Karen's Cooking Contest

  The author gratefully acknowledges

  Gabrielle Charbonnet

  for her help

  with this book.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  1 Back at School

  2 Home Cooking

  3 Chocolate Magic

  4 Recipes, Recipes

  5 Round One

  6 Tasty Treats

  7 Round Two

  8 None for Karen

  9 The Secret Recipe

  10 Karen’s Clubhouse

  11 The Not-So-Secret Recipe

  12 Nannie Is Disappointed

  13 Missing Page Eighty-eight

  14 Begin Reading

  15 The Pantry

  16 Good Luck, Nannie

  17 The Final Round

  18 And the Winner Is …

  19 Chocolate Magic, Inc.

  20 Out With the Old, In With the New

  About the Author

  Also Available

  Copyright

  Back at School

  “Who is Mark Fitzpatrick?” asked Pamela Harding.

  “He is the weatherman for Channel Seven,” said Nancy Dawes.

  Pamela snorted. “A weatherman is not a real celebrity,” she said.

  “Is too,” said Nancy.

  “Is not,” said Pamela.

  That is when I stopped listening. I knew Nancy could stand up for herself against Pamela. After all, she has had a lot of practice. We all have. That is because Pamela is the class meanie-mo.

  We are in Ms. Colman’s second-grade class at Stoneybrook Academy, in Stoney-brook, Connecticut. Nancy and Pamela were disagreeing about our latest class project. Of course, I was on Nancy’s side. Mark Fitzpatrick counts as a celebrity. He is on television, after all.

  You might be wondering who I am. I will give you some clues:

  1) I am not the class meanie-mo.

  2) I am seven years old.

  3) Nancy Dawes and Hannie Papadakis are my two best friends. Together, we are the Three Musketeers.

  Give up? I am Karen Brewer! You will find out a lot more about me soon.

  Our class project was going to be gigundoly fun. Before our winter vacation, Ms. Colman (who is the best teacher in the whole wide world) had asked us each to write letters to five celebrities. We asked the celebrities to write back and send us their favorite recipes. When all our celebrities’ recipes are here, we will type them neatly on our class computer and make them into a real cookbook.

  It will be a very special and glamorous cookbook.

  Nancy had chosen a local weatherman as one of her celebrities. Pamela had chosen only huge superstars. I bet Nancy would hear from her celebrities before Pamela heard from hers.

  I had chosen really fun people: my favorite author, my favorite movie star, my favorite singer, the owner of Funland, and finally, my favorite gymnast. I could not wait for them to write back and send me their favorite recipes. Though sometimes I wondered whether they would even have favorite recipes. Maybe because they are rich and famous, they just eat out all the time. Or maybe they have chefs at home and never cook for themselves. If their chef sent in a recipe, would it count? I hoped so.

  “Remember, class,” said Ms. Colman. “If you do not hear from your celebrities, you may ask a family member for a recipe instead.”

  “A family member!” said Pamela. “That would be almost as boring as Nancy’s weatherman.”

  “Mark Fitzpatrick is a celebrity!” cried Nancy.

  Ms. Colman held up her hand. “That will be enough of that,” she said.

  “Hmphh. No one wants to use a family member,” muttered Pamela.

  For once, I had to agree with Pamela (though I did not say so out loud). Using a recipe from a family member would not be nearly as special or glamorous as a recipe from a celebrity. After all, a celebrity’s recipe would probably be for Oysters Rockefeller or something. A family recipe would be for meat loaf.

  I really hoped I would not have to ask for a family member’s recipe. For one thing, it would mean choosing between my two families. In my big-house family, Nannie does most of the cooking. At the little house, Mommy and Seth do the cooking. I love all of them. It would not be easy to choose which one to ask for a recipe. Hmm. I guess I should explain my two houses and my two families.

  Home Cooking

  This month is a big-house month. That means I live with Daddy and my big-house family. Next month, February, will be a little-house month. I will live with Mommy and my little-house family.

  A long time ago, every month was a big-house month. Back then, I only had one family: me, Mommy, Daddy, and my little brother, Andrew. (He is four going on five.) Then Mommy and Daddy got divorced. So Andrew and I went to live with Mommy in the little house. (Daddy stayed at the big house. It is the house he grew up in.) After awhile, Mommy got married again, to Seth Engle. He is my stepfather. (He is very, very nice. He makes beautiful furniture out of wood.) So now my little-house family is Mommy, Seth, Andrew, Rocky (Seth’s dog), Midgie (Seth’s cat), Emily Junior (my rat), and Bob (Andrew’s hermit crab).

  Back at the big house, Daddy got married again too, to Elizabeth Thomas. She already had four children. Sam and Charlie are teenagers. They go to Stoneybrook High School. Kristy is thirteen. She is a terrific big sister. David Michael is seven years old, but he doesn’t go to my school. He goes to Stoneybrook Elementary.

  Daddy and Elizabeth adopted my little sister, Emily Michelle, from a country called Vietnam. She is two and a half years old. And Elizabeth’s mother, Nannie, came to live at the big house to help take care of all the people and the pets. Shannon is David Michael’s big puppy. Boo-Boo is Daddy’s grumpy old cat. Andrew and I have two goldfish. Their names are Goldfishie and Crystal Light the Second. And Emily Junior and Bob live at the big house whenever Andrew and I do. So you can see that the big house is pretty full!

  Andrew and I live at the little house one month, and at the big house one month. We go back and forth between our two houses, which is one of the reasons I call us Andrew Two-Two and Karen Two-Two. Besides families and houses, I have two of lots of things: stuffed cats, bicycles, beds. Not only that, but I even wear two pairs of glasses — the blue ones are for reading up close, and the pink ones are for the rest of the time. And I already told you about my two best friends, Hannie and Nancy.

  That afternoon, when I got home from school, Nannie was fixing dinner. It smelled delicious. I could hardly wait until it was time to eat.

  There are so many of us at the big house that we sit at a very long kitchen table, on two very long benches. Tonight I was sitting between Andrew and Elizabeth. (I usually try to sit next to Kristy.)

  “Ahem,” I said, once everyone had been served. (We were having vegetable lasagna. Yum!) “I would like to tell you about my class project.”

  “Go ahead, honey,” said Elizabeth.

  I told my big-house family about our celebrity-recipe cookbook, and how I hoped all five of my celebrities would write back soon.

  “Do not get your hopes up,” said Sam. “Celebrities hardly ever answer their fan mail.”

  “Do not discourage her,” said Kristy. “I think it is a neat idea. And I bet all of your celebrities will come through for you, Karen.”

  “Thank you,” I said. (Kristy is so nice.)

  “Let me know if you need a family member’s recipe,” said David Michael. “I have one for worm cake that I could give you.”

  I gave David Michael a Look. Sam and Charlie laughed.

  “I think your project sounds lovely, Karen,” Elizabeth said. “What will your class do with these cookbooks once they are finished?”

  “We are going to sell them in the school library,” I said. “We wil
l give the money to the library so they can buy more books.”

  “That is great, Karen,” said Daddy.

  “I have an announcement too,” said Nannie. “I am going to enter a cooking contest. It is being sponsored by the Cocoa-Best chocolate company. They will award a prize for the best recipe using their chocolate.”

  “Yum, chocolate! That sounds like fun,” I said.

  “Does anyone want to help me with the contest? asked Nannie.

  “No, thanks. Count me out,” said Sam.

  “I am pretty busy right now,” said Kristy.

  “I will help you!” I cried. “I am very good at contests.”

  “Thank you, Karen,” said Nannie. “We will get started this weekend.”

  “Now I have an announcement,” said Daddy. “You all know the little butler’s pantry by the mudroom?”

  We nodded. The big house really is big. In fact, it is a mansion. There are three floors and nine bedrooms. The kitchen is huge (but cozy). I had practically forgotten about the little pantry by the mudroom. Nannie uses the bigger, modern pantry attached to the kitchen.

  “It is just sitting there going to waste,” said Daddy. “It is full of junk no one uses. Not only that, but the walls are crumbling, and the window leaks when it rains.”

  “What should we do about it?” asked Elizabeth.

  “That is what I wanted to ask all of you,” said Daddy. “We should fix it up and turn it into a useful room. But I cannot think of what to do with it. So I want each of you to come up with ideas. We can discuss them as a family and decide what we should turn the pantry into.”

  Oh, boy! I thought. This could be fun.

  Chocolate Magic

  “Chocolate fudge?” I asked.

  Nannie thought for a moment. “No,” she said.

  I flipped through the cookbook pages again. It was Saturday morning. Nannie and I were starting to work on her chocolate recipe for the contest.

  “Chocolate-chip cookies?” I said. “You make great chocolate-chip cookies.”

  “Too ordinary,” said Nannie. “Everyone and his brother will be baking cookies.”

  I looked in the cookbook again.

  Nannie flipped through the pages of another cookbook. “Brownies?” she asked me.

  “I do not know,” I said. “I think a lot of people will be making brownies too.”

  “Chocolate mousse?” asked Nannie.

  “What is that?” I said.

  “Like chocolate pudding.”

  “Well, maybe chocolate pudding, even fancy chocolate pudding, is not really different enough.”

  “Here is one,” said Nannie. “It is for a dipping chocolate. It is a chocolate sauce. You dip strawberries or other fruit in it and it hardens like chocolate candy. Or you can pour it over ice cream. A recipe for dipping chocolate is pretty unusual.”

  “It sounds great,” I said. “Especially poured over ice cream.”

  “Let me make a list of the ingredients I need,” said Nannie.

  * * *

  Nannie experimented with the recipe for a long time. The contest recipe had to be original, so Nannie could not just use the one from the cookbook. It had to be her own special recipe. She added some vanilla, and she used less sugar. We had to do many taste tests.

  “This one tastes great,” said Nannie. “But when you dip fruit in it, the chocolate does not get hard.”

  “It has to get hard,” I agreed. “Or it will be too messy to eat.”

  “Also, you could not set the fruit in a box or on a platter,” said Nannie. “I will have to fix it.”

  * * *

  I helped Nannie all weekend. We had bought pounds and pounds of Cocoa-Best chocolate. We melted it and mixed it and added this and that. My job was to wash the strawberries and other fruit for the dipping. We tried bananas, oranges, strawberries, and even raisins and peanuts.

  You will not believe this, but I almost got tired of chocolate. We tried the chocolate sauce on ice cream and on cake, and tried dipping cookies in it too.

  “This looks great,” said Charlie, popping a cookie in his mouth.

  We waited.

  Charlie chewed the cookie and swallowed it. “It is good, but maybe just a little too sweet,” he said. “Could you make it less sweet?”

  Nannie and I sighed. Back to the drawing board.

  * * *

  “Mmmm,” said Kristy. “This is really good. I think the strawberries and the pretzels are the best.”

  “I think so too,” said Nannie. She smiled at me, and I gave her a thumbs-up. (If you have never eaten a chocolate-covered pretzel, you might think it sounds yucky. But it is yummy.)

  “What do you say, Karen?” asked Nannie. “Is this the one?”

  I nodded. “I think so, Nannie. It is sweet, but not too sweet. It is a nice chocolatey color. It gets hard after you dip something in it. It is good and shiny. I think it may be perfect.”

  “Okay, then,” said Nannie. “I will write down exactly what we used and how we made it. We will not tell anyone else what is in it. It will be our super-secret recipe. And we might just win the contest!”

  Recipes, Recipes

  “I got one!” cried Chris Lamar. “I got one!”

  It was Wednesday morning. Chris had just picked up the mail for Ms. Colman’s class. Recipes from celebrities had started arriving at our school office. Jannie Gilbert had received one. So had Hank Reubens, Addie Sidney, Sara Ford, Leslie Morris, Pamela Harding (boo and bullfrogs), and Omar Harris. Ricky Torres, my pretend husband, had received two. So had Hannie and Bobby Gianelli. The rest of us — me, Tammy and Terri Barkan (they are twins), Ian Johnson, Audrey Green, Nancy, and Natalie Springer — had not heard from our celebrities yet.

  Every day I looked through Ms. Colman’s stack of mail. Every day there was nothing for me.

  Chris ripped open his envelope. Inside was a signed picture of Tough Tommy Blackcat. (Lots of the other celebrities had sent signed pictures also.) “Look!” said Chris, holding up the picture. “It shows Tough Tommy on his motorcycle. He looks like he is about to go fight the bad guys.” Chris waved the picture around.

  “What is his recipe?” asked Bobby.

  Chris looked in the envelope again. He pulled out a piece of paper. “It is for bean dip.”

  “Ew, gross,” said Bobby, wrinkling his nose.

  “I like bean dip,” said Chris. “It is good with tortilla chips.”

  “Beans, beans, they’re good for your heart,” sang Bobby. “The more you eat, the more you —”

  “Okay, Bobby,” said Ms. Colman. “We get the picture. Chris, would you please put your recipe in our recipe file?”

  “How many recipes do we have now?” asked Addie. She rolled her wheelchair closer to the computer table.

  Chris counted them. “Fourteen.”

  “That is not enough for a cookbook,” said Addie. “We will need many more than that.”

  “I am sure we will hear from more celebrities,” said Ms. Colman. “But just to be on the safe side, maybe we should ask family members for recipes also.”

  “Nooo,” said Pamela. “It should be a celebrity-only cookbook.”

  “We will try to make it a celebrity-only cookbook,” said Ms. Colman. “But if that does not work we may fill it in with family recipes. They could be very interesting. Some family recipes have been passed down for generations. You might have one that is for special occasions, or for holidays. In the cookbook we could explain about the recipe. People would like to read about them.”

  “I guess,” said Pamela.

  Addie had been looking through the recipes. “We may have another problem,” she said. She had spread the recipes out on her wheelchair tray. “Some of these recipes sound okay. But some sound kind of weird. There is a Jell-O recipe here that uses Coca-Cola. That does not sound very healthy.”

  “That sounds disgusting,” I said.

  “We will have to go through the recipes and decide which ones to include in our cookbook,”
said Ms. Colman. “We may have to leave some of them out. Which is why it would be good to have as many recipes as possible. So do think about asking your family members to contribute.”

  Hmm, I thought. So far I had not heard from any of my celebrities. But I was certain I would. I just had to. I did not want to use a family member’s recipe. What would I turn in? David Michael’s worm cake?

  Round One

  On Saturday afternoon I got to do something very special. It was the first day of the chocolate-recipe contest. Nannie and I took her dipping chocolate to a hotel in down-town Stoneybrook. That was where the first round of the judging would take place.

  At the hotel, a sign in the lobby said COCOA-BEST CHOCOLATE COOK-OFF, THIS WAY. We followed the sign to the large ballroom in the hotel. Inside were many rows of tables covered with white cloths.

  Nannie gave her name to a lady at a table by the door and paid her entrance fee. Then together we found a table with a sign that said JANET TAYLOR. (That is Nannie’s real name.)

  I helped Nannie get ready. First I put up another sign that I had made myself. It said CHOCOLATE MAGIC on it. That was what Nannie had decided to call her dipping chocolate. I had used brown markers and gold glitter on the sign. It looked much fancier than any of the other signs I saw.

  On our table Nannie set a serving dish on a little stand. In the stand was a small candle. The candle would keep the chocolate warm during the contest. (Dipping chocolate is liquid when it is warm, and hard when it is cool.)

  Nannie took out a cookie sheet and covered it with waxed paper. Then, while she was filling in some papers for the contest, I started dipping.

  First I took a long wooden toothpick and stuck it into a strawberry. Then I dipped almost the whole strawberry in the warm chocolate. I swirled it carefully, just the way Nannie had shown me. When the strawberry was covered with a thick layer of chocolate, I placed it gently on the cookie sheet. Ta-daaa!

  “That looks perfect, Karen,” said Nannie. She finished her paperwork and started dipping with me.

  All around us people were setting up their tables. There were lots of women and lots of men. And there was chocolate everything: cakes, cookies, brownies, sauces, candies in fancy shapes, chocolate decorations, chocolate drinks … and there were two other people who were fixing chocolate-dipped fruit.