Chapter 22
There was already considerable fanfare surrounding the large tent when I arrived, having jogged three blocks just to find parking. Spectators surrounded the baking stations, where folding tables and racks of portable ovens stood waiting for the frenzy of gingerbread to get underway.
“Elle, over here!” Bea called from the far station where she waited with Delilah and Mia. “You made it.”
“Barely.” I was still breathing heavily as I set my backpack on the ground beneath the table and pulled on an apron. “We good to go?”
“Got everything you asked for,” Mia said. “Ovens are preheated.”
“Everyone gets to start with one pre-boiled pot of water and four portable convection burners,” Bea continued as she led me around the station, consisting of three folding tables in a horseshoe shape.
“You’ve got two stand mixers, a handheld beater, a small blast chiller, and plenty of baking sheets. ”
“This all looks great,” I told them. “Thanks so much for all your help.”
I had brought my own knives of course, but beneath the center folding table were pots, pans, mixing bowls, and baking sheets, as well as various utensils and consumables like parchment paper.
Several canvas bags behind the station contained my ingredients.
Those I immediately began arranging on the station to get organized, separating structural cookie products from the decoration and tasting components.
“Five-minute warning, contestants,” a voice over a loudspeaker announced. “That’s five minutes until the start of the Thanksgiving Throwdown.”
The crowd of spectators applauded, cheering on their favorite bakers. There were ten of us in all, a diverse group that included the owner of the local bakery, the pastry chef from the ski resort, and several local home cooks.
“You can thank us by winning,” Delilah said, giving me a playful nudge for encouragement.
“We’ve got to get back to The Snowdrift for a bit,” Bea said regretfully. “If we don’t keep an eye on him, Pops will end up on the roof with more lights.”
“Yeah, and I’ve got to get back to the marketplace,” Mia said. “But you’ve got this. We’ll swing by as much as we can to check in on you.”
“No sweat,” I told them. “Looks like I’m all set up.”
“Ladies!” said a voice.
“Terrific.” Mia’s face crinkled with disgust at the sound of Tom’s voice as he approached us. “Quick, hand me that pot of boiling water.”
Delilah stifled a laugh, elbowing Mia.
“Lovely to see you all again. Jumping into the gingerbread fray?” Tom said with a plastic smile. He looked like he belonged on the streets of Manhattan, wearing a conspicuous Burberry scarf with black leather gloves. “I don’t think I recall any of you entering the Thanksgiving Throwdown before.”
“We’re here supporting Elle,” Mia said, lifting her chin.
He fixed me with a patronizing grin that said aww, isn’t that cute . “You’ve got yourself a ringer, huh?”
“She’s going to wipe the floor with the rest of them,” Bea told him confidently.
“I’ve also decided to sponsor a contestant this year,” Tom said. “My event space just happened to have a guest chef from Paris this week.”
“What a coincidence,” Mia groaned.
“Two minutes, contestants,” the voice over the loudspeaker warned. “All non-participants, please clear the competition area.”
“Why don’t we make things a little more interesting?” Tom suggested. “A side wager maybe?”
“What’d you have in mind?” Mia said, taking an aggressive stance with her hands on her hips.
“How about if I win, you and your friends attend my grand opening tomorrow?” he suggested.
“And if we win, you leave town forever,” Mia shot back.
“Or, you all have dinner on me. Anywhere you like. My treat.”
Bea and Delilah shrugged. I knew from experience the chef’s tasting menu at the mountaintop restaurant where Charles took me ran upwards of two hundred dollars per person. We could certainly do some damage there.
“Deal,” I said. Because maybe I was selfishly looking forward to going back. And because I knew it meant everything to Mia to put this guy in his place.
“Final warning,” the voice announced. “We are about to begin. Please clear the competition area.”
Mia and Tom shook on it.
“Good luck,” he said, striding away like he’d just swindled us out of our life savings.
“Now you really have to win,” Mia told me, hands on my shoulders. “I can’t spend a whole night around that guy. Don’t let me down.”
“I’ve got this.”
Pastry was my safe space. I could bake with my eyes closed.
If you ignored that little altitude hiccup with the croissants.
The challenge here would be in the construction.
I hadn’t been able to make any test batches before the competition, so I was operating on gut instinct and some online research.
The display portion of the gingerbread wouldn’t be eaten, so we were free to make it more functional than delicious.
Instead, only certain tasting elements incorporated into the final design would be sampled.
Plus, a plated dessert piece that had to be made mostly of gingerbread, but was open to interpretation.
When the horn blew for the start of the six-hour cook, I waved goodbye to the girls and got to work.
I started by mixing up several large batches of my gingerbread base.
In my stand mixers, I creamed together butter and sugar until fluffy.
While those worked, I sifted together my dry ingredients: flour, ginger, cinnamon, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.
Then, to the mixers, I dropped in my eggs and molasses.
“The annual Maplewood Creek Thanksgiving Throwdown is now officially underway, as our ten bakers start whipping up their gingerbread masterpieces. It’ll be a long day of pastry and perspiration here, folks. So, settle in. Grab some cocoa. Get a snack. And cheer on our intrepid contestants.”
I mostly tuned out the announcer’s voice as they periodically bantered with the audience.
Next came the dry ingredients. At several stations I saw explosions of flour shoot into the air in great puffs of white.
The audience hollered, reacting to the sudden chaos.
I chuckled to myself at their rookie mistake, stopping my mixers before I added the dry ingredients, then starting again on a low setting and placing a towel over the bowls to prevent all the flour from leaping out.
I transferred the first two batches of dough from the mixers to plastic wrap, and formed them into large balls that I put in the blast chiller, while I repeated the process several more times.
Once those were cooled, I cleared off some workspace and laid out a large roll of parchment paper sprinkled with flour.
There, I rolled out my batter in several cookie sheet-sized slabs, meticulously measuring for identical thickness, and popped them into the preheated ovens at 350 degrees.
As I worked, I glanced down the line at the other contestants. We were all at roughly the same stage in our bake, each of us following a nearly identical game plan to get our construction batches churned out as quickly as possible, with little variation from the classic recipe.
Until I brought out my ring molds.
“Contestant number ten seems to have taken an unusual approach here on the end, folks,” the unseen announcer said. “Doesn’t look like we should expect the typical little brown box from this chef.”
Spectators began to gather around my station, whispering in curiosity as they watched me cut my rolled batter into long, tall strips, then form those around the outside of the upright ring molds. Several of those went on another set of cookie sheets and into the oven, molds included.
“Five hours remain of this baking battle, and we are still just getting started,” the announcer’s voice noted.
That was the first hour gone.
While my initial batches of baked gingerbread slabs cooled, I began on a few augmented batches.
My plan was to play with different ingredients to produce a batter in varying shades, from blond to a deep chocolate brown.
These would be accent pieces and didn’t need to be as sturdy, so I was less concerned about how the differing formulations would affect the stability.
After yet more batches of gingerbread went into the ovens, I shifted my focus to the fun bit—the decor.
That meant getting saucepans heated on the convection burners to prepare my glass candy.
I added white granulated sugar to water, along with corn syrup, a pinch of cream of tartar, and food coloring to produce various beautiful shades of blue, red, green, and yellow.
When the mixtures were heated to 300 degrees and had a liquid consistency, I poured each color into various molds positioned on silicone mats that were then set aside to cool and harden.
“And just like that, two hours have flown by,” the announcer roared.
“If you’ve been with us from the start, it’s probably time to stroll on over to some of our sponsor booths for some holiday giveaways.
There are games for the kids and lots of fun holiday swag, too.
And if you’re just joining us, I’d love if someone could scrounge me up one of those funnel cakes I see everyone eating. ”
Things started to feel a bit hectic under the big tent.
The crowd of onlookers ebbed and surged at various points, while us bakers darted around our stations, checking ovens and jostling the ever-growing supply of baking sheets and gingerbread slabs.
It seemed like we were all quickly running out of space to breathe, much less work.
I referred to my notebook for my check list. Every step of this process was meticulously planned and plotted, to make sure I could get everything done in the time allotted, while giving each component the time they needed to bake, set, and cool.
Next up on the list were my copious ornaments that would accompany the primary structure: dozens of green rock candy trees, fondant snowmen dusted in shaved coconut, and an absurd amount of tiny sugar furniture. Just thinking about constructing them nearly made me regret this whole idea.
“Looking good, chef.” Charles approached my station just as I began mixing up a batch of white fondant. “I see you managed to escape after all, huh?”
My exhaustion all but evaporated at the sight of him carrying a brown paper takeout bag and two smoothies.
“Thanks to your sister. Amelia was gracious enough to run interference with your mom. Please thank her again for me.”
“Sure,” he laughed. “When I offer, it’s a conflict of interest. When she does, Amelia’s a hero.”
I rolled my eyes, smiling to myself as I concentrated on rolling out my sugar sheets. “It’s not the same thing, and you know it.”
“Is there anything in the rules that says I can’t bring you lunch?” he asked.
“I don’t think so,” I said, gratefully putting aside my rolling pin. I was starving. “What’d you bring me?”
“A berry smoothie and a BLT . Would you prefer honey mustard or spicy?”
“Spicy.”
I dragged the large, long cooler over from the back of my station and positioned it under the front table, so it was long enough to give us each a place to sit.
“You sure you have time?” he asked, handing me a sandwich and unwrapping his own. “I don’t want to throw you off your schedule.”
I took a big bite, digging in. “I can spare a couple of minutes.”
Glancing down the line, I could see several bakers step away from their stations for bathroom breaks, or to scarf down some quick food.
“So, who’s our competition?” Charles asked.
“Hard to tell so far.” No one had begun building yet. We were all still in the preliminary stages of baking and just getting our odds and ends sorted. “Mia from the marketplace kind of got goaded into a side bet with this guy, Tom—”
Charles laughed, nodding. “Oh, yeah. I know Tom. We all go way back. He’s a pretentious try-hard, who likes to remind everyone how successful he is.”
“Yeah, well, Mia hates his guts. And apparently, he’s brought in some fancy French pastry chef, so the mission today is to just finish better than that guy.”
Honestly, Mia seemed to have beef against all rich businessmen in general. But at least Charles had the good sense to leave her alone. It seemed like Tom was a glutton for punishment. Or else he had some masochistic crush on her.
“Can I see what you’re planning to build?” Charles asked.
“Uh-uh,” I mumbled, my mouth full. “It’s a secret.”
“Come on. Just a little peek. I promise I won’t tell.”
I sighed. Those puppy-dog eyes were awfully potent. And he did bring me lunch. Suppose that earned him a reward.
“Okay, but don’t laugh at my drawing.” I pulled out my notebook and flipped to the sketch page. “I promise I’m better with cookie than pencil.”
He glanced down at the sketch and back up at me, eyes widening. “Woah. Really?” Charles flipped to the next page. “Holy shit, Elle.”
I quickly closed the notebook and tucked it away again to hide it from prying eyes.
“That’s incredible,” he said.
“If I can pull it off. I have no idea how much time it will actually take to put together. I might’ve sabotaged myself from the get-go. But I thought about what you said, about reflecting the town and the holiday spirit.”
“This is a winning design for sure,” he told me, emphatic. “I know you can do it.”
“We have now officially passed the halfway mark of the Thanksgiving Throwdown,” the announcer declared to a smattering of applause from the crowd still mingling around the tent.
“That’s three hours to go, and probably six more cups of coffee for me.
If anyone would be so kind, I’d love a double espresso with extra whip. ”
“I should really get back to it,” I told Charles as I finished my sandwich and balled up the paper wrapper. “Thanks for stopping by. I really needed the second wind.”
“My pleasure.”
He gathered up our trash and stood, letting me shove the cooler back behind my station.
“Come back for the judging?” I asked shyly.
“Wouldn’t miss it.” He flashed that charming smirk that reminded me why I’d found him so irresistible when he’d first sauntered up to me at The Foggy Goggle. “You know, you’re awfully cute all covered in flour. I should really spend more time in the kitchen.”
Blush immediately bloomed across my cheeks as I shoved him away from the station and wiped at my face with a rag.
“Get out of here,” I ordered. “You’re too distracting.”
“Right,” he said, snapping his fingers. “I’m supposed to be working on that. Sorry.”
Half my time was gone, and I really did need to kick it into high gear. Because it wasn’t only my gingerbread butt on the line.