Jessica's Fate

Chapter 81

I enjoyed the movies more than I thought I would. I had several moments to reflect on the movies in the days following our movie marathon.

Usually while making bread at school.

Again, kneading bread is therapeutic and calming. It also allows plenty of time to analyze thoughts.

I made a mental note to text him later and let him know that I was sincere in liking the Divergent series movies, but he did owe me a Pitch Perfect marathon next time. I patted the bread dough gently before covering it and setting it to rise before I headed to the job list of what needed to be made for lunch service. My eyes gleamed when I saw that they wanted cupcakes on the dessert bar and immediately scanned my thumbprint in to accept the responsibility for them. I knew just what I wanted to make.

I hummed slightly as I gathered what I needed. I'd been thinking about cupcakes again lately. It was time for a new Jessica creation and I thought I knew just the thing to bring a touch of retro to this year's Valentine's day must haves.

If they went well here, then I'd certainly add them to my catering menu as well as cake and cupcake form at the diner. Luke would be thrilled.

I plugged my earbuds into my ears and selected my favorite work playlist, set it on shuffle and started to measure out the cake ingredients. While the mixer was whisking the dry ingredients together for me, making them light and fluffy and incorporated, I measured out the wet ingredients and cracked the dozens of eggs that were needed to make the restaurant sized batches I'd gotten used to making. I ran a large container of cherries through the food processor to chop them into fine pieces.

My take on cherry chip cake was going to be better. No maraschino cherries, real sweet dark cherries would be the key. The juice from the chopped cherries would add the touch of color needed to tint the batter pink.

Most everyone was expecting red velvet.

I shuddered at the thought. Call me a traitor for not liking one of the South's most infamous and iconic desserts but I couldn't stand red velvet. I did have a recipe that I was playing with. It wasn't as red as it could be, but it did use beet juice instead of food coloring. I was still working on a way to make it taste less like beets.

And trying to figure out if there was something that could be added to make it a brighter flavor than it came out being once the beets mixed with the cocoa and buttermilk. I made a mental note about red wine vinegar. It was worth considering. I didn't want it to seem like pickled beets in a cake.

I drained the juice into the batter before sifting a little flour over the chopped-up cherries. I was pleased with the color. It was going to be nicely pink. Sang would probably love these cupcakes too. Sudden inspiration hit, and I pulled the giant, heavy, mixing bowl off the industrial sized mixer and divided the batter into two separate bowls. I put half the cherries into each one and added white chocolate chips to one bowl and semisweet chocolate chips to the other before folding them carefully to incorporate the additions to the batter.

My mind raced with sudden inspiration and I quickly scooped out the cupcakes, getting three dozen full sized cupcakes and three dozen mini cupcakes out of each half of batter. Placing them into the ovens, I set two timers. Full sized cupcakes needed 18 minutes to bake while the mini cupcakes usually took about 9 minutes. Plenty of time to do buttercream prep.

I pursed my lips for a moment, thinking about the flavors that I'd just thrown together for cupcakes. Cherry buttercream seemed most reasonable but so did white chocolate buttercream and at least the chocolate chip cupcakes would need a chocolate ganache.

Bingo.

Chocolate covered cherry cupcakes and simply cherry chip. Perfect.

By the time the cupcakes were out of the oven and cooled enough to frost, I'd made the bread dough into dinner rolls, set aside and proofing a final time before baking, made a white chocolate buttercream and a cherry buttercream and made a dark chocolate ganache. I'd also managed to have enough time to make pink hearts out of tinted white chocolate in two sizes. Perfect for decorating all the cupcakes.