Chapter 14
A week before the wedding, Saffron requested a tasting of all the food. They decided that it would happen in the Man Buns café after hours. Elodie carefully decorated up four samples of everything – cupcakes, little fruit tartlets, macarons, scones, mini hot dogs – all the favourites that Saffron had wanted. She carried the stack of Tupperware across to the café.
Mal let her in. He had set a table, with two café tables joined together and covered with a tablecloth. Elodie had brought a bag with her serving platters in, so she set about laying out her snacks too.
She had three sets of cupcakes with roses in Saffron’s brand colours and two sets decorated with hydrangeas with the colours from Jamie’s channel. Saffron had wanted a cocktail theme for the cupcakes. Mal leaned forward to look at them. ‘What flavours are these?’
‘They’re all cocktails. Some were quite hard to get the flavours for, actually.’ She pointed to them. ‘The red is Manhattan with cherry frosting, the blue is Blueberry Negroni, the pink is Cosmopolitan which is cranberry sponge and orange icing roses, the mauve is Purple Rain with blackcurrant and lime roses and the yellow is Virgin Bellini – so that’s peach and lime. All of them have a core of cream or curd that’s flavoured with the cocktail.’
She was quite proud of the range.
‘So they’re all alcoholic in the middle?’
‘Only a tiny bit,’ she said. ‘Apart from the Bellini. Saffron felt there should be something non-alcoholic in the mix.’
Mal pointed to the flowers. ‘Those are so delicate,’ he said. ‘Did you make them?’
‘I did.’ She was proud of her sugarcraft skills. There had to be some advantage to having Art as your favourite subject.
He studied them for a moment longer. ‘No wonder Saffron wanted you to make the cake. Does it match?’
‘It goes. It’s mainly white with pink, yellow and mauve flowers, just like her brand background.’
She felt warmth in her chest. Screw Travis and screw her parents for not believing in her. She was good at what she did. Saffron didn’t come to her out of pity or desperation. Saffron came to her because she was good.
She finished plating up and removed her gloves. ‘What have you made?’
There were soft white bao buns with pulled pork; some sort of fried croquettes; avocado and cucumber summer rolls; little burgers in thin mini buns; vegetable crisps with pesto and tomato. They both had quiche: his was crustless, but looked delicious. ‘What are those?’ She pointed to some round fried balls.
‘That’s a variation on Sri Lankan cutlets,’ he said. ‘Those ones are mostly made of Boursin with almond flour coating.’
That sounded delicious. She moved around to look at the sweets. There were brownies, round coconut shortbread biscuits, squares of jelly sweets and rolled-up mini pancakes. ‘What’s the filling?’
‘Coconut and sugar-free maple syrup.’
To her professional eye, the presentation could be a bit better. The snacks were not as uniform as she’d have liked to see. She opened the small pot of garnishes that she’d brought and found some parsley. She added it to the savoury food. ‘That’ll help.’
‘Thanks.’ He looked taken aback.
‘Have you got any sauces that go with them? Or … are you allowed salad leaves?’
‘Salad leaves, yes. Er … we have flavoured mayo.’ He looked at the platters. ‘Wait a second.’
When he returned with a bag of salad and some bottles, Elodie snapped some fresh gloves on, removed the snacks from the platter, reset it with the salad leaves as a background, put everything back on and added a few decorations with the mayonnaises, which were thankfully different colours.
Mal seemed very impressed. ‘That looks so much better,’ he said. ‘Wow. I guess I need to up my presentation game. I worked out how to lay out lunches a bit, but this is next level.’
The warmth in her chest intensified. It was weird being praised. ‘I do a lot of parties. You have to make it look special so that people don’t say, “I could have done that at home for half the cost”.’ She shrugged.
‘I’m sure that’s not true.’
‘Technically it is true, but they paid me to do it so that they didn’t have to and because I can make it look prettier than they can.’
He didn’t reply to her, but was gazing at her with a half-smile on his face. What was that? Amusement? She quickly looked away. She should say something about his food, too. It would be rude not to.
‘So, none of these have flour in them?’ That was just about all she knew about keto food. It was a load of meat and no carbs.
‘Not regular white flour, no. Those are made with coconut flour.’ He pointed to the bao buns. ‘The rest is a combination of almond flour, coconut flour, extra gluten and xanthan gum. The difficult part is to get it to hold together and rise without crumbling.’
‘Is that why you add extra gluten?’
‘Yes. And the xanthan gum. I tried adding gelatine at one point, but that didn’t really work.’ He gestured towards the shortbread. ‘Stevia makes the world of difference for the sweet things. It seems to have some of the structural properties of sugar without actually being sugar.’
She had no idea what stevia was, but she knew what happened when you didn’t have enough sugar in a cake. ‘That sounds difficult,’ she said.
‘It’s a lot of trial and error.’ He tweaked the position of one of the plates. ‘To be honest, I think it’s better to just keep things simple, but people like to come in and buy something that looks like things they would have eaten before.’
Oh, keto people. ‘Would they put on weight instantly if they have carbs?’
Mal laughed. ‘No, but they’d lose the ketosis and have to go through all the hassle of going back into it.’
She must have looked blank, because he added, ‘Some people find that the process of going into ketosis makes them feel very ill. Plus, you have to get the balance right – low carb, not no carb, lots of the right sorts of vegetables, drink lots of water, that sort of thing. Or else you can really damage your health.’
It all sounded far too complicated. ‘But no cake,’ she said. ‘Why would you do that to yourself?’ She shook her head. ‘What about … Don’t you even care about pleasure?’
The silence that followed was awkward. Oh. That sounded like she was talking about something else. She looked up at him, her eyes widening. ‘I meant—’
His mouth twitched. She hadn’t meant any other pleasure than the joy of a sugar rush, but now she was thinking about something else too. His eyes crinkled when he smiled. Which he did now. Oh help.
‘I care about pleasure … a lot. But I don’t need cake to find it.’
Right. Her face felt like a furnace. She looked away. ‘Well,’ she said. ‘That’s just weird.’
The door opened. Saffron wafted in on a cloud of floral perfume.
Thank goodness. Elodie turned to greet her. Jamie arrived a few seconds later. Saffron immediately started filming the spread.
‘Wow,’ she said, moving the camera slowly along above the food. ‘This looks amazing.’
‘It does actually,’ said Jamie. ‘Are those your maple coconut roll things? I love those.’
Saffron took a few more shots, then they each grabbed a plate and sampled a few things.
Elodie noticed that Mal avoided her cakes and snacks. It would probably ruin his ketosis, she guessed. Still there was nothing stopping her trying the keto food.
She picked up a deep-fried cheese ball and bit into it. ‘Oh my god, that’s good,’ she said. She closed her eyes to savour the cheesy garlic and herb filling. It was over in a couple of mouthfuls. Her eyes flew open when she finished it and she found Mal watching her. He looked away.
‘It’s very high calorie though,’ said Saffron, reading the card that Mal had put next to it. ‘Look at the grams of fat.’ She frowned. ‘Shouldn’t we have these cards for Elodie’s food too? Just to keep it consistent. And …’ She picked up the card and checked the back of it. ‘We need to make these prettier. This is so dull.’
Elodie and Mal exchanged a glance. They hadn’t budgeted for someone designing and printing out cards.
‘I can see what I can do about that …’ Mal said, cautiously.
‘Something in my brand colours for the non-keto stuff and something in Jamie’s colours for the keto food, I think,’ Saffron said.
‘Okay,’ said Mal. ‘We’ll mock something up and get it to you in the next few days.’
‘Wait, do we need to see it before the day?’ Jamie clearly didn’t think so.
Saffron put her hand on his knee and gave him a meaningful glare. ‘Darling. I know we’re going for small and informal, but it’s still our wedding day. Small and informal and perfect.’
Elodie watched Jamie melt before her eyes. What wouldn’t she give for someone to look at her in the way Jamie looked at Saffron. As an influencer couple, their public interactions were very brand conscious, but the connection between them was one hundred per cent real. She glanced across at Mal to see if he had noticed it too. He was busy making notes on his phone. Typical.
‘Yes,’ he said, still tapping away with his thumbs. ‘Leave that with me.’
They discussed a few other tweaks that Saffron wanted. Jamie seemed happy to let her handle all of the details. By the time they finished up and left, Elodie had a long list of notes. She waved them off, shut the door and leaned against it. ‘Phew. That was quite intense.’ So that’s what people meant when they said weddings were the worst to cater for.
Mal sank into a chair. ‘Saffron really knows what she wants.’
Elodie joined him, taking a chair across the table from him. ‘She does. But I think it went well.’
Mal nodded. ‘Nothing she suggested was unreasonable. I can certainly make those changes.’
‘Likewise.’
They sat in silence for a moment, with the remains of the spread on the plates between them and Elodie felt the sense of shared achievement. They had made something together. It bonded them.
Mal’s phone buzzed. He checked it and put it away. ‘Well,’ he slapped his hands on his knees. ‘I guess we should tidy up and then head home. Lots to do tomorrow.’
Elodie stood up, suddenly tired now that the excitement had faded. ‘Yes.’ She gathered her platters. ‘I should say, I liked some of your snacks.’
He smiled, a little uncomfortably. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t try yours. It’s just that I get really bad keto flu when I’m going into ketosis, so I try really hard never to crash out of it.’
She knew about ‘keto flu’. It was something like a hangover from giving up the carbs, that people got when they first went into ketosis. ‘I avoid it by never going keto,’ she said, cheerfully.
‘Most people do,’ he said. ‘I’m just odd.’
She laughed. ‘You’re not that odd.’ The minute she said it, she wished she hadn’t. It sounded a bit like flirting and there was no room for that here. The relationship she had with Mal was purely professional. She reminded herself that she didn’t even know if she liked him, yet. A flutter in her stomach told her to stop kidding herself.
He collected his own platters and took them into the back. ‘I can wash yours as well, if you like,’ he said. ‘I’ll return the platters to you tomorrow. It’s just a matter of running the dishwasher.’
Elodie would have had to wash everything by hand. ‘If you don’t mind …’
‘Oh yeah. Not a problem. Just leave them there.’
She did as he said. ‘I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.’
‘Yes.’ He popped his head out of the kitchen. ‘Thanks for this evening. I’m so relieved that it went well.’
She said her goodbyes and left. It was summer and the nights were getting shorter, so it was only dusk, despite it being quite late. As she walked back to her little car, she wondered about her response to Mal. She still didn’t know him that well, but her first impression of him, assuming he was an arrogant alpha bro, had been wrong. He seemed nice. A little prone to worrying, perhaps, but otherwise nice. And attractive. But no. That wasn’t something she should be thinking about.
When Mal went across to return Elodie’s platters, it was mid-morning, when things were quiet. Marty was leaning against the counter, scrolling on his phone. He looked up when the bell tinkled and seemed to perk up on seeing Mal.
‘Oh, hello,’ he said. ‘She’s in there.’ He inclined his head towards the back of the shop. ‘I gather the tasting went well last night?’
‘It did.’ Mal closed the door carefully with his free hand. ‘Saffron and Jamie both liked the food, so we’re all good to go, I think.’
‘I knew it would be fine,’ said Marty. ‘Elodie is a genius with cake decorating.’ He gestured to the selection in front of him – all different, but with a similar theme of pink and yellow today. ‘She did the cutest pink-and-yellow cupcake tower cake earlier, and just made these as extra. Aren’t they adorable?’
‘Cupcake … tower?’ He hadn’t heard of that before.
‘Yeah,’ Marty said, slowly, as though astonished that he had to explain something so simple. ‘Like, a tower of themed cupcakes instead of a cake. It’s dead popular. It means that you don’t have to actually cut the cake, just give everyone a cupcake each.’
Mal’s mind flew to the woman who wanted a keto birthday cake for her daughter. He could make muffins, so why not cupcakes? ‘Oh. That’s really interesting.’
Marty beamed at him.
Mal headed towards the back room and peered in.
Elodie was leaning over a tray of cupcakes with a piping bag full of dark pink icing. As he watched, she piped flowers onto the cakes. The petals were dark pink at the edges and light pink in the middle. Each flower was placed subtly differently, yet the cakes all matched. He watched, marvelling at the speed at which she worked. When she paused to wipe away a flower she’d done in error, he knocked on the doorframe.
It took a second after Elodie looked up for her to really register him. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Hi.’
‘I brought your plates back.’
‘Just put them over …’ She looked around the small room. ‘There.’ She pointed to a clear space on one of the shelves. ‘Thanks for doing the washing up. It saved me a few minutes last night.’
‘You’re welcome.’ He deposited the plates as instructed and paused. He could make cupcakes. He wasn’t very good at decorating them. He made a coconut cream topping that looked and tasted almost like icing, but applying it in a decorative way wasn’t something he had any experience with.
She picked up her piping bag again. When he didn’t leave, she said, ‘Was there something else?’
Of course, she was busy.
‘Can you teach me how to do that?’
‘What? Work?’
He tamped down the spark of irritation at her tone. ‘No. Piping icing. I would like to learn how.’
She looked down at her cakes and back up. ‘But it’s … just … piping. It’s not difficult.’
‘To you, maybe. You’re clearly expert at it. To me it looks like witchcraft.’
She was still frowning. He knew her well enough by now to know not to push her.
‘Sorry.’ He raised his hands. ‘Forget I said anything.’ He backed away towards the door.
‘No, wait.’ She was still frowning, but looked less annoyed now. ‘Um … yes. I’ll teach you how to decorate cakes. Not now, because I have to do these. Some other time? When I don’t have an order due in the evening?’
‘Brilliant. Thanks. I’ll text you and we’ll arrange a date.’ He had reached the door now.
She nodded, still frowning, and bent her head back to her task. What a serious woman. He felt bad for having disturbed her concentration.
When he turned around, Marty was watching him, eyes twinkling mischievously.
‘Cake decorating, huh?’ Marty said. ‘Do you get much call for icing flowers in your blokey bakery?’
‘What? Oh. No. I was thinking about using coconut cream as icing and I was wondering if I could get the consistency to work.’ Ideas were slotting into place slowly. ‘You said you make a lot of cupcake stacks. Do you have any photos?’
‘Sure. We always take photos of cakes that we make. Here. Let me find it.’ He disappeared below the counter for a second and resurfaced with a folder. ‘Cupcakes …’ He flicked through. ‘Ah. Here we go.’ He slid the open folder across to Mal.
There were indeed stacks of cupcakes. They seemed to be in holders of some sort. But the main thing, as far as Mal was concerned, was the fact that they looked like non-keto cupcakes. He flipped the page. This one was a flat cake of a cartoony pirate’s face.
He was about to turn the page back when Marty said, ‘That one’s cupcakes too.’ He came round and leaned in. ‘If you look closely, you can see they’re just pushed together and iced over. These ones are a bit of a pain because you have to sort of corral them into place so that they don’t move and ruin the effect.’
‘That’s clever.’ It really was. Now that Marty had pointed it out, he could see the joins between the cakes. ‘Wow.’
Marty cleared his throat and leaned back. ‘Can I ask a question?’
Mal turned the page to look at another cake. ‘Sure.’
‘Your friend, Jake. Is he … single?’
Mal paused and glanced at the other man, amused. ‘Actually, yes. He is.’ He took in Marty’s bright eyes and reddening face. ‘He has been for a while.’
‘Oh. That’s good … to know. Good to know,’ said Marty. ‘Could you … er … pass on my number?’
‘Sure.’ He tried not to grin. Marty seemed nice. And fun. He should probably check with Elodie for a character reference, but there was no harm in passing on his number.
‘One second.’ Marty grabbed a loyalty card from the stack, scribbled a number on the back and handed it to Mal.
‘I’m not promising anything,’ said Mal. ‘Jake’s his own man. Plus, he’s very busy. But I will definitely pass it on to him.’ He pocketed the card, closed the cakes folder and went back to his shop.
‘What are you smiling at?’ Liz said.
‘I have just had an idea,’ said Mal.
He glanced at the clock. The Keto Parents group would be in later that afternoon. He could run his idea past them. In the meantime, he had the accounts to do.
Elodie looked at the cupcakes she’d just finished. These ones were decorated with pink and purple hydrangeas, as requested by the customer. She was particularly pleased with the leaf-like piping around the edges of some of them.
Mal was right. She was good at this. Having her concentration broken had really annoyed her, which had made her snappy with him. Thinking back on it, the admiration in his voice had been genuine. He really did think her ability to decorate a bunch of cupcakes at speed was something special. She did it all the time, so she assumed it was something everyone knew how to do. It was good to have someone else point it out to her.
Did she really want to teach him? How did that even work? He didn’t do icing. That was sugar. Hmm. She would have to ask him the next time she texted him.
Peering in, she saw the shop was empty, so she carried the tray out and put it on the counter. The light was better in here for photographs. She took out her camera. Marty moved a few things around to get a better backdrop. He was grinning.
‘You’re looking pleased with yourself,’ she noted.
‘I’ve just found out that the delectable Jake is single and Mal agreed to pass on my number.’ Marty did a little jiggle. ‘I am going out and grabbing life with both hands.’ His hand gesture made Elodie giggle.
‘Life,’ she said. ‘That’s what you’re grabbing there, is it?’
Marty laughed.
Elodie took a couple of photos. ‘So, when did this conversation take place?’ She moved around and took more photos.
‘Earlier, when he was looking at the photos of the cakes you make.’
Elodie froze and lowered her camera. ‘He was looking at my cakes? Why?’
‘I dunno. He just asked about cupcake stacks, so I showed him the photos … Should I not have done?’
‘What is he up to?’ Frowning, Elodie put her phone away. ‘I thought he only did low-carb things. Cakes are not low carb …’
‘Oh, he said something about coconut cream. I don’t know. I wasn’t paying attention.’
‘Hmm.’ She collected the cakes and took them back into the kitchen to be boxed up, ready for delivery. What was Mal doing? She had talked herself into relaxing a bit around him because, as he kept pointing out, he wasn’t actually her competition. If people wanted real cake, made with actual sugar and flour, they didn’t go to his shop, just like they didn’t come to hers for salad.
As far as she knew, there wasn’t a way to make icing that didn’t involve using sugar. It was called sugarcraft for a reason. If he wanted her to teach him about icing, did that mean he was thinking of branching into non-keto food? She hoped not. That would be bad. He had an actual café …
Her mood settled somewhere in her shoes. The strength of her disappointment surprised her. She had started to think of Mal as a friend. She trusted him enough to pitch for a major project with him. What if she’d been wrong? What if his plan was to slowly undermine her and put her out of business? How had she got herself into this predicament?
‘Elodie?’ Marty was standing by the door looking sheepish. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t realise … Do you want me to go over and ask for more details?’
‘No.’ She took off her apron and hung it up on the hook. It was time to stop catastrophising and get on with her work. ‘I’ll do that. After I’ve done my deliveries this evening.’