Rose gulped. She knew the Gala des Gâteaux Grands was a big deal, but she wasn’t expecting banners the size of blimps.
Stefan held the back door open while Rose and Purdy and the rest of the family piled out of the car. As they pushed through the giant revolving glass door in the front of the centre, a nervous woman with short golden hair and extremely thin lips, which she’d painted fire-engine red, ran over.
“Rosemary Bliss?” she said, taking Purdy’s arm and pulling her towards a set of giant double doors. “You are late for the orientation! You must hurry!”
“No, no, I’m Purdy Bliss,” said Rose’s mother.
The woman stopped in her tracks and eyed the rest of the group suspiciously. “Then which one of you is Rosemary Bliss? Who is our chef?”
Rose hooked her thumb against the chest of her hooded sweatshirt. “Me?”
Confusion flashed across the red-lipped woman’s face. “Ah. I see. My name is Flaurabelle. I am chief assistant to Chef Jean-Pierre Jeanpierre. And you are late!” She ushered Rose through the double doors, with the rest of the Blisses following behind.
The room on the other side of the doors was immense. High ceilings arched overhead, with intricate hanging chandeliers. The floor was crowded with people sitting around large round tables. In the centre of each table was a giant crystal mixing bowl containing multi-coloured batter. All of the tables were filled except one.
Everyone turned to watch as the red-lipped woman led the Blisses to the empty table. Rose sat with Purdy and Ty on either side of her. “The batter is for decoration only,” the red-lipped woman warned in a whisper. “We already had an incident this morning. Please do not eat the batter.”
“OK,” Rose said quietly. She turned to the people glaring at them from a nearby table. “Sorry we’re late,” she said.
“Americans,” she heard someone sneer.
Just then the chandeliers went dark and a spotlight shone on a balcony on the back wall of the room. Pre-recorded orchestral music swelled as a man wearing a chef’s coat made entirely of red velvet appeared atop the balcony. The man was clearly old – not as old as Balthazar, but far older than Purdy and Albert – and completely hairless. His head was bald, his cheeks and chin were bald – he even lacked eyebrows. His bald head was small compared to his rotund belly, giving him the overall appearance of a turtle.
How do I get myself into these things? Rose wondered.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” boomed an announcer, “please welcome the inventor of chocolate éclairs, the pre-eminent pastry chef of France, and most importantly, the founder of the Gala des Gâteaux Grands, Chef Jean-Pierre Jeanpierre!”
As the audience applauded, Jean-Pierre Jeanpierre reached up, took hold of a set of handlebars hanging above the balcony, and stepped over the railing. The spotlight followed him as he soared down a zip line from the balcony to a stage on the other side of the room.
Chef Jeanpierre landed on the stage in a rumpled pile of red velvet. He huffed and puffed his way to a standing position and approached a podium, his arms held up like he was the pope.
Rose’s stomach fluttered. She had read about Jean-Pierre Jeanpierre, of course. In a sense, he truly was the pope of baking. From her reading she knew that he took seven lumps of sugar in his morning coffee, that he’d had his hometown of St Aubergine renamed St Jeanpierre, and that he slept exclusively on pillows made of angel food cake, which he baked fresh every evening.
Whenever Rose thought that she’d become too obsessed with baking, she reminded herself about Jean-Pierre Jeanpierre.
Jean-Pierre’s eyes glimmered wide from behind his spectacles. He tapped the microphone, then said, “Bienvenue à la Gala des Gâteaux Grands.”
The room erupted into violent applause as everyone jumped to their feet and cheered.
“Please!” yelled Jean-Pierre. “Sit! Twenty of the world’s fiercest culinary competitors – and their assistants – are in this room,” said Jean-Pierre. “None of them as fierce as myself, of course, but this is why I exclude myself from competition.”
As Jean-Pierre was boasting, Rose glanced round the room. At one table sat a slight, bespectacled man with his arms folded, holding whisks like knives. In front of his plate was a name tag that read WEI WEN, CHINA.
At another table, a young man smirked behind a name tag labelled ROHIT MANSUKHANI, INDIA. At still another table sat a lithe blond man who looked to be eight feet tall: Dag Ferskjold, Norway. He peered at the ceiling with a thousand-yard stare. None of the other contestants looked particularly happy or excited.
“Each morning at 9am,” Jean-Pierre went on, “I will announce the surprise theme of the day. Past themes have included things like FLAKY. FLOURLESS. ROLLED. GREEN. Whatever crosses my mind as I wake. Where do the themes come from? Who knows!”
Rose turned round in her seat and glanced at the other side of the room. There was a tawny woman with short blonde hair gelled into spikes – Irina Klechevsky, Russia – and a tall bald man with exceedingly white teeth – Malik Hall, Senegal. There was a short man with sallow skin and big lips – Victor Cabeza, Mexico – and a handsome man with shoulder-length brown hair – Peter Gianopolous, Greece. There was Fritz Knapschildt from Germany, King Phokong from Thailand, Niccolo Puzzio from Italy, and many more, all grown-ups wearing stern, competitive looks. They were out for blood.
What am I doing here? thought Rose.
Rose was relieved to spot a table with two French girls who looked like they could be in high school. Their name tags read MIRIAM DESJARDINS, FRANCE and MURIEL DESJARDINS, FRANCE; and, upon closer examination, it seemed that they were identical twins, though one had long, brown hair and the other one had short, brown hair.
Ty had seen them, too. He was leaning as far back in his chair as he could, raising and lowering his eyebrows at them. The girls were too busy staring at Jean-Pierre to notice.
“After I announce the theme,” Jean-Pierre continued, “you will have one hour to collect a special ingredient of your own choosing. The rest of your ingredients must come from the Gala kitchen.”
It suddenly occurred to Rose that Aunt Lily was probably sitting somewhere in that room at that very moment. Rose looked around and finally spotted the producers of 30-Minute Magic, Ryan and Kyle, sitting at the table on the other side of the room. Both producers were typing on their phones; Lily herself was nowhere to be found.
Jean-Pierre paused for a minute to take a sip of tea. “At 10am, after you’ve collected your special ingredient, the competition will take place. There will be cameras filming you from every angle, capturing every turn of the spoon, every bead of sweat, every tear. You must love the cameras, and also ignore them.”
Rose prayed that she wouldn’t produce any tears for them to capture.
“After the baking you will face the judge’s table, where your desserts will be sampled by the judge, who is myself. After that, I will announce who will move on to the next day of competition and who will be sent back to their houses to cry and relive the painful memories of what they did wrong, over and over, for the rest of their lives.”
The audience tittered meanly.
“There will be five days of competition, with the final day being a face-off between the top two competitors.” Jean-Pierre paused to wipe his bare brow. “As always, competitors must work from memory. Anyone caught with a cookbook as they bake will be immediately tossed to the curb.”
The from memory part was what worried Rose the most. The recipes in the Bliss Cookery Booke relied on precision – any deviation could alter not only the taste and texture of whatever she was trying to bake, but its magical properties as well. She and her mother would have to memorise the magical recipes perfectly in the hour before the baking commenced – that is, if Balthazar could manage to translate them.
“And,