Pumpkin Pie Wars

Julie Gonzalo,Michele Scarabelli,Meghan Gardiner,Lucia Frangione

Ten years ago, the McArthy and Harper families severed all cordial ties with each other after the family matriarchs, once-best friends Faye McArthy and Lydia Harper, had a falling out when Lydia, whom Faye taught to bake, opened her own bakery without Faye, a co-owned and operated bakery which was their dream. Lydia had to choose the seed money that was provided to her for the venture or Faye, and she chose the money. Since Faye opened her own bakery, the fortunes of the rival businesses rise and fall with whoever wins the annual Lake Shore County Harvest Festial Pumpkin Pie Bake-Off. Since Lydia won for the last three years, Faye's bakery is falling on hard times, so she's counting on winning this year's bake-off and the lucrative contract to service a major hotel for the business to pull through. Making matters worse, an accident forces Faye out of this year's bake-off, leaving the bakery's fortunes in the hands of her daughter, cooking/baking-challenged Casey McArthy, a Wharton business graduate who could have had her choice of finance jobs in New York but chose to come home to Emeryville to help her mother handle all the bakery's financial matters. Learning what happened to Faye, Lydia decides to hand over the bakery's reins at the bake-off to her son, Cordon Bleu-trained chef Sam Harper. Despite Sam having the obvious upper hand over Casey at the bake-off, not all is harmonious between Sam and his mother; Sam wants to expand the business into a full-service restaurant against his conservative mother's wishes. With both their bakery-business fortunes at stake and learning of the other's problems, Casey and Sam, who never had any real issue with each other, decide to help each other achieve their short-term goals: Sam will teach Casey how to bake for the bake-off, while Casey will help Sam with the business proposal to turn the bakery into a full-service restaurant. In the process, they both realize that there can be only one bake-off winner although both their dreams hinge on winning--and that they are falling in love with each other. The answer is to focus on a common goal important to both of them.—Huggo