Frosting Her Christmas Cookies - Alina Jacobs Page 0,117
was sad that I was going to have to leave Jonathan.
I needed to concentrate. Keeley occupied the station next to mine. I knew she had a sabotage planned, so I needed to be on my guard. She was making some sort of layered icebox cake. She had a domed bowl out, and I heard her tell Anastasia when she came over to ask if she was making a Christmas-themed baked Alaska.
My cake was going to be much better than hers. I was sure of it. I watched her like a hawk while I carefully poured my various cake mixtures into pans lined with parchment paper and slid them into one of the two ovens I was using.
While they baked, I worked on the frosting and fillings. It was like prepping a painting palette. All the colorful fruity and custardy fillings, not to mention the chocolate ganache and the caramel, made a tasty array of colors and smells.
“I so have this in the bag.” I took a celebratory shot of rum as I pulled the last double boiler off of the heat and took the first of my cakes out of the oven. I placed the chocolate cakes in the blast freezer. I liked my chocolate cake to be ooey and gooey. There was nothing worse than dry chocolate cake.
While the cakes cooled enough for me to be able to cut them and assemble all the layers, I started on the decorations and the structure for the cake. Using PVC pipe and dowels, I rigged up a structure that was going to make the cakes look like they were teetering in that quintessential Tim Burton aesthetic.
To avoid going too kitschy, instead of festooning the cake with generic characters from The Nightmare Before Christmas, I was highlighting the natural surroundings in the cake decorations. On one layer, I had the woods surrounding the town and the gate. A curved path of icing led up to the next cake tier with the whimsical Halloween Town, which was decorated with mini Christmas decorations and white frosting snow. The path continued to the next tier with Jack’s mansion, then to the next with the snow-covered graveyard with little miniature singing zombies in Christmas hats. At the very top, I would have miniatures of Jack Skellington and Sally.
I was super proud of this cake, and I hummed the Nightmare Before Christmas soundtrack as I carefully made all the decorations, carving them out of fondant and drizzling shapes in royal icing.
When I went to the fridge to check my cakes, they were cool. I carefully carried them back to my station then evened up the tops and assembled all the layers.
I had the first cake frosted and covered in fondant and was carefully setting the next layer in place when Keeley let out a scream.
“She sabotaged me!” she yelled. “Morticia tried to ruin me.” My cousin came storming over to me, holding several bowls of melty, soupy cake and ice cream.
“You couldn’t handle that I was going to win and be Mrs. Frost and that Jonathan was going to fall in love with me,” Keeley sobbed, “so you ruined my dessert!”
“I didn’t touch your dessert,” I retorted.
“Yes you did,” she cried, tears rolling down her face. “Look at it.”
The melted ice cream in the bowl sloshed. I cursed as I tried to keep it from landing on my cake.
“Now I won’t have a dessert,” Keeley blubbered dramatically.
“I bet you just forgot about it,” I said brusquely.
“You don’t even care!” Keeley cried. “That’s how I know you ruined it.”
“Just look at the footage,” I countered. “You’ll see that I didn’t touch it.”
Anastasia hurried over with Dana. “We actually don’t have any footage of that area,” Dana admitted, tablet in hand. “The fire the other day ruined the camera feed to that area. We see Morticia go over to the blast freezer,” she narrated as the video played.
“Yes,” I said tersely. “I was going to fetch my cakes.”
“You were going to sabotage me!” my cousin interjected.
“Keeley,” Dana pleaded, “can you just redo the dessert?”
“I’ll try,” she said. “But it’s not going to be right.”
She sniffled, and I turned back to my cake.
“I bet she did that herself,” Lilith muttered, ducking next to my station.
“Did you see her do it?” I whispered.
“No,” she admitted. “I was too busy moderating comments on the Bake-Off Instagram account. For some reason, there are a ton of trolls out. Dana begged me and Emma to help them comb through comments. It’s nasty.”