by Joan Holub
“At least your eggs landed in the bowl,” Hephaestus said. His had totally missed and glopped onto the counter.
“You’ll get the hang of it. It takes a lot of eggs-perience to become an eggs-pert,” Hestia joked. The others laughed. And suddenly, everyone was cracking puns as well as eggs.
“I hope there won’t be an eggs-am on this later, or I’ll flunk for sure,” Asca said. He’d given his first egg such a hard knock that it had smashed.
Only Ares got the hang of one-handed egg cracking right away. “Eggs-cellent!” he crowed when his very first egg cracked down the middle and fell neatly into his bowl with the yolk intact.
“Beginner’s luck,” huffed Hephaestus.
“I bet you can’t do it twice in a row,” Asca challenged.
But Ares did. “You want to hold the egg kind of like you’re throwing a curveball,” he counseled the others.
“Duh, I’ve never thrown a curveball in my life,” Aphrodite protested. “This is eggs-asperating!” Nevertheless, after several more tries, almost everyone managed at least one success.
Before taking her second cake out of the oven, Hestia checked it carefully. “I think this one’s more done. You can tell because it’s shrunk a little from the edges of the pan.” Reaching inside the oven she pressed down lightly on the top of the cake. “It feels firm, too—another good sign.”
“Mmm, that smells sooo good,” said Aglaia as Hestia finally moved the cake from the oven to the counter.
“Can we try some?” asked Ares eagerly.
Aphrodite gave his reaching arm a light tap with her spoon. “Not unless you want to burn your fingers and your mouth!”
While waiting for this second cake to cool enough to cut, Hestia let the others help mix up the ingredients for a third cake. Most of them didn’t know how to measure and sift. But that made sense, she realized. Till now they’d had little opportunity to cook.
“I guess I never thought about how our food gets prepared and winds up on the table,” said Ares as Hestia slid her third cake into the oven. “It’s just always there.”
Splat! They looked over to see that Aglaia had accidentally knocked an egg onto the floor, where it had exploded. She and Hephaestus began cleaning up the mess. “Explosions seem to be our thing lately,” Hephaestus joked. Then he and Aglaia told the others about their near disaster earlier that week when something in the forge had exploded and shot out flames.
Hmm, thought Hestia as she set a bowl into the sink to be washed later. Explosions.
And suddenly she went still. Because a fabulous new dessert idea had just come to her. The one she’d been searching for!
Would her idea be too showy, though? Too dangerous? But then she recalled what the Gray Ladies had said to her at the ice sculpting contest: “When you hide your light under a cooking pot, you deprive others of your gifts. And you also cheat yourself.”
The others kept talking, but now Hestia was only half listening. Hephaestus was leaning against the counter, absently twirling his beautiful silver cane and saying something about the Service to Humankind Award. “I heard the line for the voting was so long, it snaked down the steps of the temple and up the street.”
“I bet the vote counting will take all night,” Asca put in.
“Think cake two is cool enough to taste test yet?” asked Ares. Like Zeus, he had a one-track brain when food—particularly anything sweet—was being offered.
“Huh?” Hestia came out of her dessert-inspiration daze and touched the top of the cake sitting on the counter. “Definitely,” she announced. She sliced off samples and handed them around.
Ares practically inhaled his piece. “Whoa! Dis is duh bes ake iver ha,” he mumbled with his mouth full.
Aphrodite froze, her fork half-raised to her lips. “The best cake you’ve ever had?” She frowned at him. “Better than the birthday cake I spent hours putting together for your last birthday party, even?” she challenged.
Ares blinked. “Wha— No! I mean—” Looking uncomfortable, he pulled at the neck of his tunic.
Uh-oh, thought Hestia. She didn’t want her cooking to cause any trouble between these two!
But then Aphrodite tasted the cake. “Oh, wow,” she said, her blue eyes widening in pleasure. “This is mega-yum. And so light and fluffy!” A small smile played around her lips as she said to Hestia, “Maybe you could teach Ares how to make a cake like this for my next birthday!”
With a relieved smile, Ares said, “Sure! I’m halfway there since I’ve already mastered egg-cracking-ology!”
“Seriously, though, we should have a class or something,” Aglaia told her. “I bet others around here would like to learn to cook too.”
“Maybe,” Hestia replied lightly. Antheia and Pheme had said something along the same lines. So why not really do it? The more she thought about the possibility, the more excited she got. Ms. Okto would probably let her use the kitchen after the final dinner cleanup once a week. That way, cooking students wouldn’t be in the way of regular meal preparations. It was worth an ask.
After the recruits also tested cake number three—which was almost but not quite as delicious as cake two, everyone decided—they cleaned up. All volunteered to help with the cooking and setup for the banquet the next day.
It seemed to Hestia that she was finally crawling out of her turtle shell. Ms. Xena was right. She did have new friends. And if her cooking class became a reality, it would be sure to result in even more new friendships. A win-win!
12
The Banquet
HESTIA ZIPPED INTO THE KITCHEN bright and early on Saturday morning. She could hardly wait to try her dessert idea. It was going to be a time crunch, though. The banquet was tonight!
First off, she mixed enough chocolate cake batter to fill three round cake pans of graduated sizes, using the recipe her recruits had favored. The pans ranged in diameter from nine inches to eleven inches to thirteen inches across. While the layers were baking, she mixed up sugar cookie dough, dyed it green, and cut it into three-inch-tall tree shapes. Then after the pans of cake were out of the oven, she put the cookies in to bake.
When the cake layers had cooled, she used a nectar-flavored icing between the layers to “glue” them together, stacking the layers from largest to smallest, so that they formed a tiered, mountainlike shape. Next she put the large three-layer cake into the larder to keep till later.
That done, she made a quick trip to the Supernatural Market, where she bought ambrosia ice cream. All part of her plan to wow the banquet-goers. If her dessert was a disaster, she’d be letting Ms. Okto down. Still, it was a risk she was determined to take, and one that would fulfill the final goal on her recipe card list. It just had to work!
Later that morning her friends arrived to help out with the main meal preparations. They gathered round Ms. Okto while she demonstrated how to slice and dice vegetables using a rocking motion from the tip of the knife to the end of the blade. “If you keep the fingertips of the hand not using the knife curled so that only the flat part of the knuckles face the blade, you’ll be less likely to cut yourself,” she told them.
While they cut veggies to be used for celestial salad and other side dishes for the banquet, Aphrodite, Ares, and other friends they had recruited were over in the open-air domed cupola at the top of the Academy. There, they were seeing to the decorations and setting the tables. The cupola was quite large for a cupola, but Hestia figured it would probably prove just big enough to accommodate all the finalists and guests tonight.
Meanwhile, in the kitchen, Ms. Okto began making the main dish that she and Chef Soterides had finally agreed upon—a special nectar-glazed roast lamb. It would be accompanied by a pot of rice seasoned with a blend of spices that Hestia had come up with.
Hestia was pleased to see that her friends were getting to know and appreciate the cafeteria ladies the way she did. When a piece of carrot Aglaia tried dicing fell to the floor, she, Hephaestus, and Asca barely flinched when Ms. Xena u
sed her snout to suck it up.
Eventually, all was done and Ms. Okto shooed Hestia out to get all dressed up in her finery. Happily, Aglaia, Hephaestus, and Asca had volunteered to work as servers during the banquet, so Hestia would see them again.
She could feel herself getting anxious as she headed for the dorm to change clothes for the banquet. Not about the contest. About her dessert! The finishing touches couldn’t go on it till the very last minute. Not until the banquet was nearly over, in fact. Which was the sort of drama that was going to make her way more nervous than finding out who won the award!
When Hestia entered her room, she gasped at the sight that met her eyes. There was a beautiful sparkly gold chiton lying on her bed! A note beside it from Aphrodite read: Thought you might like to borrow this for tonight. Gold’s not really my color, but I think it will look fabulous on you.
How nice of her! thought Hestia. This was the kind of thing friends did for one another. She did a little happy dance. She had friends now!
Quickly, she slipped the chiton on and then checked herself in the closet door mirror. Aphrodite was right, she decided. The chiton did look fabulous on her, if she did say so herself. It brought out the gold flecks in her brown eyes and the glints of gold in her brown hair that were usually invisible. Nevertheless, she did feel a bit flashy as she ventured out of her room in the sparkly chiton. Was this outfit really her?
Risk it, she told herself. She was so done with being invisible. And this sparkly dress was the opposite of that, for sure. Besides, she had more important things to worry about than what she was wearing. Namely, her dessert!
She arrived at the top of the MOA cupola’s winding staircase just as the other ten finalists were being led from there into the banquet room. Quickly, she joined the end of the line. Her eyes widened with pleasure as they entered the cupola. Tables had been set in arching rows facing a stage, and were filled with people there to celebrate. Special guests, teachers, contest committee members, and Principal Zeus and Hera, all stood to honor the finalists as they filed in.
“Everything’s so cute!” she heard one of the finalists ahead of her murmur. It was true. Aphrodite, Ares, and their friends had done an amazing job of decorating. Gold and silver streamers, possibly left over from Ares’ recent birthday party, were wound around the tall columns that encircled the inside of the domed cupola.
And floating in the air, held up by a magic spell, were symbols representing the eleven finalists. There was a cute toy club and a toy spear (for Heracles and Ares), a prism that broke the light into rainbows (Iris, of course), and a red heart-shaped pillow (for Aphrodite). Hestia’s flame symbol was represented by a beautiful, lit scented candle in a holder that resembled cupped hands.
The linen-draped finalists’ table was long and elegantly set with the Academy’s best plates, rimmed with gold. It was up front, and their seats were lined up on one side of it so that they sat facing the rest of the room. Name cards showed where everyone was to sit. Hestia was in the middle, with Aphrodite and Athena on either side of her. They’d all been placed in the same order as they’d been portrayed in the mural!
She picked up the card next to her plate. Her name was written on it in beautiful swirly, swoopy calligraphy. She ran her thumb over the letters, and they magically recited her name: “Hestia.” She giggled. Overhearing, the other finalists did the same with their cards.
Hestia leaned over to Aphrodite. “Thanks for letting me borrow this outfit.”
“Anytime,” said Aphrodite. She was wearing a stunning rose-colored chiton with a ruffled hem. “I knew gold would look great on you.”
“It really was nice of you. Pink may be your favorite color, but I think you’ve got a heart of gold,” Hestia quipped.
“And you’re as sweet as those chocolate cakes you baked last night, to say so!” They both laughed.
Once everyone in the room sat down again, dinner was served. All went perfectly, though Asca tripped over his own tail when he brought in the platter of roast lamb. Everyone gasped in horror as the roast sailed into the air, but somehow he managed to do a dive and maneuver the platter under it as it came down. Plop! The roast landed with only a minimum of splattered juices.
“Good catch!” Apollo called out. “Ever thought about playing javelin ball? We could use you on the team!”
Asca grinned. “Sure! I bet balls wouldn’t be any harder to catch on the tip of a javelin than a lamb roast is to catch on a platter.”
The banquet-goers all laughed. Hestia smiled at Asca when he served her a slice of the nectar-glazed lamb. “Tail okay?” she asked.
“Still attached if that’s what you mean,” he said with a grin.
Hestia grinned back. “Good thing Pheme isn’t sitting near enough to hear you say that.” The goddessgirl of gossip was attending the banquet as a special guest so that she could write about it for Teen Scrollazine.
“Yeah,” Asca agreed. “It’d be all over her next column!” After a moment’s hesitation he added, “You look like a winner tonight. I mean, I hope you win tonight.” Then his cheeks flushed bright red.
“Hurry up with that platter!” Ares called from farther down the table. “I’m so hungry, I could eat Heracles’ club!”
“Hey!” said Heracles, overhearing. He shot Ares a fake look of alarm and wrapped both arms around his club as if to protect it. Which cracked up all the finalists.
“Thanks,” Hestia told Asca before he moved on to serve the others. She wasn’t entirely sure, but she thought maybe he’d been trying to say she looked pretty. No boy had ever told her that before. Maybe he’d never said it to a girl before either, which was why he’d gotten so flustered. It was kind of nice!
When everyone had eaten and the dishes were being cleared away, Hestia started to get nervous again. She slipped off to the kitchen to finish making her dessert.
Seeing her, Ms. Xena smiled wide with approval. “How pretty you are!”
“Yeah, gold’s a good color for you,” Ms. Okto added.
“Thanks,” said Hestia with a quick grin. “Ready?”
With the ladies’ help, she set the large three-layer chocolate cake she’d baked on a silver tray and placed that on a fancy wheeled cart. Then they began the last-minute prep. This was the tricky part!
Hestia piled ambrosia ice cream on top of the cake in the shape of an overturned bowl, which made her “mountain” even higher. At the same time, Ms. Okto beat several egg whites and a handful of sugar to make a stiff white meringue. Working together, they completely covered the cake and ice cream with the meringue.
Now, her dessert resembled a snow-covered mountain. It was Mount Olympus in winter! She scooped out enough space at the very top of her snow-covered mountain to hold half an eggshell that she was going to add later on.
Her hands shook a little as she moved her flame around to carefully brown the egg-white meringue. She’d been afraid she’d accidentally burn it. Or that the flame might melt the ice cream that was piled on top of the chocolate cake base. That would have caused her creation to collapse! Fortunately, however, her cake mountain stayed upright and the meringue browned evenly to a pale gold that matched her chiton. Perfection!
While Mrs. Okto made a quick trip to the cupola to check on things, Hestia placed the half eggshell she’d saved from the eggs she’d cracked (with one hand!) into the space she’d made for it at the very top of her creation. She filled the bowl of the eggshell with a special golden liquid that Ms. Xena had saved for her to use.
The lunch lady helped Hestia place the tree-shaped cookies she’d made earlier all around the base of her chocolate cake mountain. “Fantastic. It looks like a forest below a snow-covered mountain,” Ms. Xena praised.
“Fingers crossed that it tastes fantastic too,” said Hestia.
“You’d better get back to the cupola lickety-split,” Ms. Okto told Hestia, pushing through the kitchen door just then. All eight of her hands were balancing stacks of dishes she’d cleared from the cupo
la. “Hera just told me that the head of the contest committee is going to make her announcement before dessert is served.”
Sensing Hestia’s reluctance to leave her dessert behind, Ms. Xena helped to shoo Hestia off. “Scoot. We’ll carry this mountain up in just a minute. It’ll make a big splash.”
“Thanks!” Hestia was suddenly glad she didn’t have to bring in the dessert herself. Nervous about how everyone would like her creation, she might accidentally do an Asca, but really drop it!
Back in the cupola she slid into her seat at the finalists’ table just as Zeus was finishing a speech. “And now the moment we’ve all been waiting for,” he roared, his blue eyes twinkling. He glanced toward Hades, who was sitting at a drum set in a corner of the room. On cue the godboy of the Underworld played a drumroll—brrum, brrum, brrum, brrum.
The head of the contest committee stood up beside Zeus, a letterscroll clutched in her hand. Brrap-a-tap-tap! Hades finished up. A sense of expectation swept the room.
The committee head bowed to Zeus. “Thank you for that most kind introduction,” she said. “And for sponsoring this banquet to honor some of Mount Olympus Academy’s finest and most generous students.”
Her eyes scanned the table of finalists. “Every one of you has done worthy things to benefit humankind,” she told them. “And I want you to know that yesterday’s vote count was very close.”
Hestia was not completely surprised to hear this. When she thought of all the things the students sharing her table had collectively done for mortals down on Earth, she felt proud to be a finalist. She hoped that all of them had gotten at least some votes.
The head of the committee paused to slip a blue ribbon from the cream-colored letterscroll she was holding. Hestia wished the woman would hurry. If the contest winner wasn’t announced soon, the meringue-covered ice cream at the top of her dessert would surely melt!
It seemed to take forever as the gray-haired woman shook the letterscroll to unroll it, then studied what was written on it. Hestia peered worriedly at the cupola door.