The second stand mixer, across the kitchen, took a direct hit from the flour fireball. Its bowl is warped into an oval. Its whisk attachment is welded to the housing by heat-fused sugar residue.
Both mixers. Dead.
Magnolia lowers the two surviving cake layers to her. Water drips from her chin. Her jaw works. Her eyes sweep the ruined kitchen, the ash, the foam, the slag, the soaked ingredients, and land on me.
"Three hours," she says. "We have three hours, no mixers, and two surviving layers out of twelve."
I set the fire extinguisher down. Shake foam off my hands.
"What's the plan, baker?"
Her eyes drop to my arms. My forearms. Specifically, the muscles corded from wrist to elbow, still pumped from forty minutes of continuous whisking.
"How long can you beat buttercream by hand?"
CHAPTER 11
MAGNOLIA
Ipluck the grandmother's notebook out of the puddle. Shake it once. Water sprays from the pages. The ink has bled but not dissolved. Grandma Eloise wrote in wax pencil because she trusted nothing, least of all the future.
Good woman. Paranoid. But good.
"Station one." I point at the long prep counter by the window. "Clear everything off it. Everything. It doesn’t matter if it's bolted down."
Dash doesn't ask questions. He sweeps his arm across eight feet of stainless steel and sends mixing bowls, sheet trays, a ceramic utensil crock, and a decorative vase of someone's dried lavender crashing to the wet floor. The counter gleams empty.
"Dry it."
He grabs a stack of industrial kitchen towels and mops the surface in two passes. He stands there, his torn undershirt clinging to his shoulders, skin still glistening from the sprinklers, and waits.
My mouth goes dry for exactly one second.
One.
I snap back.
"Twelve egg whites." I hold up the carton I pulled from the blast-proof reach-in cooler. The professional unit survived intact, its rubber gasket seals worth every copper coin. "Room temperature. I need stiff peaks in under six minutes."
I hand him the biggest stainless bowl I can find, a commercial balloon whisk, and twelve cold eggs.
He cradles one egg in his palm. His hand dwarfs it so completely the egg vanishes.
"Separate the yolks. Crack them on the edge, pull the shell apart, pass the yolk back and forth between the halves. Drop the whites in the bowl. No shell. No yolk. If one drop of yolk gets in those whites, the meringue won't stiffen and we start over."
He stares at the egg.
"This is a precision operation," he says.
"Welcome to my world."
His brow furrows. Those heavy orbital ridges draw together. He holds the egg between his thumb and forefinger like a demolitions expert handling a detonator. Taps it against the counter rim. Too hard. The shell implodes. Egg white and yolk cascade over his knuckles.
"Eleven eggs," I say. "Adjust."
The second egg, he barely touches to the counter's edge. A hairline fracture. He works his thick thumbnails into the crack and pulls. The shell separates. The yolk sits fat and golden in one half. He tips it to the other. Tips it back. The white slides into the bowl, a clean viscous ribbon.
"Good. Ten more. Faster."
