Frosting Her Christmas Cookies - Alina Jacobs Page 0,34
into the silicon martini glass molds and then set them aside and began to make the filling.
I happened to glance over to the other side of the room. Jonathan was staring at me. I quickly turned back to my stove.
“It’s hot in here, isn’t it?” Lilith said, coming up to me.
I made a noncommittal noise.
“Jonathan certainly seems obsessed by you,” Emma added.
“Doubtful. He’s been flirting with every girl in here. He’s just a player.”
“I’ve been following him around for the last few hours, and every chance he gets, he’s looking at you,” Lilith said, showing me her camera.
“It’s because you’re playing hard to get,” Emma said breathlessly. “There was a really good article in Vanity Rag about how to make a guy obsessed with you in time to bring him to Christmas dinner at your parents’ house. Rule number one was don’t give it up too early. You have to time the sex right so that it happens ten days before Christmas. It has to be good and addicting. Then he’ll agree to come home to impress your parents.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “I am not looking for a man to bring to my nonexistent parents.”
“Maybe he would take you to visit his parents,” Emma said.
“I do not want a boyfriend, and even if I did, being asked to meet the guy’s parents is not on the list anywhere,” I said. I poured heavy cream into the double boiler along with the egg yolks and whisked the mixture.
Crap, it was warm in here! The Krampus costume was basically a fur coat. Fortunately, I had worn more than a bra underneath, not wanting to repeat my reindeer-costume experience. I unzipped the suit to take off the fur top and set it aside.
“I knew I stayed around for a good reason,” Jonathan said, sauntering over to me.
“You’re such a creep.”
“Please,” he scoffed, casually picking up the whisk and stirring the custard. “You so wanted me to watch you take your clothes off.”
There he was, flirting with me again.
He doesn’t mean it.
But what if he did?
I stewed over Jonathan’s intentions as I carefully cut out each layer of the cake in the shape of the curved bottle of cognac with its tall stem. Next, I layered the cognac-spiked cream, the cranberry preserves, and the chocolate ganache. It was closer to sculpture than baking, and I used a level and several metal triangles to ensure that the cake was perfectly straight.
Once it was finished, I put it in the blast fridge to cool while I painstakingly painted the ornate gold design of the cognac logo onto the oval sugar glass medallion I had made. Then I mixed the fondant and frosting while the paint dried.
After I double-checked that the alcohol bottle cake was good and stiff—
Bet Jonathan’s good and stiff!
Shut up, brain!
—the cake was ready to frost. Normally, I would have placed the cake on a turntable to evenly frost it, but I would have to do this one by hand because the bottle was not round. I had appropriated one of my small painting spatulas for the job, carefully applying the frosting until the whole cake was coated. Then I very carefully draped the whole thing in a paper-thin layer of fondant, using pointed bamboo skewers to add the ribbing that would be seen in the glass bottle.
When I had the shape sculpted, I set about using the paint to give the illusion that the cake was actually a bottle of expensive liquor, which meant it had to look like a hollow container with liquid inside. Fortunately, yours truly was an artist and could paint much more difficult subjects hungover.
Wonder if Jonathan would pose nude for you.
No cake for you, brain, if you can’t keep it together.
Against my better judgment, I glanced over at him.
Maybe he is interested in me.
He could also have been interested in the cake. He was doing his signature pose at the judges’ table, casually leaning on it, his body in that perfect David pose, the tuxedo accenting the triangular shape of his torso, the abs that I knew from seeing them in the hot tub leading down to his hips and—
I took a breath, trying to steady myself. I could not let Jonathan distract me. And he was a distraction. He was there just in the periphery of my vision as I finished painting and set the cake aside to dry.
I had less than an hour left to go, and I hurried to make the mousse