinly veiled disgust on their faces.

Johnathan had been talking to them earlier. From our conversation the previous night, he seemed to respect their opinion. I needed to bake a dessert that they would appreciate. I didn’t have it in me to throw the competition and let Keeley—or heaven forbid, Sarah—win.

Since this was the meet-the-in-laws challenge, I decided to make a dish that represented who my family was—not the lying, cheating, sabotaging part but the Italian part that loved to eat.

I was going to make a Struffoli. A rustic Italian dish, the southern cousin to the French croquembouche. This Neapolitan dessert was made by frying sweet, spiced dough pieces then glazing them with honey and sprinkling them with nuts and Christmas sprinkles and arranging them in a wreath. It was a homey and tasty dessert and was not super sweet because it used honey. Besides, I couldn’t go wrong with fried dough. Unfortunately, it wasn’t an elegant dessert, and from the looks of Jonathan’s mother, she would want a fashionable dish that she could put on Instagram. I needed to refine the Struffoli.

I took out the stand mixer and added eggs, egg yolks, and sugar to the bowl and then beat them with the wire whisk attachment until they were frothy. The dough needed to be light and fluffy so that the little glazed puffs would melt in one’s mouth. I added softened butter then orange zest and anise liqueur for a slight hint of bitterness and depth. I let the dough rest on the counter while I contemplated my options.

Since the Struffoli was typically formed into a wreath, it made sense to run with that option. I started making the dough for various traditional Italian cookies like dense, buttery, nutty Italian wedding cookies, fruity cuccidati fig cookies, hazelnut-and-chocolate baci di dama cookies, and fruity horn cookies filled