She read her line off the prompter. “Okay, Austin, let’s see what you’ve brought to the table.” Then, ignoring the next line—another weak joke about there being too many cooks in the kitchen and that only one of them could be victorious—she looked into the camera and said, “I sure hope this cake of yours can rise to the challenge.”
“You never have to worry about me—or my cakes—rising to any challenges, Charlie,” Austin replied, his charm on full force for the camera. “So this is my gram’s amaretto and apricot cake. I’ve been making it with her every Christmas since, as she says, I was ‘wet behind the ears.’？” He bent down to open the oven door, the white bar towel in hand to take out the Bundt pan. “Simple to glaze with amaretto icing and some candied spiced apricots, this will wow any—”
Austin paused. He stared into the oven, confusion crossing his face. His eyebrows knitted together.
Cass tried to catch a glimpse inside the oven, dramatizing her movements for the camera. “Enough with the suspense, Austin. Let’s see your grandmother’s cake.” She smiled wide, covering the moment as Austin continued staring into the oven. Sasha gave Cass a look, and then whispered something to Sydney, who was standing beside her. The assistant shrugged, and Sasha frowned.
“Uh . . . is everything okay, Austin?” Cass asked, keeping her tone light. “Here, let me help.” She quickly slipped on an oven mitt and bent down beside Austin, pulling out the Bundt pan. Then she, and everyone else on set, saw what had rendered the great Austin Nash speechless.
His dessert was pancake flat inside the pan.
“Oh, dear,” Cass said, setting it down onto the workstation beside her glorious, perfectly puffed gingerbread cake. She cringed, extra animated for the camera, and said, “I guess sometimes you do have trouble rising to the occasion?”
Austin stared at his failed cake. Sasha yelled cut, and marched over to the hosts. Just then Austin turned to Cass and hissed, “What did you do, Goodwin?”
“What did Charlie do?” Sasha repeated, then huffed. “She baked a gorgeous-looking cake, and you . . . You baked something that could pass for a ringette ring!”
When Cass and Austin both gave Sasha perplexed looks, she said, “My mom’s Canadian. Ringette’s sort of like hockey, except instead of a puck you pass a rubber ring around the ice.” Then she waved her hands around, as though clearing the air in front of her. “Doesn’t matter. We are short on time and I am short on patience. Ideally we would have two perfect cakes here, but you know what? This is fun.” Austin looked at Sasha in a way that showed he did not think anything about this was “fun.”
“I think the audience will like to see that even the experts make mistakes, right?” Sasha continued, hands on her hips as she looked between Cass and Austin. “And that they can handle missteps with grace and humility.”
Sasha was clearly speaking directly to Austin, but he wasn’t listening. Instead he was running his finger down the recipe on the tablet his nervous-looking assistant had brought him.
“Nothing’s missing. I added everything. Flour. Yes. Sugar, yup. Amaretto, two teaspoons . . .” he muttered under his breath. Cass stood beside him, locking eyes with Sydney. “Baking powder, added. Baking soda . . .” Austin paused, tapped the screen, then looked at his assistant. “The baking soda got added, right?”
“I think so,” Nathan squeaked out. “But, uh, I was making the candied apricots at the time.”
Sydney and Cass exchanged a quick but telling look. Then Cass said, “Austin, we really need to get these iced.”
“Give me a minute!” he said, loudly enough that Sasha turned around, her glare causing him to wilt slightly.
“Fine,” Austin said, sighing deeply. He was rattled and Cass took a moment to enjoy that she was responsible for his current demeanor.
Because what he didn’t know, would never know, was that Cass had enlisted Sydney—who was still ticked off about when Austin （via Nathan） stole Cass’s recipe idea from under her nose—to make a slight change to the amaretto cake recipe. She’d removed the baking soda line, and then added it back in once the cake was in the oven. There were plenty of people on set at any given time, so switching tablets wasn’t easy, but Sydney had distracted Nathan by telling him Sasha insisted he find star anise in the spice room, and then after he left she’d made the change to the recipe. Once the cakes were baking, which was when the assistants took short breaks, Sydney added the line back to the recipe and voilà—no one was the wiser. Without baking soda, necessary to leaven the cake, Austin’s dessert came out flat and dreary . . . not dissimilar to how he looked right now.