Margery and Penny are baking rivals hoping to win the Women's Institute District Best Homemade Fruitcake competition. As Margery sets about preparing her best recipe with the help of her trusty cookbook - The Perfect Fruitcake by Bunty Crow - she is so obsessed it hardly registers when she catches her husband in bed with their housekeeper, Marie-Babette. Then comes the shocking news that Penny has died in a car crash. Was this Margery's fault for wishing such a thing? Soon enough though, guilt gives way to glee with the realization that her biggest rival is gone.

However, Margery's world is turned upside down once more when her idol Bunty Crow, the All-England WI Fruitcake champion (eight years running) moves into her area and declares that she will take first prize in the competition. If only Penny was still alive they could join forces and triumph together. There seems to be no hope until Marie-Babette (a voodoo priestess from Haiti) offers to help. She performs a ritual and, to Marg