A Spoonful of Sugar by Kerry Barrett

Author:Kerry Barrett [Barrett, Kerry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781474035897
Google: rQEACQAAQBAJ
Amazon: B00XAFSXGA
Goodreads: 25501514
Publisher: Carina
Published: 2015-08-09T16:00:00+00:00

Fourteen

To my surprise, the judges did.

‘These are terrific,’ Lizzie said, munching happily. ‘You’ve got the right amount of cream and icing, and they’re perfectly baked.’

I smiled in delight. Maybe I had inherited the family talent for baking after all.

‘Well done,’ Peter said grudgingly. I fought the urge to scowl at him. He was such a misery guts.

Of course, Harry’s éclairs were voted best of the bunch, while June’s were also gorgeous. Wilf’s weren’t great. His second attempt at the dough had also been too runny, and he’d ended up with skinny little éclairs that were, according to Lizzie, ‘too chewy’.

‘You’ve made a right mess of those,’ Peter told him. Wilf looked glum and I felt sorry for him. Hopefully he’d pull it out of the bag in the next challenge. Although, I thought suddenly, my competitive nature finally getting into gear, if he did, then I’d probably be the one to go home this week. With the final round in sight – just two weeks away – I discovered I actually really, really wanted to make it to the end.

That was a surprise. I decided to spend our lunch break studying my notes and recipes for this afternoon’s test – pies.

We all sat together in the cafe for lunch, but instead of joining in the chatter, I read and re-read everything I’d brought with me. This next challenge was to make a three-tiered pie – a celebration pie. Jamie was thrilled with the very idea and had spent all week eagerly suggesting ideas and then gobbling them up as fast as I could make them. I’d eventually decided on a three-course-dinner pie. My smallest tier was a starter – a feta and spinach parcel sprinkled with sesame – then the main course was a traditional chicken and mushroom pie, and pudding, the biggest tier on the bottom, was a treacle tart. Apart from the timings, it was all pretty straightforward and once again I was worried I’d gone too simple.

Harry was making three kinds of fruit pies, each with a different fancy crust. June was doing pies for three occasions – Christmas, Easter and Halloween. And Wilf’s was genius. He was doing breakfast, lunch and dinner in pie form. Sausage, bacon and egg on one tier, a layer of Cornish pasty for lunch in the middle, and a coconut chicken curry pot pie on the bottom. It was a family recipe, passed down from his Jamaican mum and he was very secretive about it.

‘I’m not saying anything,’ he teased Harry as she asked him about it. ‘Ask June about hers.’

Frustrated, Harry turned her attention to June, who was more than pleased to chat,

‘I’ve got pie tins that belonged to my grandmother,’ she said. ‘They’re iron. Very heavy – you wouldn’t want to drop them. They’d cost a fortune if you bought them nowadays.’

‘How lovely,’ Harry said. ‘I’m using one of my mum’s recipes, too.’

I was a bit cross I hadn’t thought of doing that, but I pretended not to hear

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