A Recipe for Bitch Cake

Warning: Profanity

Marcie knew she should ignore it. On any other day, perhaps she would have. She mainly received order requests through her website, Cakes by Marcie and Joe (damn, she’d have to change the name). She had her fair share of spammers and pranksters. Had things been different, she would have just deleted it.

But she didn’t. Leaning forward in her creaky office chair, hands gripping a steaming mug of tea, she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the words on her computer screen: “BITCH CAKE.”

Leah bustled in with her sleeves rolled up and her apron dusted with flour. “The Garcia’s are picking up their cupcakes this afternoon. I started the batter. You’re gonna help me frost?”

“Yeah,” sighed Marcie. “Just going over new orders.”

“Anything good?”

She pointed to the screen, and Leah rolled her eyes. “Oh, please. Someone’s idea of a dumb joke. Remember when we got that order for a penis cake?”

Marcie raised her butterfly patterned mug to her lips, but didn’t look away. “That one was real - for a bachelorette party. I passed it to….”

Saverine. The name turned to dust in her mouth. Leah flinched, but Marcie didn’t. She didn’t feel much of anything these days.

Had it only been a year since the opening of Saverine’s Patisserie? Marcie remembered strolling over there and pressing her face against the window. The store was white and navy with elegant red accents, and Marcie thought of her mint green storefront with a pang. When she first painted it, she thought it looked whimsical but classy. Joe thought it looked like toothpaste.

Most of Saverine’s bakery was taken up by a large display case that showed off croissants, pain au chocolat, mille-feuille, and other decadent pastries. A diploma hung on one wall, no doubt from a culinary school, and a raven-haired woman with brick red lipstick was serving customers from behind the counter. It was the first time Marcie laid eyes on Saverine, and she was as awestruck by her beauty as she was by her baking.

She was even more stunning in person. A few days later, when Marcie and Leah were picking up ingredients at the grocery store, Marcie spotted her in the baking aisle. Saverine was shaking a box of gelatin in the face of a bewildered stock boy.

Marcie nudged Leah. “That’s her, with the new bakery.”

“Ugh.” Leah wrinkled her nose as the stock boy looked around for someone to save him. “What a bitch.”

Marcie winced. “I think she’s just French?”

She didn’t know what the issue was with the gelatin, but she didn’t want to dismiss the situation so easily. She could think of plenty of times when she was given the wrong item, or the last unit in stock was damaged, or the thing she needed was entirely sold out. How she wished she were the kind of person who spoke up, instead of swallowing her disappointments and running away to lick her wounds. How she wished she were confident enough to shake a box of gelatin in a stock boy’s face.

When Marcie got a request for something she didn’t think she could pull off - erotic cakes, for one, but also souffles, macarons, and croquembouche - she passed it to Saverine. Joe thought that Marcie was crazy for giving away business, but Marcie didn’t think it was such a big deal. Wasn’t it important for a baker to know her limits? She hadn’t gone to culinary school. She grew up baking alongside her grandma. While she knew that she could make basic, American-style desserts, she was far less comfortable with anything more complex. Wouldn’t her clients respect her for making sure that they got the best cake possible, even if it wasn't from Marcie? Perhaps Saverine, too, would respect her devotion to client satisfaction.

In the end, though, it turned out that Saverine had been helping herself to more than just Marcie’s clients.

“Forget the bitch cake,” said Leah, snapping Marcie back to reality. “We have real orders to worry about.”

But Marcie couldn’t forget it. Not after scooping batter into three dozen cupcake liners. Not after making just as many cupcake toppers out of spun sugar. Not after whipping up a gigantic batch of honey lavender buttercream and frosting the cupcakes with Leah. Despite the mountain of work, her mind kept drifting back to BITCH CAKE. What would a bitch cake even look like?

Marcie stood over the stove and swirled melting sugar in a heavy bottomed pan. How would she even define bitch? It was supposed to be an insult, but what did it really mean? Crazy bitch meant any woman who expressed a strong emotion. Dumb bitch meant any woman who committed the sin of making a mistake. Basic bitch meant any woman who dared to like popular or feminine things. Meek bitch wasn’t even a phrase. Bitchiness seemed to be a tier above timidity.

Was bitch a woman who was unpleasant, or who didn’t fit the expectations of others? Was it a woman who was rude, or who stood up for herself? 

When they first started the bakery, there was a customer that shirked payment for a three-tiered cake. After calling him nearly every day for a week, Marcie had resigned herself to taking the loss. Joe was the one who looked up the guy’s address and squeezed the money out of him. After the incident, Joe demanded that Marcie start taking payment information upfront. That piece of business advice seemed so obvious in hindsight that all Marcie could do was nod, scarlet-faced and teary-eyed.

Saverine would never make that mistake, Marcie thought as she removed the pan from the heat. She tossed in cubes of butter, and the mix bubbled violently.

As the caramel cooled, Marcie made herself another cup of tea. Joe never understood why she liked it. “It’s bitter leaf juice,” he scoffed as she made her daily mugs. Once, she pointed out that his instant espresso was even more bitter than her tea. He got so huffy that she never brought it up again.

She brought the butterfly patterned mug up to her nose and inhaled the delicate bergamot aroma, savoring the balance of citrus and floral. A bitch isn’t really a bad thing, she thought. Much like flavors, it seemed like a matter of perspective.

Marcie gasped and sloshed hot tea over herself. The idea that seized her was so exhilarating that she hardly noticed her burned fingers. Flavors! That was it - a bitch cake would be a cake with polarizing flavors.

She grabbed the notepad she used to sketch order ideas and jotted down the most controversial foods she could think of: black licorice, blue cheese, white chocolate…. She starred flavors that could work together and began to plan a recipe.

Leah wandered into the office. “Where did you disappear to?”

Marcie handed her the notepad.

“What’s this?”

“It’s my bitch cake. Coconut-almond flour cake with fig jam and goat cheese.”

“Um, okay.”

“It’s supposed to have polarizing ingredients.”

“I guess….” Leah trailed off. “I mean, this is definitely polarizing, but to me, it doesn’t seem very bitchy.”

“What do you mean?”

“It looks more like a Mediterranean summer cake to me. When I think of bitch, I don’t think of goat cheese and figs. I think of.…” Leah sighed. “I don’t know, a harshness? A sharp edge. Something pointy and unapologetic, you know?”

Marcie didn’t really know, but nodded anyway.

Leah’s words stuck with her as she went back into the kitchen and decorated four different graduation cakes. What flavor was pointy and unapologetic? Marcie thought of punks with torn fishnets and spiky hair, but cigarettes and hairspray didn’t seem very appealing. If she couldn’t go with cigarettes, what about something charred or burned? Perhaps…a smoked chocolate? She supposed so, but it was difficult when she had never smoked herself. What was so appealing about tobacco, and what did it taste like? The French were crazy about food and they were crazy about cigarettes - did they know something Marcie didn’t?

“Leah? What does a cigarette taste like?”

Leah looked up from the yeast she was blooming. “Uh…I don’t remember. I smoked like, one in high school.” She shut her eyes and furrowed her brow. “It was kind of earthy, I guess? Warm and a little sweet. I think. It was a while ago.” She opened her eyes. “Why?”

But Marcie didn’t answer. She went back to piping Congratulations, only it was her fourth time writing it and it didn’t seem like a real word anymore.

Her mind was swimming with sugar and icing and tobacco. What was earthy, warm, and sweet? A spice. Cinnamon, maybe, but that wasn’t controversial. Sometimes she liked to substitute a little cardamom for cinnamon in her baking - that was closer, but still not right.

Then, it hit her: anise. What was more polarizing than black licorice? And it was earthy and warm and sweet. Smoked chocolate and anise seemed like an unbalanced combination, though. She needed something slightly salty, slightly umami to balance it all out….

She put her finished graduation cakes in the refrigerator and reached for the bowl of yeasted dough that Leah had started. Marcie inhaled the wonderful, frothy aroma. So few things had this kind of smell - rising bread dough, fermenting beer, and….

Marcie yelped, almost knocking over the bowl. Marmite! That was her missing ingredient. It was yeasty, umami, salty, and would go perfectly with smoked chocolate and anise. It was polarizing. It was harsh. It was pointy and unapologetic.

As soon as they baked their last cakes and piped their last frosting, Leah went home and Marcie ran out to the grocery store. She felt a buzzing throughout her body that she got when working on a new recipe. It had been a long time since she felt this kind of thrill - in fact, it had been a long time since she felt anything other than numb. When she got excited about baking, though, it was hard to concentrate on anything else. It was like her mind was wiped clean and taken over by only one thought. Today, she was on a very specific shopping mission, and nothing was going to stop her - 

But Marcie did stop. Right before walking into the grocery store, she froze. Just a few steps in front of her, pushing a cart together, were Saverine and Joe.

The buzzing in Marcie’s body died. Even from the back, there was no mistaking them - Saverine, with her black hair falling almost to her waist, and Joe, in his Miami Marlins baseball hat. Even though she knew it was them, there was a part of her that was desperate to see their faces. Did Saverine wear red lipstick to the grocery store? Did Joe still have bags under his eyes? What about their grocery cart - did Saverine quash Joe’s instant espresso habit? Did she replace it with pour-over or a French press instead?

Saverine reached up and effortlessly twisted her hair into a knot, securing it with a single hair tie. The amount of times that Marcie told Joe how much she admired Saverine’s hair, and her baking, and her lipstick, and her shop's decor…back then, she hadn’t thought that Joe was actually listening. She was wrong. Not only was Joe listening, he was deciding to trade up - but no, Joe wasn’t the only one in this equation. Saverine had also decided to take everything from her.

Marcie’s stomach lurched, and she left the store before they noticed her. She ducked into the Wine and Spirits next door and came face-to-face with a gigantic cardboard Eiffel Tower. A sign next to the display read: Try our selection of French wines! Merlot, Moscato, Chardonnay - 20% Off!

She glared. Were they mocking her? Had the entire universe conspired to kick her while she was down?

Fuck them, she thought as she grabbed a bottle of Merlot. It was her turn to make something French. Her hands were still shaking when she got to the bakery and decided that her bitch cake wouldn’t be a smoked chocolate cake at all. It would be a quiche Lorraine.

She downed a glass of Merlot. If she was going to make this the Frenchest bitch cake in the world, then she was going to have to get into character.

She took out her phone and found the closest French restaurant. She scrolled through the appetizers - petit plats, she mocked in an outrageous accent - and ordered one of each. Without even reading the desserts, she ordered them all, too.

As Marcie waited for her food delivery, she got started on the crust. She smashed pieces of butter into flour with her hands, and didn’t see the need to wipe them as she took more and more sips of wine. By the time she chilled her dough, she had guzzled another glass.

She finished rolling out the dough and was fitting it into the pie plate when her food arrived. Marcie set the dishes out on the counter and basked in how overwhelmingly French it all was - baguettes and soft cheeses, olives and duck pate, steak tartare and onion soup, mussels and oysters and escargot….

Marcie plucked a snail with her flour covered hands and popped it into her mouth. The garlic and butter sauce was decadent on her tongue. She closed her eyes for a moment and thought that maybe Joe wasn’t such a bastard if Saverine could cook as well as she baked.

She snorted and popped the quiche shell into the oven. She’d make the filling while the crust baked. She nibbled on her food as she caramelized onions, grabbing whatever she could without washing or wiping her hands. She tore off pieces of baguette, dipped her index finger into the soup, scooped out pate with her thumb. After sucking her fingers clean, she cracked eggs into a bowl and whisked them with heavy cream and spices. When the crust was baked through, she poured in the egg mix while the shell was still piping hot. Who cares if it curdled? It was all going into the oven anyway.

And now, for the added ingredients. Wasn’t the best part of quiche that you could use just about anything you wanted? She scraped in her caramelized onions, but she wasn’t going to stop there. Not when there was an embarrassing wealth of food right on the counter.

“But first,” she announced to her empty kitchen, “more wine!”

With a generous glass of Merlot in hand, Marcie inspected her food more closely. She picked up a gooey wedge of brie, and with a shrug, dropped it into the egg mix. Cheese usually went into quiche, right? She dug two fingers deep into the pate and gouged out a thick gob. Meat was a part of quiche - why not duck liver?

Soon, it was all going in - chunks of baguette, fistfuls of steak tartare, a splash of French onion soup, whole olives, mussels and oysters and escargot with their sauces. As much of it ended up on the floor as it did in the quiche.

By the time she threw in a piece of each appetizer, she had gulped down more than half of the bottle of wine. Marcie swayed and stumbled, but had no intention of winding down. Instead, she set her sights on the desserts, and in they went: macarons with ganache fillings, profiterole with chocolate drizzled on top, a wad of cremeux sprinkled with sea salt, a mini tower of croquembouche….

But the quiche shell was much too full. Croquembouche and macarons and escargot spilled onto the counter, leaving a trail of crumbs and shattered meringue and congealed butter. Marcie growled as she marched over to toss them back in, but slipped on the soup and wine and sauces that she spilled on the floor during her frenzy. She landed on her bottom with a plop. The wine in her glass leapt into the air and onto her shirt.

Marcie blinked, trying to piece together exactly how she ended up on the floor. She took a deep breath and screamed, her cry dissolving into great gasping sobs.

“Fuck…you,” she bawled, her chest heaving with each syllable. “I…fucking…hate…you….” 

But she didn’t know if she meant Saverine, or Joe, or herself.

Marcie sat on the floor, clutching her wine glass and crying until she got the hiccups. With her pants smeared with eggs and flour and her teeth darkened with wine, she called an Uber to take her home. She climbed into bed and drifted off into a dreamless sleep, blissfully unaware that she had completely forgotten to turn off the oven.

A few hours later, she was woken up by a call from the fire department.

She rushed to the bakery and was grateful to see it still standing. The storefront was miraculously undamaged, but the same could not be said about the kitchen. The wall behind the oven was blackened and peeling. The countertops were charred. The bowls and pots and pie plate she used for her quiche had melted and warped. Everything seemed to have both a fine layer of soot and be drenched in water. Marcie pressed her fingers to her temples. It was hard to comprehend the damage when her head felt like it was about to split into two, and her mouth felt like it was full of sand.

“Oh my god,” Leah gasped when she saw the kitchen.

Marcie nudged something with her foot - a misshapen glass blob. It took her a few seconds to recognize it as her wine glass. Something next to it, though, had a butterfly pattern that caught her eye. She reached down and grabbed her tea mug, covered in ash but otherwise perfectly intact.

“This…this is crazy,” Leah said. “What happened?”

Marcie looked at her butterfly mug and sighed. “Some bitch did it.”