Chapter One
The week of the funeral, we kept the bakery closed.
The entire time Grandpa Victor spent in the hospital and then hospice, the bakery had stayed open every day. I’d been here for months, keeping the bakery running while my grandma, my parents, and a rotating cast of aunts and uncles kept my grandpa company during the day. I stayed at my grandparents’ empty house and slipped out early every morning, long before the sun rose, just as we used to do together when I was a child visiting and watching my grandpa bake. I followed his recipes and kept the bakery well-supplied with Danish kringles and other local specialties, as much as it pained me to leave behind the recipes I was truly passionate about: flaky croissants, delicate pastries, napoleons, and éclairs. I’d go to Grandpa’s bedside after a long day at the bakery, flour-dusted and tired, and he’d beam at me, knowing I was doing just what he’d asked—keeping his work alive.
All that time, open despite everything, and now the bakery was dark. A closed sign hanging on the door in the middle of the day. I was sitting on the counter, the box of Grandpa Victor’s recipe cards in my lap. At this point, I had them memorized, but you couldn’t pay me to get rid of these cards, handwritten with smudged ballpoint pen in my grandfather’s careful all-caps.
The door jingled and I almost dropped the box, turning to face the customer and tell them that we weren’t open—and maybe we’d never be open again. When I went back to Los Angeles, the bakery would have to close its doors forever. My grandma in a kitchen was like a bull in a china shop. If the china shop was flammable and the bull had a knack for sparking flames and a propensity to mix up salt and sugar.
Instead of a customer at the door, it was Grandma Ruth, standing just inside the door, her hands on her hips as she gazed at the shadowy bakery.
“What are you doing sitting in the dark?” she asked, reaching for the light switch. The bakery flickered into its usual brightness, illuminating the dark circles under Grandma Ruth’s eyes.
“Did you sleep at all?” I asked, sliding the recipe box off my lap.
Grandma Ruth shrugged slightly, smiling ruefully.
“I thought I’d come in and clean up a little,” I said. “I left it in a bit of a state.”
I’d been here on Tuesday, prepping and baking in the wee hours of the morning, when the call had come in that Victor had passed in his sleep. I’d turned off the ovens and crammed everything haphazardly into containers to deter bugs, but there was flour on the counters and nothing was in its place.
Before I could say anything else, Grandma Ruth let herself behind the counter and pulled the broom off its hanger on the wall.
I opened my mouth to protest, but she was already wagging a finger. “I need something to do,” she said.
I slid off the counter and followed her around the bakery, packing away ingredients properly and throwing out week-old cookies
that had never made it off their baking sheet. Between the two of us, cleaning took hardly any time at all, and before long, I was elbow-deep in suds, washing the last of the mixing bowls I’d left in the sink the day the call came.
“Madeline,” Grandma Ruth said, leaning against the counter beside me as I washed. “You’ve been a real godsend to your grandpa and me these past few weeks. I don’t know what I would’ve done without you—gone crazy, I guess.”
“Stop, Ruth. I’ve only done what any family member would do.”
“I don’t see any other granddaughters or grandsons around here baking their butts off,” Grandma Ruth said, craning her neck to look back toward the front of the bakery and back toward the pantry for dramatic effect. “This has been all you, kiddo, and I’m sorry I’ve been so busy taking care of Victor to not express how grateful I am until now.”
“I miss him,” I said. Sometimes the simplest but truest words were the best comfort. “I know he’s only been gone a few days, but it feels like things will never be quite as bright without him.”
“I know just what you mean. Honestly, I’m grateful I’ll be kept busy closing up shop the next few weeks. It will be good to have the distraction.” She tapped her chin. “Eventually, I’ll have to get a job somewhere else, keep saving up for retirement … selling this place will go a little ways, but the real estate market’s not too hot. Anyway, it’ll be good to keep busy. It’s not in my nature to just sit around and do nothing, is it?”
The soapy water suddenly felt ice-cold. I’d always planned to return to my life in LA and the delightfully posh French restaurant where I worked as the pâtissier. My cozy, yet tiny, apartment with the plants in the window that were always on the verge of death. The rather charming French sommelier at the restaurant, James, who I’d barely gone on one date with before my mom called to
tell me that Victor had been hospitalized.
When I left LA, my job, my life there, it was supposed to be just for a week or two, to keep the business going until Victor got out of the hospital and back into the kitchen. Then my grandfather got worse, and it became a way to keep up the bakery’s income for Victor and Grandma Ruth as the medical bills piled up.
Now, I wasn’t sure. My half-glamorous, half-gritty life in the kitchen of Le Tableau Bleu felt so far away now, and none of it felt important anymore. What did it matter if I made the best, most gourmet éclairs in the Southern California food scene? What did a review in a food magazine mean if I was miles away from all my family as they grew older?
I withdrew my pruney hands from the water and dried them on the nearest dish towel, a novelty one embroidered with one of the windmills that were a signature of this gloriously Danish-themed town.
“Well,” I started, but my phone buzzed in my pocket. Grandma Ruth waved for me to answer, and I took it into the café area.
“Hello?”
“Madeline,” a stern, unyielding voice rang out, and I knew immediately it was Randall, my boss back at the restaurant. Speak of the devil.
“Yes,” I said. “Hi.”
“Did you get my email Thursday?” Randall asked. I heard clanging in the background and checked my watch they were just getting ready to open.
I cringed. “Yes,” I said. “Sorry, I forgot to reply.” He’d asked for an update on my leave of absence—and griped that my interim replacement’s chocolate fillings were always grainy. It was his way of paying a compliment.
“So?” he said. “When can we expect you back?”
I peered past the counter to where Grandma Ruth
was finishing rinsing off the mixing bowl I’d abandoned. She was humming under her breath, and once she hoisted the massive metal bowl onto the drying rack, I watched as her shoulders slumped and she let out a long sigh.
She and I had been avoiding the conversation about what would happen to the bakery once Victor passed. During the entire time I’d been staying here, running the bakery, today was the first time either of us had broached the subject. I knew Grandma Ruth couldn’t learn to bake: I’d had the misfortune of eating a box-mix pancake she cooked once. She was good with the business side, but Victor had always been the baker. My parents and Grandma Ruth and Victor’s other kids couldn’t take it over—they weren’t bakers, and they had their own jobs and lives elsewhere anyway. Without me, the bakery was done. I couldn’t even imagine Grandma Ruth getting a job somewhere else—some soul-sucking, lonely position at a big company? An exhausting minimum-wage job at a restaurant or café? And she’d be alone, her coterie of gal pals aside.
“Actually,” I said, turning back to the front of the store, with the adorable arched windows and the sights of Solvang, California, beyond them. The midday crowd was bustling by, locals on their way back from their lunch breaks and tourists on their way to the windmills. The hills in the distance that I knew sheltered the vineyards that had boomed in recent years here.
I cleared my throat. “I’m going to resign.”
There was a clatter from the kitchen, and as I listened to my now ex-boss hem and haw and curse about how he’d have to find someone better than the current temp to take my place, I held up a hand to keep Grandma Ruth at bay. She stood feet away from me, her hands raised at her sides in disbelief.
When I hung up, I could only shrug at her. “I want to stay,” I said, and she silently folded me into her arms. When she let go, she
kept her hands on my shoulders.
“But what about LA?” she said. “Won’t you miss it?”
“I’d miss you more,” I teased. She looked at me sternly, and I sighed. “I will miss baking French pastries. But my only real friend there just moved to New York, and my rent’s supposed to go up in a few months. The restaurant is exciting, but I never really cared about that. I just want to bake.”
Grandma Ruth turned away and looked at the bakery cases, perfectly empty and waiting for the next batch.
“If you’re staying,” she said, “I want you to make it yours. Victor would want that too.”
“Well, I could find a few more Danish recipes …”
“No,” Grandma Ruth said. She rifled through the cards in the recipe box. “Do your own recipes. Make it French.”
I forced a chuckle. “Ruth, this is a Danish-themed town.”
Solvang was like something straight out of a fairy tale—a tiny European village made up of cute cottages with white walls and shingled roofs, with its very own windmills and cobblestone streets. The fact that the town was nestled in Southern California, three hours outside of Los Angeles, only added to its magical quality. It was like a storybook mirage amid the rolling hills of the Santa Ynez Valley.
Like the other bakeries in town, Victor and Grandma Ruth’s bakery had always specialized in Danish desserts, a natural fit for Grandpa Victor, whose father had immigrated from Denmark. Grandpa Victor’s signature item was a spandauer, a round pastry with a jam center and glazed with white icing. It was Grandpa Victor’s secret recipe and their most popular dessert. French pastries would be heresy in these parts.
“That’s my condition,” Grandma Ruth said as she clutched Grandpa Victor’s recipe cards to her chest. “If you’re going to quit your
job and move here, I’m not letting you be the pastry chef unless you make your recipes.”
I couldn’t help but smile.
“Okay,” I said. “Deal.”
Chapter Two
Two months later
“Do you have any apple skiers?”
The customer leaned over the bakery counter. She wore a red bonnet tied below her chin. Two long blonde braids were attached to the bonnet and hung well below her own natural, shortly cropped hair. Her husband, perusing the far end of the bakery counter, wore a plastic Viking helmet.
“I think you mean æbleskiver,” I said gently.
“Yes, that’s it! I’ve heard they’re the thing to get here. What are they exactly?”
“Sort of like a pancake ball,” I explained patiently, and certainly not for the first time. “You must be visiting us from out of town.”
“How’d you know?” the woman asked, tugging on the end of one of her artificial braids.
Between their novelty headgear, comfortable footwear and the series of shopping bags they each clutched, she and her husband both practically screamed “tourist.” But I knew this routine well enough by now and played my part adroitly.
“Oh, just a lucky guess. I’m afraid we don’t sell æbleskiver here. It’s a Danish pastry.”
“What isn’t Dutch around here?” asked the husband, stepping over to join his wife.
“Danish,” I corrected. “But this is a French pâtisserie. I’m Madeline Andersen, the owner. We don’t have any æbleskiver or kringles. But we do have a lot of other things—croissants, petit fours. And our specialty of the house—éclairs. Here, give one of the pistachio crèmes a try. I made them myself this morning.”
I cut one of the fresh éclairs neatly in half and handed the two pieces over to the tourist couple. The woman looked a bit suspiciously at the light green pistachio cream, but they both dutifully devoured their portion of éclair within seconds.
“Wow,” said the husband. “That’s great! And I don’t even like pistachios!”
“Do they come in other flavors?” asked the wife.
“They sure do,” Grandma Ruth said, walking over from the register where she’d just finishing ringing up a customer. “Let me show you …”
I let Grandma Ruth take it from there, satisfied that my latest batch of éclairs had won us another couple of converts. Now if only the locals were as easy to convince as the tourists, we’d be doing big business. But building a local customer base had proven an uphill battle ever since the bakery’s grand reopening. Owning my own bakery had been a lifelong dream of mine, though the reality was proving to be more of a mixed bag. Certainly I had never envisioned that my dream French bakery would be located in a Danish tourist town.
I grew up visiting my grandma and grandpa in Solvang throughout my childhood and teens. Every summer my parents took a two-week cruise with their closest friends, the Martindales. Most kids would have been upset
at being left behind, but I looked forward to their annual departure because it meant I got to visit Grandma Ruth and Victor.
The picturesque town was truly magical to me as a child, and there was always something to do. Solvang thrived on the tourist trade, whether it was folks stopping over for a few hours while on their way to LA or Angelenos seeking a break from the city. Even outside of its quaint architecture, walkable downtown and many small independent shops and businesses, Solvang had a surprising amount to offer. There were a series of annual festivals, such as Danish Days and Julefest, the Christmas celebration, and now the vineyards offered additional upscale activities for adults.
But even more than the town itself, I’d always looked forward to spending time here, in the bakery. It was already several decades old when I would visit as a kid, well-established in the community with a thriving customer base of locals and tourists. I was enthralled by everything in the bakery back then—the industrial-sized mixers I could literally sit in as a child; the constant, comforting scent of cinnamon and sugar; and, of course, the endless rows of desserts. I loved waking up while it was still dark outside to go with my grandma and grandpa to the bakery and begin the morning baking, watching with pride as they joked and chatted with the stream of customers who came in throughout the day.
Those summer visits were pure magic and were the reason I first dreamed of becoming a baker. Unlike most of my high school peers I knew exactly what career I wanted to pursue and went straight to culinary school after graduation. A post-grad six-month sojourn in Europe, eating my way through some of the most famed bakeries and restaurants in the world, convinced me that French baking could not be beat. I became obsessed with all things patisserie and upon returning to LA got my first job as an assistant pastry chef at a posh French restaurant. The LA restaurant scene was fierce and competitive—and I loved
every minute of it. I worked my way slowly but steadily up the ranks throughout my early twenties, moving up to better and better restaurants until I was finally named head pastry chef at Le Tableau Bleu, an up-and-coming French fusion spot beloved by young Hollywood.
It only made sense that I would return to the place that inspired me to bake in the first place.
I shook myself from my reverie as Grandma Ruth finished ringing up the tourist couple’s purchase—a box of éclairs for themselves plus several boxes of macarons to take to friends and family members back home. I watched with pride as she chatted them up, just like the old days when she and Grandpa Victor ran the bakery. I hoped to foster the same community feel that always seemed to come so naturally to them. Though not everything was the same: I’d certainly instituted some major cosmetic changes to the place, along with completely changing the entire menu.
We used some of Grandpa Victor’s life insurance money to totally renovate the space. We traded the traditional but old and gouged dark wood and red Danish flags for durable marble countertops and lots of vintage mirrors on the wall, with brass accents like you’d find in many a Parisian patisserie. There were small white iron tables and matching chairs placed in front of the shop and a charming vintage chandelier I found at the local flea market hung from the ceiling. The lighter, airer décor made the small space seem twice as large and allowed greater focus on the baked goods in the long, wraparound bakery counter. The pastel petit fours, flower-draped cakes, and éclairs frosted in a variety of colors practically dazzled. It perfectly matched the dream I’d long held in my head for my own bakery—even if we were embedded in a Danish-themed town.
But I’d figured that specializing in French baked goods would give us a competitive edge, once the locals could get over the shock. There were already several other bakeries in the small town that churned out all of the traditional Danish treats that visitors came seeking. We offered a literal different flavor. The one Danish recipe I’d insisted on keeping was Grandpa Victor’s signature...
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