“Do we have any parchment paper left?” I asked Brady, sweat on my brow that I swiped away with my sleeve.
“About the size of a piece of toilet paper,” he joked, pulling it out and setting it down.
“That will work. I need a small pan that will fit in the fridge.”
His brow went down, but he grabbed the lid from a CamSquare and set it down. “Will that work?”
“Perfectly.”
I covered it with the minuscule piece of parchment paper and piped on three plumes of icing, immediately sticking it in the fridge to harden. Brady’s eyes smiled as he prepped the cupcakes, having filled them with our strawberry cream cheese center and plated them to await the final touches.
I started to clean up the workspace and kept my eye on Darla. She was dressed to the nines in a summer sundress meant for the beach and not a bake-off, complete with matching heels and a flower crown. She looked ridiculous, but maybe that was just because I hate her.
I eyed her again.
No, she looked ridiculous.
I enjoyed the fact that she was sweating up a storm, and the back of her dress was soaking wet as she labored to finish her three cupcakes in time. There were five minutes left on the clock, and I was done other than hardening the icing, which wouldn’t take long in the deep cold. The icing only had to last until they got into the judges’ hands. After that, they’d be eaten too fast for them to care. Darla, on the other hand, wasn’t having that kind of luck. Her frosting was runny like water rather than holding any sort of shape. I should be a nice person and tell her how to fix it, but I’m not a nice person when it comes to Darla. Besides, with less than five minutes to go, there wasn’t time for her to correct her tactical error now.
Unfortunately, Team Barton had dropped out of the competition at noon. The better half of Team Barton had gone into labor with their second child most unexpectedly. She was whisked away by ambulance to the hospital, and we were waiting for word on the outcome. Lila was a few weeks away from her due date and thought she’d make it through the bake-off easily, but this heat, and the baby, had different ideas. That left just us and Darla to fight to the end for the best cupcake of the year. But it looked like Darla brought her F game to the table.
Checking the clock, I had three minutes to go. I piped a small amount of icing on each cupcake for the cold plumes to adhere to and grabbed them from the cooler. After adding the frosting to each cupcake, Brady garnished them with a stuffed strawberry and hit our timer. We were done with two minutes to spare, and Brady carried the plate of cupcakes to the judges to present them. While Darla squirted and spread, huffed and moaned, I stared her down, hoping to unnerve her. It wasn’t the mature thing to do, but after she tried to rip my hair out, I didn’t much care about what was mature.
She tossed the frosting bag down with a bang, plated the cupcakes, and hit her timer with twenty seconds left to go. After dropping them at the judges' table, she hurried back to hers to start her clean up. She had to be ready to run to the pageant building when the judges finished declaring the winner. Something told me she already knew it wasn’t going to be her. Her cupcakes were probably edible, but the icing was a gloppy mess that looked like she had barely mixed the milk and powdered sugar before plopping it on.
“I think Darla bit off more than she could chew this year,” Brady said from the side of his lip while we stood in front of our tables. We had to wait for the judges to leave the tent before we could do the same.
“In her case, I hope she chokes on it,” I said quietly just as Mr. Samson grabbed the microphone.
“Okay, everyone. We will take a thirty-minute break to judge the cupcakes. Normally, we’d give you an hour, but since we are down one team, it won’t take as long. Please be back here at three for our announcement.”
They left the stage area, and the audience also dispersed to get refreshments and some fresh air. It was stifling in the building, and I was going to be glad when we could clean up and head over to where Amber was waiting to taste test the new cupcakes. We planned it for three-thirty, but I was happy to have the extra half an hour between jobs. At least the tent Amber was in had more airflow and better fans.
Brady’s phone rang, and he glanced at the number, his brow going down. “I should take this,” he said, and I motioned him out of the tent.
“Go ahead. I’ll start cleaning up.”
He jogged away with his phone to his ear, and I worked on the rest of the clean-up. Since we work as a team, we do the majority of our clean-up as we go. I refused to wash all of my tools in the minuscule sink we had to share with Darla, though, so I’d take them back to the bakery to clean them. Besides, I was not about to deal with Darla when Brady wasn’t around. Thankfully, she didn’t notice that he’d left. She was concentrating on finishing her work, so she could move on to be the next big thing as a beauty queen. I had to fight to keep from rolling my eyes on the off-chance Darla noticed.
I grabbed my phone, checking the time. It had been ten minutes since Brady left, but it was a Friday, so a vendor might have had a question about our order. I sent Amber a text and let her know we were ahead of schedule and would be there sooner than three-thirty to help her with the cupcakes. All I had left to do was grab a drink of water and wait for the judges to make their decision. I was looking forward to six o’clock tonight when I could go home, take a shower, and fall into bed. My exhaustion was another reason I was ready to be done with this bake-off every year.
Okay, so if we slept instead of making love all night, I might not be as tired as I am right now, but let’s not get crazy. Besides, I’ve been exhausted for months. Keeping up the pace at the bakery as the business grew was taking a lot out of me. I didn’t need competitions like this one to get customers now. Thankfully, Brady agreed with me when I talked to him about it on the way over. He was more than happy to take an afternoon to enjoy Strawberry Fest with me and not have to worry about the work involved with the competition. We’d still have our booth, that’s just good business, but we’d be able to spell Amber if we weren’t tied up here, which was a bonus.
My phone dinged with a text from Amber, telling me she was more than ready to reveal the cupcakes as people were already waiting. I promised to text her the second I knew who won. If it was us, she could break them out before we got there rather than wait. My eyes drifted to the clock on my phone, and it had been fifteen minutes since Brady left. I pushed the cart filled with our supplies to the door and left it on the square marked for Team Fluffy Cupcake, then ducked out of the building to breathe air that wasn’t quite as hot as inside. I searched for Brady, wondering if he’d decided to run to the bathroom before he came back. I had better text him and let him know he was going to be late. Both members of the team had to be present when the judges returned with the results.
I sent him a quick text saying he better get back inside, then headed to the table to wait for him and the judges. I was glad that Darla was off at the sink cleaning her dishes frantically, so she could get out of the building as soon as the judges announced a winner. She was soaking wet, her hair was a disheveled mess under her flower crown, and her makeup was smeared from wiping her face. Only an amateur wears make-up to a baking competition in the middle of July, I thought, rolling my eyes.