Victoria was a young lady, wearing a 3/4-length sleeve chef coat and a wedding band.
“I think,” she said, “take the competition out of the equation for a second. If you were proposing to the girl of your dreams tonight on Valentine’s Day, what would you want to bake? I mean, something dripping down the sides doesn’t sound like it’s going to sweep a girl off her feet.”
He stepped back. “You’re right.” It was essentially the same advice Lori had been giving him. Keep your eye on the theme. Don’t worry about the complexity of the recipe. That’ll come naturally.
The only woman he’d ever asked to marry him was Kelly. There was no question in his mind what he would bake for her. The Honey Almond Cake they’d created while they’d been dating and he’d worked in the café slinging hash in the evenings. Simple in taste, but he could make the presentation elegant.
Andrew shook Victoria’s hand. “If there’s anything you’re not comfortable with that I ask you to do, let me know. We’ll divide and conquer to your skill set.”
“I was top of my class. Don’t you worry. I’ve got your back,” she said proudly.
“Awesome.” He folded his arms across his chest. He hadn’t made a tiered cake since culinary school, but this wasn’t a wedding cake competition; the theme was Marry Me. A proposal cake. “So, I’m thinking a proposal cake can go a couple of ways. If you’re confident of a yes, it could be a big party cake. Not so sure of the yes, then it could be just the two of you.”
“Somehow I find it hard to believe you’ve ever had an unconfident day in your life.”
“I’m going to take that as a compliment.” He laughed. He liked her confidence too. Like Kelly, she spoke her mind.
“Just brainstorming here for a few minutes to be sure we’ve got a solid plan,” he said. “We could do a Croquembouche. Kind of tie to France, where I live. Or we could do a tower of petit fours with Marry Me? written on them. I do great petit fours.” He grabbed the pen from his shirt pocket. “Or…” he sketched out a large round cake, “…frost in a quilted pattern with tiny diamonds between gold-colored piping, like engagement rings. I saw a conical layer tray in the pantry room. We could make macarons and stack them on their edges on that tray towering above the cake like a topiary. On the top, the words Will You Marry Me? Two rows—WILL YOU, over MARRY ME?—in bright-red candy glass. “
“That sounds beautiful. That’s totally it.”
“We can do two different flavor macarons. One for yes, and one for no.” He shook his head. “No. We don’t want any nos. We’ll do passion fruit macarons, strawberry for a nice red color, and good old almond, and we’ll stamp with edible ink YES on one side and I DO on the other. Hopefully we’ll have some gold back there for that. I think I saw it.”
“Good thinking. It sounds fabulous. And doable.”
“Let’s see what we can find in the pantry for the display.” After fifteen minutes of rummaging through their options, they had to nix the topiary idea. The display wasn’t sturdy enough to place on top of the cake, and attaching the Will You Marry Me? topper was going to present too many opportunities for mistakes. Instead, Andrew found a four-tier wedding cake form. He’d use the three widest layers for the custom macarons, then at the top layer he’d place the cake and cake topper.
“Can you calculate how many macarons we’ll need to make for those three layers?” he asked Victoria.
“I’m on it.”
He wrote out a list of the steps they’d need to take, in what order, with times next to them to be sure they stayed on track. This wasn’t his first rodeo. He could make anything happen as long as he had a plan.
Andrew redrew the final idea, marking the colors and tools needed for each step.
He wrote down the recipe for the cake. “We’ll use a passion fruit curd in between the layers. It’ll be bright and fresh,” he said, mostly to himself.
On a separate piece of paper, he began listing the recipe steps for the macarons. “You’ve made macarons before?”
“Every week.”
“Thank you for being my partner.”
“You have someone very special in mind as you’re making this cake, don’t you?” Victoria said.
He remembered Lori saying the cameras and mics were always on. He held back the truth. “Actually, no. I was just trying to pick something that would be both elegant and yet different.”
“Oh, sorry. The way you seemed so excited…I thought maybe this was almost a practice run for someone.”
“I wish it was,” he said quietly.
She shrugged. “No offense, but who ever said men were smart wasn’t a woman.”
He laughed. “Probably true.”
“If you wish it was, make it so. It’s really pretty simple,” Victoria said.
He walked over to the counter then came back. “You know what, I’m going to switch something up here.”
She stopped mid-motion. “I’ve got the strawberry macarons started.”
“That’s cool. No change in the macarons at all.” He whipped past her. “It was what you said about this cake being special enough for that special person. I know exactly what cake is most important to her.”
“Now you’re talking! Cooking with your heart. I’m telling you from experience, that’s the secret ingredient in every great recipe.”
The words played in his mind. The secret ingredient? It was true that the recipe had never come out quite as perfect as when he and Kelly had made it together, but if she saw the show, she’d know he was serious. His love for her was still as strong as it ever was.
“Thank you for saying that. I think a few things just fell in place for me.”
“My work here is done
