Piece of Cake

“You can bake, right?”

Rick looked over the desk towards the Chief, who looked far more concerned than he normally did in briefings. Of course, briefings were normally talking about targets, and reasons that they needed to either be killed or stopped from being killed, rather than straying into topics like culinary efforts. Rick gave a smile, trying to be reassuring.

“Bake? You need a birthday cake for your daughter, Chief?”

“Don’t try to be funny Rick. It’s a serious question.”

“Of course I can bake, Chief. I make great cookies. Back in my student days, I even made brownies.” He allowed the sarcastic tone to carry through.

“Well, Rick, you might need to brush up a bit. We have your next assignment.”

Rick raised an eyebrow. When he’d been called into an urgent meeting, he fully expected that he would be receiving orders, but had assumed that the baking discussion was simply small talk before they got to the real business. Then again, the Chief wasn’t the type to beat around the bush – he always got straight to the point.

The Chief pushed an envelope over the desk and Rick picked it up and opened it. Inside was a typical briefing document. Young man in his twenties, Russian, currently at university studying politics and economics. Rick raised his eyebrows when he saw who the kid’s parents were – one of the richer families in Russia and suspected of having supported all kinds of regimes hostile to the west. He wondered if Artem, the kid, took after the family or was at university trying to get away from them.

“Is this a kill, or stop from being killed job, Chief?”

“Very much a stop from being killed, though our analysts suspect that kidnap and extortion is more likely,” the Chief replied drily. “Artem has been acting as a mole into his family’s affairs for a while, feeding us information, but he may have been found out. He’s under guard on campus, but, of course, there’s a spanner in the works.

“It turns out” incredulity dripped from the chief’s words “that Artem is a keen baker and, unbeknownst to his guards, he applied to SummerBake. You haven’t heard of it? I’m not surprised – neither had I. It’s a four week programme over the summer vacation, intended for highly skilled amateur bakers. Think of it as something like a pageant, but for baking. Artem, our lucky little mole, has managed to get a place, and this is prestigious enough that if he pulled out, it would be notable.”

Rick shrugged. “You can still guard him though, right? You’ve got undercover people on him already.”

Chief shook his head. “Not that simple. The only people permitted onto the grounds of the show are the contestants, the mentors, the judges, and the TV crews. Everybody takes part in some way – we can’t have a handful of bodyguards on him at all times.”

“I think I see where this is going.” Rick sighed – it was going to be a long four weeks. “You’re pulling a Miss Congeniality, aren’t you.” It wasn’t a question.

Chief smiled. “That’s exactly right. We’ve managed to get you entered, but we can’t push it further than that. You’ll need to do well enough to get to the final four. Now, we can have somebody in your ear to give you instructions and recipes, but you’re going to need to have the skills.”

Rick nodded, considering. “Fair enough – how hard can it be? Baking is just following instructions, right?”

“You’re also going to have to be nice to people,” Chief continued, his voice still steady, though his lip turned up in the corner. “Contestants only proceed if they bake well enough, and if the TV audience likes them enough.”

Rick raised his eyebrows. “I can be nice,” he said, his voice slightly indignant. “Will that be all?”

“One more thing,” Chief continued. “Go home and bake a cake. If it’s as easy as you think it is, then all will be well. Otherwise, you’ve got two weeks to get some practice in.”

Rick decided to start simple. A chocolate cake. A recipe was easy enough to find on his phone and purchased the things he would need on the way home from work. He went into the kitchen confident –everybody always says that baking a cake is easy. It’s a proverb, after all.

The recipe was American, but he was only slightly irritated at needing to convert the temperature from Fahrenheit to Celsius, and the oven was soon pre-heating. Next: butter the cake tins. Shrugging, he got out a knife and started to spread the butter all over the tins. Then – dust them with flour. Dust? Surely that was for cleaning up small particles like flour. Frowning, Rick poured some onto the tins, but it stuck to everything, including himself.

Rick washed himself off and looked at what he’d done already - he wasn’t convinced by it. What was the benefit to having the butter and flour on the outside of the tins? Should it have only been on the inside? Surely, if that were the case, the instructions would have said so. Ah well – best to just continue.

Cups of flour and sugar into a bowl. He didn’t have any cups – he wasn’t really a tea kind of a guy. He had coffee mugs though, and that was probably the nearest he could get. He’ tried to look up how much a cup of flour weighs, but the answers were highly variable. At least teaspoons and tablespoons were easy for the other ingredients. He didn’t have a tablespoon, but he was sure he remembered that four teaspoons made a tablespoon, so he went with that. The mixing was straightforward, though once he lost his patience and stirred too hard. Flour and part-mixed cake went flying across the kitchen. Now there was even more stuff stuck to the outside of the cake tins.

Eggs next. Easy – though he did manage to get some shell in the mix and it took a long time to manage to get it out again. Warm water? How warm was warm? Did he need to boil it? Or would that count as hot water? Just from the hot tap? Lacking any further guidance, he went with that, though the water and the buttermilk were, again, measured in cups. Rick used his mugs.

Beating the mix. What did that mean? When he thought of beating something, it was with a stick, or even his fists. That couldn’t be right. Rick looked it up. Rigorous stirring. Why hadn’t it simply said that? Clearly, baking had its own language, just like his own work, and to follow instructions he was going to have to learn it – he wouldn’t be able to research fundamental terms on set. At least he’d discovered something that from this experience.

However, Rick was learning, and he started to feel the same satisfaction that had led him to pick up myriad other talents over the years. He realised he was actually enjoying himself, despite some of the obscure nomenclature and vague instructions. He did his beating, and divided it all between his pans. There was some left in his bowl after filling them, but that was probably just because he’d used the mugs instead of cups. Rick put it in the oven and set the timer.

The next part, making frosting, looked much simpler. He mixed the ingredients together and beat them – now knowing what that meant. Rick fell into a rhythm with his beating, similar to how he felt when he ran, or did other exercise. The physical exertion, and knowing that he was making something, was very rewarding.

Lost in the rhythm, he got carried away, surprised when he heard the over timer beep. Putting down his bowl of frosting (which was nice and thick), Rick opened the oven and widened his eyes in shock. The cake was… well, it was everywhere. It had massively expanded and escaped from its tins. Or had the flour and other things on the outside of the tins managed to cook as well?

Rick gently pulled the tins out of the oven and stuck a skewer in them. It didn’t come out clean. So – they were huge and expansive, but still not cooked? Perhaps he could cut them down a bit before putting them back in the oven. Rick took a knife and sliced off the top of each section of cake and then carved down as well, removing it from the outsides of the tins. Once they were cleaner, he put them back in, but had no idea how long to do it for! Perhaps checking them every five minutes?

Whilst he waited, he stuck a finger into his frosting and tried it. He quickly turned to the sink and spat it out again – it was far too sweet. Rick reviewed the recipe and sighed. It had to be the cup/mug difference - the sugar was in cups, he’d used mugs.

The five minutes beeped, and Rick checked the cakes again. As before, they had expanded out of their tins, though mercifully not as much. The skewer said they were probably done, but he dreaded taking a taste even if they were. If the mismeasurements had made the frosting inedible, what might they have done to these? He cut a slice, intending to risk it, but couldn’t bring himself to put it into his mouth. Sadly, Rick scraped them all into the bin and started to clean up.

Clearly, there was more to baking than he’d realised (and he’d need to get some cups!) He was suddenly glad that the Chief had told him to practice. He was going to need it.

Rick was confident when the first round of the competition actually began. He had spent so long baking over the last two weeks that he was almost seeing recipes in his dreams. He knew how to convert temperatures in his head, and he could even do measurements of quantity. He could work out some simple substitutions if he didn’t have the ingredient he needed, and he could tell how much longer finished products needed in the oven. He had this.

He’d even managed to make friends with Artem – they’d ended up sharing a room (no doubt the Chief pulling what strings he could), and he’d found the young Russian very personable. He had his best smile ready and had pre-prepared answers for some likely interview questions so he could come across as friendly to the audiences as well. He was ready.

Rick looked down at the counter before him and took stock of the ingredients he’d been given, scanning the counter for a recipe – there wasn’t one there. He looked at the ingredients again – he didn’t know what to do with them. He forced down sudden panic - the cameras were already rolling, and the judges were explaining the rules to the TV audiences. Resigned, Rick put one hand to the side of his head, activating the earpiece. It seemed he was still going to need some help.