Bake for a Date with Oliver Queen
Week One
Week One Baking Challenge: Hot Holiday Drink Inspired Desserts
The thing with cooking was that she just didn't get it.
Well, obviously.
But what Felicity meant was that she didn't get why she didn't get it.
Cooking wasn't rocket science – rocket science, she understood that; hell, she had wanted to be an astronaut as a child, but it wasn't necessarily art either. While it could be made into art, one didn't need to be a chef to not run the risk of a life sentence in the California Department of Corrections. Untalented men and women managed to feed themselves, their families, on a daily basis and not wind up on the front page of their local papers as a sad murder-suicide story. Yet, she, Felicity Smoak – Mensa level genius, MIT graduate, and general all-around tech badass – could not even manage to boil water without setting off her apartment's smoke detectors.
It was a bad sign when she personally knew the names of every one of her local fire-fighters. (What made this even worse was that the whole hot fireman trope? Yeah... it wasn't exactly a thing in real life.)
Rationally, Felicity knew that she should be able to cook. To bake. To saute. To grill. To broil. She could name all the tools (not that she owned them... or planned on buying them for just a single week of this ridiculous competition), and she knew all of the terms, too. (Memorization had never been her downfall... in anything.) Her math skills were exceptional, so she could divide or multiply a recipe into its minutest or grandest scale possible, and the principles of proper cooking times, leavening, and flavor combinations were easy as pi. (Notice the spelling.) What Felicity could not do was put all of this knowledge together to create even a single, edible dish.
Granted, Donna Smoak was no role model when it came to cooking. While not as hopeless as Felicity herself, Donna had little interest and even less time for home cooked meals during Felicity's childhood, so there was no learning by her mother's side as a little girl. But that was fine. Donna Smoak also wasn't one to build computers or set up networks, though Felicity could now do such things blindfolded and with one hand tied behind her back... not in a kinky way or anything. Just... hindered. Anyway, she was quick on her feet and could read something and instantly comprehend it to the point of mastering the skill the very first time she attempted it.
Everything except cooking.
Like her mom, Felicity didn't really have an interest in cooking, though it would be nice if she wasn't so reliant upon takeout and pre-packaged meals. She was a successful, self-sufficient woman who would like to be able to feed herself without the pitying looks of the pimply faced delivery boys constantly mocking her. But she was also practical, so Felicity knew that, instead of trying to cook and not succeeding, it just made more sense to suffer the judgement of pubescent teenagers rather than wasting her money, time, or sanity. Felicity had long since accepted and made peace with the fact that cooking was her one failing in life...
… that was until her mother decided it was a good idea to enter her into a blind baking/blind dating competition... for her frakking boss.
Even just the thought of Donna Smoak's latest stunt made Felicity's jaw lock, her teeth grind together. She was so... pissed! at her mother that it made concentrating difficult. All week long – ever since Felicity had discovered the latest example of her mom's meddling, Felicity's work had been suffering. It wasn't that she was worried about not winning the date with Oliver Queen. In fact, Felicity wanted to lose. But she didn't like to lose, and she didn't like others being aware of any of her weaknesses. It was going to be embarrassing to submit whatever slop she managed to dump together, and it would be even more embarrassing if anyone ever learned that Megan Kuttler was actually Felicity Smoak – both because of her lack of cooking prowess and because then they'd think that she was desperate enough to enter a dating competition. While her relationship skills might be just one step above her kitchen skills, Felicity didn't need a man to be or to be happy, so desperate she was not... no matter what her mother might believe.
These worries, however, did nothing but make Felicity bite her nails and fall behind on her projects. Because she couldn't concentrate 100% on her work like normal, she was running the risk of missing her deadlines, and, because Felicity was running the risk of missing her deadlines, she was staying later and later at work every night. Even when she did manage to make it home, at night in bed, she just tossed and turned, further exacerbating the issue. The fact that she was even allowing the nonsense that was this reality competition to interfere with her life compounded her frustration, her anger. It was a vicious, destructive cycle. On top of everything else, for the past few hours, there had been a tinny, phone alarm going off throughout the entire IT department, and no one was doing a damn thing about it.
"For the love of all things holy, would someone please shut that thing off!" Normally, Felicity had a strict no-violence policy when it came to tech (and pets, especially puppies), but, that afternoon, she was seriously reconsidering her stance.
"Umm... Miss Smoak," a tentative, hesitant, downright frightened voice squeaked from her doorway. Felicity glanced up from her computer only to find one of the interns looking anywhere but directly at her. "Everyone else already checked their phones. We think..." The college student gulped in her nervousness. Granted, Felicity's mood had been all but nuclear for the past week, but she hadn't realized it'd been that noticeable to her coworkers... whom she was now realizing were all a bunch of cowards if they were sending in a teenager to do their dirty work for them. "Well, the only logical conclusion is that the alarm must be coming from your phone."
"Oh."
The intern didn't even stick around long enough to hear Felicity's shocked acknowledgment, let alone an apology... which she would have offered had their been an audience for one. Instead, she spun around on her desk chair and reached for the junk drawer where she kept her purse and other personal belongings. Rifling through the bag's contents until she located the offending (and now almost dead) mobile, Felicity tried to recall why she had set an alarm in the first place. If it was for a meeting or an appointment, she would've just put the notice on her outlook calendar. In fact, Felicity rarely used her phone notifications, because she didn't really need the reminders. If it was worth remembering, her brain remembered it. End of story.
Waking up her cell's screen, she saw an entire, scrollable list of notes she had sent to herself. Starting hours earlier, there were messages that ranged from encouraging to downright insulting, all of them insisting that Felicity leave work early and take a few hours to throw together... something for the baking competition. Only... in her abstract distraction over and about the whole Bake for a Date with Oliver Queen disaster, she had done the one thing her reminders were meant to prevent: forget that she actually had to bake something.
And, now, her submission was due in less than half an hour.
"Sweet mother of monkey milk," Felicity gasped, standing up so fast that she caught her right shin on her open junk drawer, the heel of her left pump on one of her chair legs, and she only managed to catch herself from knocking over her cubicle and then face-planting into the not-been-scrubbed-in-far-too-long berber carpet by jamming her hip into a filing cabinet and using its sturdiness to hold her not-so-sturdy-anything up. Needing a moment to recuperate... and a few deep breaths so that she didn't burst into tears (part from pain, part from mortification, and part from defeat), Felicity collapsed back down into her desk chair.
Between inhalations, "stupid elite...," and exhalations, Felicity cursed, "...and their belief... that the world... and the work day... revolves around them!" Seriously! If using baking as a measuring stick of a woman's dating worthiness wasn't chauvinistic enough, the Queens thinking it was a good idea to make the baking submissions due on their frakking doorstep at 5:00 on a Wednesday afternoon was basically the family announcing to the world that truly desirable women shouldn't even need to work while they were single, that their schedules should revolve around finding a husband rather than meetings, and deadlines, and paychecks. It was yet another example of how out-of-touch this entire reality competition was, and, yet, there Felicity was, tying herself up in knots and making herself sick with worry, because of the insipid thing anyway.
"Alright, you can do this, Smoak," she tried to psych herself up. It didn't work, but talking to herself did relieve some of her anxiety, so she continued to ramble out loud. (Okay, so she always talked to herself, and she always rambled, but work with her! Felicity was having a frakking meltdown here!) "You like food. You like sweets. And you're inventive." (With tech.)
As she ticked off her strengths, Felicity haphazardly started removing items from her junk drawer. After a quick examination, she'd either set them aside as a possible ingredient or toss them over her shoulder to be cleaned up later. "And there's the theme. Don't forget about the bloody theme." Which was hot holiday drinks – normally something that would galvanize Felicity and inspire her, because nobody loved festive coffee, hot apple cider, toddies, mulled wine, or hot cocoa more than she did, but Felicity was lucky if she could make hot chocolate in the microwave... let alone turn it into a baked good.
Unfortunately, an inordinate amount of red pens, several pairs of tights, a back-up pair of flats, an assortment of dental hygiene products, far too many bottles of finger nail polish, some clothespins (Hey, they made convenient chip bag closures!), a hair brush that was missing several teeth, practically an entire aisle's worth of tampons and panty-liners, a rainbow assortment of hair-ties, a man's tie (She, sadly had no idea how that got in there.), a tube of deodorant, a miniature menorah, and two slinkies (Yes, two – do not ask her!), all Felicity managed to scrounge up that was even edible was a jar of cookie butter and a half-eaten sandwich which she had shoved in the drawer a few days prior when her boss made an unannounced (and totally unwelcome) stop by her office to discuss her future with the company.
Her love of fast food and habit of eating absolutely everything on her plate struck again!
With one last exasperated exclamation, "you've gotta be kidding me," Felicity swept the measly offerings into her arms and took off towards the break room at a run.
Okay, so maybe it wasn't a run per-say. She didn't run. She jogged...ish. She shuffled. Sometimes, Felicity honestly did skip, because it was an underrated mode of transportation and exercise, but whatever spastic combination of movements she happened to piece together in her efforts to get to the 12th floor kitchenette, they were done so in a hurry. At least, there she'd find the coffee. Not only did coffee always make things better, but she needed it. And, if anything would be able to lift her spirits, it would be her mug collection which, intended by Felicity or not, had somehow managed to migrate most of its way to QC.
And that's when inspiration struck.
She'd make a mug cake!
Alright, so maybe it wouldn't be a mug cake exactly. But it'd be in a mug! And it'd be sweet, because she'd add the cookie butter. And it'd be hot, because she'd microwave that... biscotti. And, while she didn't have access to any flour, bread was made from flour, there was such a thing as bread pudding, and beggars couldn't be choosers. Plus, she'd even sacrifice her favorite mug to help make up for its contents. Maybe Oliver Queen would be so charmed by her panda cup which woke up when hot and went to sleep when cold, which had panda ears for handles, that he'd forget to even taste the coffee-cookie butter bread pudding (hopefully) like substance inside the mug.
It was a long shot, and she was down to less than fifteen minutes to get the concoction thrown together and then down on the entry table before the Queens waltzed in for the tasting ceremony, but this was her pride, her privacy, and her professional career on the line.
It was do-and-hope-Oliver-Queen-doesn't-die-time.
Something was rotten in the state of Starling, and it wasn't just Felicity's dessert submission.
After just skating her mug-of-death onto the Michelin five star looking table in Queen Consolidated's ground floor located and largest media room (usually used for press conferences, now used for the death of the 19th amendment), Felicity had hightailed it back to her office. Though her work day was officially over, and there was no way she'd actually get anything productive done that evening, the entire reality competition was like a train wreck she couldn't look away from... only, instead of actually being in danger of wrecking, the train really contained an evil intent upon killing everyone on board, and the train would neither stop nor let her jump off even in flight. (And, yes, she meant flight. Watch some Doctor Who already!) So, instead of going home – like she should have, Felicity sat glued to her computer screen, watching the nightmare that was Oliver Queen's (kind of creepy) personal life unfound before her very eyes.
One of the local news channels... the one with that annoyingly peppy Bethany Snow... was live broadcasting the tasting for all of Starling to watch. While Felicity hated being one of the sheep willingly being led to the Queen family slaughter of women's rights, she just had to know, too. She wouldn't be able to sleep well again until she was sure that she was officially done in the competition. And so she waited. And she actually gave her viewership numbers to the infuriating reality dating segment. And she was appalled at what she saw.
So, apparently, presentation was a thing.
Thanks a lot, Donna!
Just like with her wanting to lose but not liking it, Felicity didn't appreciate being showed up by women who actually wanted to impress Oliver Queen and his family. Maybe she couldn't bake, but she could decorate. She knew colors, and she knew textures, and she knew how to arrange something visually to stimulate and catch the human eye. So, while she certainly wasn't ashamed of her panda bear mug, it didn't exactly jump off the screen and impress.
However, this should have been just one more reason why Megan Kuttler was the first booted from the competition.
But she wasn't.
And Oliver Queen actually ate her mug-of-death – not just a bite, or two, or even three, but the entire, nauseating, poisoning thing! He ate it, he managed to smile afterwards without gagging or throwing it back up, and he passed her along to the second round. If it had been anything else, Felicity just would have assumed that there was a cook out there in Starling City who was actually worse than she was, but she saw those submissions – in high definition no less, and she witnessed the Queen family's reactions for herself after Oliver eliminated some woman named Rachel who submitted hot apple cider cupcakes with brown sugar and cinnamon frosting. With edible decorations. And garnishes. Those cupcakes made Felicity's mouth water through a screen!
Hence, the rottenness.
Before that evening, Felicity Smoak never would have believed that there could be something that could make her actually want to stay in the reality baking/dating competition, but, for once in her life, she had been wrong. (Okay, so there was that whole goth/Cooper/hactivist... phase in college, but she liked to think of that as growing pains rather than a string of bad decisions.) Anyway, Felicity would have to admit her mistake, because, now, she did want to stay. The fact that Oliver Queen seemed determined to eliminate anybody but MeganKuttler and the fact that Felicity was still in the competition made both Oliver and Bake for a Date with Oliver Queen a mystery.
And she hated mysteries.
They needed to be solved.