Recipe for Love

Recipe for Love

ANNE MALCOM

Copyright © 2022 by Anne Malcom

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Cover Design: TRC Designs

Editing: KimBookJunkie

Proofreading: All Encompassing Books

Contents

Foreword

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Epilogue

Recipes

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Also by Anne Malcom

For all the compulsive worriers warriors.

Foreword

I had so much fun writing this book. If you follow me on any of my social media platforms, you may have seen snippets of my messy kitchen while I was baking. I have dubbed myself ‘The Chaotic Baker,’ since whenever I bake, our kitchen explodes. Not literally. Luckily.

An idea bloomed from that. About a story with a woman who has a lot of quirks. Who loves sugar. Who is wildly successful. Who battles with anxiety daily. Who falls for a grumpy badass who has loved her since the moment he laid eyes on her.

Nora was born.

It seemed like a no-brainer to have recipes to go along with each chapter, since I wanted to give my fellow chaotic bakers a chance to try fun and different things. Not all of the recipes are my own. In fact, most of them aren’t. I do tend to make little changes here and there to original recipes, so if I did, I was sure to note it.

If you do want to bake as you read, I highly recommend this book, Dessert Person by Claire Saffitz. Most of the recipes you’ll find come from there.

We’ll start with a treasured favorite, just in case you want some cookie dough with your smut.

I know I do.

Us Kiwis will know and love the humble ‘Santé Biscuit.’ These cookies (as you Americans say) bring so much nostalgia to me. I remember making them with my mum, my nana, my girlfriends. There have been many times in my life when I was heartbroken, sad, stressed, overwhelmed, and I turned to these cookies to get me through it.

Full disclosure: I make the cookies purely so I can eat the dough and very few cookies actually make it into the oven.

This isn’t me recommending you eat raw cookie dough, of course. That’s up to you.

Okay, let’s get to the recipe so we can get to the book.

Also, if you’re making this for a bunch of people (and not just for yourself on a Friday night, which I do regularly) I recommend doubling the recipe for higher yield and more dough to eat during the process.

Santé Biscuits

•1/2 cup of butter, softened

•1/4 cup sugar

•5 Tbsp sweetened condensed milk (the original recipe calls for three, but I always add more)

•1 1/2 cups flour

•1 tsp baking powder

•3/4 cup chocolate chips

•1/2 tsp vanilla

Preheat the oven to 350°. Line a baking tray with wax paper.

Cream together butter, sugar and condensed milk until light and fluffy.

Combine all of the dry ingredients in a separate bowl, then sift them into the creamed mixture, mixing until combined. Add the chocolate chips.

Roll the mixture into balls, place them on the baking tray and then flatten them with a fork.

Bake for 15 mins or until golden at the edges but still soft.

Leave on the tray for 5 minutes, then transfer to a baking tray to cool (even though they are best eaten warm).

Chapter One

Recipe: Tan Slice

My name is Nora Henderson, and I am currently having a pulmonary embolism.

If you didn’t know, a pulmonary embolism is when a blood clot develops in the body then travels to a lung where it disrupts air flow.

The symptoms are a sudden shortness of breath, chest pain, a feeling of anxiety, lightheadedness, heart palpitations and sweating. If you have deep vein thrombosis you will also have pain, swelling and warmth in your leg.

If not treated, it can cause serious problems, ultimately leading to death.

Death.

Right now, I could be dying.

“Nora, do the muffins have peanuts in them?” a voice asked, interrupting visions of what my funeral might look like.

I thought it would be small but well attended. The flowers would be white. Lilies. Or roses. At the church down by the water, even though I wasn’t a particularly religious person. It was pretty there. A nice place for a funeral.

I blinked my pink, girly, magnificent, orderly kitchen into focus and sharpened my attention on the fresh-faced, blonde-haired Australian who had just asked me a question.

“What?” I asked, my voice scratchy and dry. Likely from the trouble I had breathing. Caused by the blood clot clogging my arteries.

“The muffins,” she said. “I would’ve just lied and said no if the customer in question hadn’t stressed their life-threatening peanut allergy. I don’t want to get sued if they like, keel over and die or something.”

My breathing evened out, my heart slowing now that I had something to focus on.

Fiona was obsessed with being sued. Apparently, you couldn’t sue people in Australia like you could here.

“No, there are no peanuts in the muffins,” I reassured her.

She chewed her lip. “Can you come and tell the customer? I think I kind of shattered my credibility with them. I told them that no one had died from our products… that we know of. It would sound better coming from the person who actually baked the muffins. And liability would shift to you.” She winked before her blue eyes flickered over me. “Plus, you look like you’re spiraling back here. What is it today?”

Fiona was one of the few people who knew about my health anxiety. About my worrying about anything and everything. She didn’t judge me for it. Didn’t tell me I was crazy—which I often thought I was—didn’t try to reassure me that if I just ‘calmed down,’ everything would be fine. She took me in stride, stayed composed when I couldn’t, and didn’t act like I was a massive hypochondriac, which I was, to put it lightly.

She didn’t understand completely, of course, because her brain didn’t torture her daily. At least not like mine had since before I could remember. My life has consistently been punctuated by worry. Bookended by anxiety and panic.

“Nothing,” I replied weakly. I was embarrassed, hyper-embarrassed about this little idiosyncrasy. I did not want to be like this.

I did not thrive on ill health. I didn’t run to the doctor or the emergency room, didn’t lie in bed day after day with my imagined maladies. No, I continued to function, just quietly spiraling until I didn’t die from a pulmonary embolism. That was the only way to lessen the anxiety… continue living until the next wave of panic, the next life-threatening illness.

I did not want the attention, though my mother had thought that’s where this little quirk originated. I was the last person in the entire world who would actively want attention.

Not like Fiona. Even though she didn’t want it or strive for it, she attracted it in a natural way and flourished off it. Bloomed like a flower in situations where people were attracted to her like honeybees.

Whereas I shriveled up, tried to make myself look as small as possible.

I sighed, looking down at the cupcakes I had been frosting. They were chocolate peanut butter with a fudgy frosting. I called them the PMS special since they were the perfect degree of chocolatey and sugary and comforting when you were craving them. I was sure indulging those cravings by consuming copious amounts of sugar, butter and chocolate wasn’t the best way to serve your hormones. You should probably eat nuts, fruits, smoothies… whatever.

As much as I believed a healthy lifestyle was a cure for a lot of ills, and that processed foods full of sugar, chemicals and preservatives were the reason for a lot of our health problems, I also believed that a little chocolate wouldn’t kill you.

Or even a lot of it.

Plus, I imported all of my ingredients from France. It was really costly and not at all fiscally responsible, according to my accountant, but you couldn’t deny that the ingredients were more wholesome, without the additives that were commonplace here in the US and illegal in Europe. You could taste the difference.

My business was all about taste. And it was worth it since people literally traveled across the country to come and get these cupcakes. People paid exorbitant shipping fees to have them made, shipped in climate-controlled packaging and trucks so they arrived fresh the next day.

“Yeah, I’m done here,” I said, looking from the cupcakes to Fiona.

Her eyes flared as she looked down. “Okay, you better not be shipping those out anywhere or putting them on sale before I have at least two.”

I grinned, leaning over to grab the plate I’d set aside for her. “Way ahead of you.” I winked, wiping my hands on my apron before brushing my cheek with the back of my hand out of habit.

Though I’d been baking for years—my whole life pretty much—I still had not perfected the art of looking like Nigella Lawson after I was done, all flawless and goddess-like. No, my auburn hair was usually escaping from the tight bun at the top of my head, chocolate was staining my fingertips, and flour ended up… pretty much everywhere.

When I first opened the bakery five years ago, I’d tried really hard to not only be the baker but also the face of the place, painstakingly crafting my appearance after spending hours in the kitchen. I’d battle with my wild burgundy locks, trying to wrestle them into a slick bun. I’d attempt to put on makeup, slathering it over my freckles, wear white dresses that molded over my considerable curves… the whole thing.

But that quickly went to shit.

You could not wear white and be a baker. Or maybe other bakers could. You couldn’t be me and wear white.

I wasn’t exactly the kind of person who would talk myself up, but even I couldn’t escape the wild success of my business and my food, so I knew that I was a good baker. Maybe even a great one. But I was not orderly, put together nor organized like a lot of my contemporaries at pastry school had been. In every other aspect of my life, I was meticulous, careful, purposeful. In the kitchen, I was not. Sure, I adhered to correct measurements—most of the time, at least—but other than that, I was like a hurricane.

I’d gotten the nickname ‘the chaotic baker’ in school which was an apt way to describe me.

Trying to fight it had almost driven me mad, so I’d embraced the chaos and no longer tried to make myself look perfect. My hair was clean, brushed and somewhat tamed when I made it to the front of the house. Makeup was a thing of the past. The closest I got was the tinted strawberry lip balm I swiped across my lips after I’d wiped the flour off my face, or if I had extra time in the morning, I’d brush mascara on to accentuate my large green eyes.

Fiona was leaning on the arch between the kitchen and the front of the house, regarding me with perfectly manicured brows.

Fiona, despite spending her day waiting on people, looked like she could’ve just strutted off a runway or from a Sports Illustrated shoot. Her blonde hair brushed her shoulders with perfect beach waves which never turned frizzy, never stuck up or out of place and always looked intentionally mussed. Her tanned skin was always glowing like she’d just spent a week sunning herself in the Caribbean, even in the dead of winter. She was tall, much taller than my 5′5′′ and had curves that seemed to defy physics itself. On top of all that, she had a sweet tooth that should’ve wreaked havoc on those curves but did nothing but improve them.

Even though she was only wearing a plain white tee and worn blue jeans, she wore the simple outfit like it was couture or something.

I liked to think that the hordes of men who frequented the bakery came because of my superior baking skills—which I was sure was part of the reason—but I knew that Fiona was an important ingredient, luring in men outside my target audience. The ones who weren’t likely to be drawn in by chocolate, peanut butter and buttery light croissants—which were the best you could get outside of Paris.

“Are you sure you don’t want to tell me about the latest malady?” she asked, folding her toned arms across her ample chest. The black lace of her bra was showing through the thin white material, looking sexy, chic and effortless at the same time.

I could never pull that off. I wanted to pull that off, but I didn’t have the effortless, sexy thing going on. The best I could go for was cute with an anxious edge.

I wore high-waisted pants from Paris. I had them imported because they never wrinkled, fit my pear-shaped body like a dream, were comfortable enough to wear all day, and made me look halfway presentable. My chiffon blouses were the same. Feminine with delicate flower prints on them, the fabric not clinging to my curves like the cheap stuff did.

“I’m sure,” I told Fiona, straightening my shoulders and trying to push away thoughts of a blood clot traveling to my heart or brain. After having this affliction my entire life, you would think I’d be very good at convincing myself I wasn’t dying from a blot clot or some infectious disease. But when it came to this, practice, it seemed, did not make perfect.

I had not become good at convincing myself I was okay, but I’d got pretty damn good at hiding it from the public at large.

Fiona lingered, as though the customers asking about the peanuts weren’t waiting at the counter. Presumably because she knew they wouldn’t be mad, irritated or irate. Fiona had a way of charming even the most difficult of customers. It was impossible to be irritated with the woman with the enchanting accent, electric blue eyes and the warm magnetism that seemed to exude from her very pores.

I had yet to meet someone who was immune to her charms.

“You don’t look sure,” she prodded.

Fiona, who was endlessly patient and caring, did not find this part of my personality to be annoying, weird or off-putting. My ex-fiancé had found it to be all of those things. Which I supposed was the normal reaction. I hated dealing with my own idiosyncrasies; I couldn’t expect anyone else—even the man supposed to love me unconditionally—to want to deal with them.

I let out a sigh, blowing a rogue strand of hair from my face. “I’m sure that the customers would like to know whether the muffins are going to kill them or not,” I told her. “Now, let’s go.”