Friends · Letter 51
The winning cake has a witness
Fictional editorial letter
Dear Duck,
I entered our neighborhood baking competition with a cake from a recipe my friend gave me. I won first prize.
When the organizer asked where the recipe came from, I panicked and said, “It’s a family secret.” My friend was standing beside the tea urn. We are not related.
She has now sent me a photograph of the recipe card, including the little grease stain I copied onto my competition notes. I think the stain was unnecessary evidence.
The organizer wants to print the recipe under my name in next month’s newsletter. Can I quietly give my friend half the prize and leave the story alone?
— First Prize, Second Thoughts
Dear Decorated Sponge,
Your friend has not submitted an invoice. She has supplied a remarkably well-preserved opportunity to stop digging.
Tell her you panicked, claimed credit you should have shared, and will correct it. Leave out the part about the organizer putting you on the spot. The tea urn was presumably nearby; you could have looked toward it and said her name.
Then contact the organizer before the newsletter is printed. Say, “I baked the winning cake, but the recipe came from my friend. I gave you the wrong impression at the judging. Please credit her if she agrees to have the recipe published.”
That last part matters. Ask her whether the recipe may be printed at all. Giving you a card for your kitchen did not necessarily mean volunteering it for circulation between the parish notices and a secondhand lawn mower.
Also check the competition rules. If the prize required an original recipe, tell the organizer and let them decide what happens to it. Do this before spending it on a commemorative cake stand.
You can offer to share the prize, but do not make the offer conditional on her remaining quiet. Half a hamper is an unconvincing price for becoming your invented grandmother.
You did bake a good cake. Correcting the credit will leave you with that perfectly respectable achievement. Persisting in the family-secret story may eventually require you to manufacture an aunt, two childhood summers and a photograph of a nonexistent farmhouse.
I have enough relatives. You cannot borrow one.
Answered by Lady PetronellaTact was not included in the inheritance.