Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake (Winner Bakes All #1) - Alexis Hall Page 0,16
you to produce a perfect, classic, fruit-laden, almond-topped, jes bonny wi’ a wee dram o’ whisky”—this last part she said in an affected Scottish accent, which Rosaline thought might have been pushing it—“Dundee cake.”
Yes. They’d looked at that this morning. It had been in Cakes from the Mills.
“And it’s my recipe,” added Wilfred Honey, “so I hope you’ll all take extra special care, because if it comes out right, I promise, it’ll be gradely.”
“Blanch the almonds,” said the first line of the haiku that passed for instructions.
And suddenly, a huge wave of unreality swept over Rosaline. What the actual fuck was she actually doing? Somehow, she’d manoeuvred herself into a position where she’d imagined that baking a Dundee cake in front of some cameras would fix her life. And now, staring at a kettle and a bowl of nuts, she was becoming viscerally aware that it wouldn’t.
A little under a decade ago, she’d been studying at one of the most prestigious universities in the world. If she’d stuck with it, she’d be about three years away from being a fully qualified neurologist or cardiologist or some other impressive kind of ologist who saved lives or advanced the boundaries of human knowledge. And had more important things to worry about than whether blanching almonds took two minutes or five.
Did blanching almonds take two minutes or five? Did it even fucking matter?
The worst of it was, she’d done this to herself. She’d had every conceivable advantage. Excellent schools. Affluent parents. Good teeth and twenty-twenty vision. But none of it had quite compensated for her ability to make genuinely atrocious decisions.
After all, she could have responded to Lauren cheating on her by being mature and forgiving, instead of rebounding onto a guy she was only vaguely into. She could have been more careful about condoms. Even after she decided to keep the baby, she could have let her parents step in—like they’d wanted to—and gone back to university. But oh, no, she’d insisted on raising Amelie herself. Being in her daughter’s life. Giving her the sort of childhood Rosaline had never had. Except, fast-forward a bit, and here she was, unable to give her daughter half of what she deserved and trying to compensate for that by going on a reality TV competition that was famous primarily for that one time somebody sat on somebody else’s trifle.
“What are you doing?” Colin Thrimp was right there, as well as a camera, a camera operator, a sound technician, and a boom mic.
“Doubting the wisdom of every choice I’ve ever made.” Well, balls. She’d said that aloud, hadn’t she?
Colin Thrimp smiled his limpest smile. “That’s lovely. But can we have it again as if you weren’t answering a question.”
“I’m not sure I want to say ‘I’m doubting the wisdom of every choice I’ve ever made’ on national television.”
“Don’t worry. Contestants say lines like that all the time. It makes them look relatable.”
Rosaline hesitated, trying to figure out if it was worse that she’d committed to doing this objectively pointless thing or that she was now trying to get out of the objectively pointless thing that she’d committed to do.
“So at the moment,” she said, trying to sound at least a little bit like she was joking, “I’m trying to work out how long to blanch my almonds for and doubting the wisdom of every choice I’ve ever made.”
They broke for a late lunch so the crew could take glamour shots of the bakes, which, in some cases, were not looking all that glamorous. Rosaline had intended to catch up with Alain, but he and Anvita and a couple of other contestants had been shepherded off for interviews. Which left Rosaline feeling distinctly first-day-of-school as she tried to navigate the curly sandwiches and soggy wraps on her own.
Clutching a sad-looking cheese and pickle in one hand, she approached the tea trolley and found herself standing next to someone who had to be Anvita’s second stone-cold hottie—the guy with the manly hands whose tight T-shirt Rosaline felt distinctly regressive for enjoying.
“Do you want a cuppa, love?” he asked.
Oh God, he was one of those. And yes, he had arms that said I have earned these through honest toil and eyelashes like a baby deer. And yes, his jeans were clinging in places nice girls weren’t supposed to notice jeans clinging. But this was going to end one of two ways: either she was going to tell him to stop calling her love and he was going to get