A Dash of Magic: A Bliss Novel

by Kathryn Littlewood

  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 around 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 labeled 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 nine a.m.,” 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 around in her seat and glanced at the other side of the room. There was a tawny woman with short blond 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 ten a.m., 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 memorize the magical recipes perfectly in the hour before the baking commenced—that is, if Balthazar could manage to translate them.

  “And, as always, no one who has previously participated in the Gala des Gâteaux Grands may participate again. If your assistant has previously baked in this competition, you must find a new assistant!”

  Rose stared at her mother. Her mother stared back. Don’t panic, she thought, trying to catch her breath. Grandpa Balthazar is a professional. He can be my assistant.

  Balthazar was scratching Gus’s pinched, rumpled ears. Rose leaned over and whispered, “You can be my assistant, right, Grandpa Balthazar?”

  Balthazar shook his head. “Nope. I competed in the first Gala des Gâteaux Grands in the nineteen fifties, when I was sixty-six. Lost flat-out. It was grueling.”

  Rose looked at her father. “I know you never competed, Dad,” said Rose.

  Albert reached into the pocket of his trousers and pulled out a brown paper bag, then held it to his mouth and began to hyperventilate. “Rose,” he managed in between puffs, “I can’t be in front of cameras. Or audiences. I’m too shy. I’ll get seasick. You’ll be better off with Ty. You two were a good team when your mom and I went off to Humbleton, right?”

  “Thyme, my sweet,” said Purdy, “you’ll help Rosie, right?”

  Ty perked up, staring joyfully at the table where Miriam and Muriel Desjardins sat. “Sure! I’ll get to be on TV, right?” Purdy nodded. “Anything for my beloved hermana.” Ty practically shouted when he said hermana, hoping the French girls would hear him.

  They didn’t—but Jean-Pierre did.

  “Shush your mouths!” he yelled. “You’ll have the rest of the day to sort out your pairings. I will see you all tomorrow morning at nine a.m. for day one of the competition.”

  With that, Jean-Pierre grabbed the handlebars, which hoisted him higher and higher until he disappeared through a hole in the ceiling.

  Rose looked again at her brother Ty, who gave her a double thumbs-up sign.

  We are going to lose, she thought.

  The next day, Rose examined her little Gala kitchen in the expo center. It was one of twenty that were connected by an aisle of black and white checkered tiles that led to a raised platform at the front of the room with a microphone and a long oak dining table.

  Hanging above the row of kitchens were balconies draped in red velvet, like special box seats at an opera. In the balcony above her, Rose saw Balthazar and Gus sitting with her parents and Sage and Leigh.

  Across the black-and-white-tiled aisle stood Lily’s kitchen. Lily was standing coolly behind a wooden chopping block, wearing, as usual, a black cocktail dress. She turned and winked at Rose as she tested the dials on her oven.

  Rose sighed heavily, and Ty poked her in the shoulder. “What’s bugging you, mi hermana?”

  “This whole thing, it’s too much pressure,” she said.

  Ty tousled her stringy black hair. “Don’t worry, Rose. You’re the best there is. And you’ve got me right here, all the way.”

  Ty had been so nice to Rose in the previous nine months that she almost couldn’t believe it. But nice wasn’t going to help her get the Booke back. She needed expert assistance. Still, it was comfor
ting to have her older brother beside her.

  “Thanks, Ty,” she said.

  Rose peered around her kitchen once more. On one side of the oven was a red refrigerator, and on the other was a wooden bookcase that served as a pantry. There were clear mason jars of flour, white sugar, brown sugar, baking powder, and cocoa powder, plus a brightly colored cardboard box hidden in the back.

  “What’s this?” Ty asked Rose, picking up the box.

  Rose took the box from Ty and recognized it immediately as a box of Lily’s Magic Ingredient. “No!” said Rose. “What’s this doing here?”

  Rose marched across the aisle of black and white tiles and stopped short in front of Lily’s wooden chopping block.

  “Why is this in my kitchen?” she demanded.

  “It’s in everyone’s kitchen!” Lily replied, brushing a strand of black hair from her cheek. “I donated it, so it’s part of everyone’s allowable pantry items. Anyone can add a dash of Lily’s Magic Ingredient—I think it’ll really improve their results.”

  “It’ll improve your results, you mean!” Rose cried. “Anyone who eats this stuff waxes poetic about you! The judge will just start talking about how amazing you are!”

  “Can I help it if it has that particular side effect?” Lily winked.

  The expo center suddenly went dark, and Rose hurried back to her own kitchen. A set of roving purple spotlights focused on the center of the ceiling, where a giant cupcake with a hollow center hovered like a hot-air balloon.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” boomed an announcer, “please welcome the inventor of crêpes suzette, the champion pastry chef of France, and the founder of the Gala des Gâteaux Grands: Chef Jean-Pierre Jeanpierre!”

  Orchestra music soared as the giant cupcake sank slowly to the ground. Jean-Pierre Jeanpierre stepped out of it, dressed in his coat of red velvet, his hands clasped atop his wide belly. His beady eyes peered from behind his glasses as he stared out over the crowd.

  He raised a microphone to his lips and said, “Remember, after I announce the theme, you’ll have precisely one hour to plan and to gather your one special ingredient, one that is not found in the pantry.”

  “So now Lily can combine her Magic Ingredient with any of the magical recipes in the Booke, which will make it infinitely more powerful!” whispered Rose. “Can you believe this, Ty?”

  But Ty was too busy staring across the black-and-white-tiled aisle. Miriam and Muriel Desjardins were looking casually at Ty. Ty was pretending not to notice, staring into the distance with his eyes wide and his mouth pursed, as if he were writing the lyrics to a painful love song in his head.

  The twins had perfect faces, with sparkling eyes and pouting lips, chic haircuts, and expensive-looking clothes. They looked a year or two older than Ty, and an inch or two taller. They were definitely out of his league, but he would be the last one to admit it.

  “And now . . . ,” Jean-Pierre said over the thunder of a drumroll, “the theme of the day is . . . SWEET! You may interpret the theme however you wish. The cooking will commence in one hour. Go. Now!”

  The lights snapped back to full in the room and the spectators in the opera boxes clapped as all of the bakers and their assistants began to confer in heated whispers.

  SWEET. Rose could bake a hundred versions of the common cupcake, but today she was competing not only against the best bakers in the world, but also against her aunt Lily, who could make any magical recipe in the Cookery Booke, plus add a dash of Lily’s Magic Ingredient. To make it through this first round, she would need something from the Bliss Cookery Booke, and for that she needed Purdy and Balthazar.

  As she waited for her mother and great-great-great-grandfather to join her on the expo floor, Rose glanced over at Lily. Lily was conferring with an impossibly small man wearing a calico jumpsuit of purple, white, and gold satin, the kind you’d find on a medieval clown. He was little, but he wasn’t proportioned like a dwarf—it was as if he was a typically sized man who had been shrunken down. The top of his head barely reached Lily’s hip. He had tanned skin, a bald head, thick black eyebrows, and a long, black mustache.

  Lily’s assistant? Rose wondered.

  Balthazar and Purdy hurried up, with Albert, Sage, and Leigh trailing behind.

  “Look at this,” said Rose, holding up the box of Lily’s Magic Ingredient. “She donated this to the Gala. Everyone’s pantry is stocked with it.”

  “That wicked cheater!” Purdy yelled.

  “I have just the thing to beat her,” Balthazar said, handing her one of his perfectly handwritten sheets. “I translated this one a few months ago. It’s aces.”

  With Ty looking over her shoulder, Rose read the recipe:

  The Sweetest Cookie, for the Relief of Human Sourness

  It was in 1456, in the French city of Paris, that young Philippe Canard did confess to Sir Falstaffe Bliss that his sole wish on the occasion of his fifth birthday was that his notoriously sour, crabby, ill-tempered, and otherwise foul Grandmother might grant him a smile. Sir Bliss did feed these sweet cookies to the Countess Fifi Canard, who, at the occasion of Philippe’s birthday party, did hoist Philippe into her arms, kiss his cheek, and smile so sweetly that young Philippe himself did smile for the remainder of his life.

  Sir Bliss did place four fists of white flour in the center of the wooden bowl. Into the flour he cracked one of the chicken’s eggs, then poured an acorn of vanilla and one staff of melted cow’s butter. Afterward, he did add the lover’s sweet whispers, congealed in almond butter.

  “So that’s our one special ingredient,” Ty said. “‘Lovers’ sweet whispers in almond butter.’ That should be easy enough to get. I’ll just whisper into a jar.”

  Balthazar rolled his eyes. “No, kid. You’ll need the sweet whispers of two people who are in love, not one person who wishes he was in love.”

  “Burn, Abuelo,” Ty replied. “Burn.”

  There were a few more instructions, and then the recipe ended with

  He did rest the cake in the oven HOT as seven flames for the TIME of six songs and then fed the cookies to the sour Countess, who remained sweet thereafter.

  Just then Lily walked up, arm in arm with Jean-Pierre Jeanpierre. The short man she’d been talking with earlier was nowhere to be seen.

  “Look!” Lily said, pointing at the scrap of paper with the recipe. “They’re cheating!”

  Purdy stepped between Lily and the recipe. “Lily, if you sunk any lower, they’d have to dredge you up from the bottom of the Seine.”

  Lily smiled at Jean-Pierre. “I really hate to have to tattle on children,” she said. “I’m just trying to protect the integrity of the Gala.”

  Albert stepped in with a toothy grin. “No rule violations here, sir! The rules prohibit using a cookbook while baking. The kids have merely planned out their recipe. The paper will be gone come competition time.”

  Gus, still in the BabyBjörn on Balthazar’s chest, swatted Rose’s ear till she leaned close, his whiskers tickling her cheek. “If I were you, I’d go now and get those sweet whispers. An hour goes by faster than you think.”

  “But where are we going to get lovers’ sweet whispers?” Rose asked.

  Gus squinted a minute, thinking. “In my first marriage, my dear Hilarie and I often exchanged sweet nothings while catching mice along the River Thames in London.”

  Gus was right—lovers did tend to congregate by water. The expo center was only a few blocks from the Seine, the winding, snaky river that cut through Paris.

  Rose reached up and scratched the soft gray fur under Gus’s chin.

  If it’s possible for a cat to look bashful, at that moment, Gus did. “Thank you,” he said. “Now go.”

  Though the riverbank was just a few minutes’ walk from the Hôtel de Ville expo center, Sage complained the entire time.

  “Why am I even here? You and Ty are gonna do all the baking, and I’m just supposed to watch?” he whined. “With all those cameras around? I should be in front of
the cameras! I could launch my stand-up comedy career. But no, you two get to do everything important, as usual.”

  Rose glanced over at Ty, then looked guiltily at the blue mason jar she was carrying, which she’d slathered on the inside with pale yellow almond butter. It was true. Sage rarely got the opportunity to do anything important. Of course, when he did, he usually made a mess of it.

  “Why don’t you be in charge of collecting the sweet whispers?” said Rose. “In fact, you could collect all the special ingredients! We’ll do the baking, you’ll do the collecting, and then when we win, we’ll introduce you on camera and you can launch your stand-up comedy career.”

  Ty looked at her like she was crazy, but Sage smiled and immediately stopped complaining. He took the blue mason jar from Rose and cradled it in his arms like it was an infant.

  The morning light rippled across the Seine like a spilled canister of silver glitter. Rose thought that this may have been the most romantic place she’d ever seen, even more romantic than the overlook point on Sparrow Hill in Calamity Falls. She imagined building a hut on the stone riverbank and living there with Devin Stetson, baking croissants for passersby while he played guitar and collected change in a hat.

  As she was plotting where on the river wall she’d build her hut, Rose spotted a man and a woman walking hand in hand. The man and the woman were staring at each other so lovingly and intently that the man tripped over a raised brick in the sidewalk and fell to his knees. The woman giggled as she hoisted him up again and kissed his cheek.

  “Jackpot,” Rose said.

  Sage nodded and scooted ahead, falling into step a few feet behind the couple. He opened the blue jar and held it up to the back of their heads, trailing behind as close as he could without running into them.

  It worked for a few seconds, until Sage sneezed and the man whipped around. “What are you doing, kid?” he said.

  Sage snapped the jar closed so as not to catch any less-than-sweet whispers in the almond butter. “Uhhh . . .”