The Babysitters Club Mysteries #21: Claudia and the Recipe for Danger
Mrs. Goode's Bakeware
Company decided to hold a baking contest and picked Stoneybrook. One
contest is open to younger bakers and one is open to those 16 and
older. Claudia and Mary Anne decide to join forces and agree to let
Shea Rodowsky join their team too. Logan and his little sister join
Austin Bentley to form a team too. Cokie pairs up with Grace, but
most teams are from other cities. One is comprised of some cute guys,
and one has a girl named Julie. Claudia feels bad for her because
Julie's parents own a cooking school and seemingly only want her to
win to advertise their business.
Cokie brags about their
secret weapon and how it will help them win. She gets sick and has to
drop out, but their secret weapon turns out to be Mari, the daughter
of a pastry chef who learned everything her dad knows. Marty, the
college intern for the contest, calls and asks the BSC to run a
daycare for the kids of contestants. They all naturally agree to
help.
Claudia keeps coming up
with these recipes that look great but taste awful. Mary Anne finally
tells her that they need something better. Her dad keeps talking
about this chocolate cherry cake that her mom made and how she wants
to find the recipe. They check her attic before Claudia suggests that
MA call her grandma. Though she leaves a message, she remembers that
her grandma talked about taking a long trip. Since they don't know
when she'll get the message, it's back to the drawing board.
*Why is it that Kristy
throws a tantrum when club members want to do their own thing but
then agrees to let them run a daycare? She gets ticked off when
someone takes a sitting job outside of the club or goes on vacation
because it might leave them short handed. Thankfully, none of their
charges ever need a sitter during the whole competition.
A bunch of weird things
start happening during the competition. Someone switches Mari's
cornstarch with baking powder, which causes their oven to catch on
fire. Cakes get burned, oven timers get changed, the whole nine
yards. Grace and Claudia both suspect each other until they talk
things through, learn they both love Nancy Drew, and decide to work
together. Both their teams make it through to the final round of the
competition, despite all the sabotages.
While sneaking around,
the girls see Julie and Marty in a major lip lock. They then set up
all their suspects, cover their work station with flour, and actually
put their cake in Grace's oven. Richard managed to show up at the
last minute with the recipe for the cake and all the right
ingredients. The judges come over, Claudia tells them what happened,
and they all watch as Marty comes over and messes with their oven.
They catch him and the
truth comes out. Turns out that Julie is actually 16 but entered the
younger group because she could win easier. She and Marty are dating,
and he did all that stuff to try and help her out. They get a
lecture, Julie leaves the contest, but nothing bad actually happens
to them.
Kristy comes up with an
idea of holding a fake restaurant for the kids because they feel left
out. Kyle, one of the kids in the daycare, tells Kristy that his
sister Megan stole a calculator that got left sitting out. He says
that she's been acting out since their dad left. Megan later breaks a
terrarium and does some other stuff, but she always accepts
responsibility when something happens. After someone clogs the sink
and leaves the water running, Kyle blames his sister, but she was
actually with Jessi the whole time. He finally admits that he was the
one acting out, cries, they all hug him, and he starts acting better.
Logan's group winds up
winning third place, but Claudia's group wins first place. They get a
$1,000 prize to split, which she thinks her parents will make her
invest, and their recipe goes in a cookbook. Claudia dreams of naming
the recipe after herself and comes up with all these weird names
before Mary Anne announces that she chose the name Alma's Memory
Cake. Claudia feels bad for even thinking about naming it herself
since they won all because of MA's mom.
*Claudia finds a flier
that says free daycare is available before Marty calls them. What
would he have done if they couldn't help?
*You can tell this is a
book from the 90s because of how excited Claudia gets when her dad
buys a cordless phone. Wonder what she would think of smartphones?
*I would have totally
smacked Mary Anne while they were going through her attic. While
Claudia's digging through boxes, MA stops to read all those freaking
letters for the 900th time that her grandma sent to her
dad and actually stops to cry.
*Claudia finds one of
Mary Anne's old plaid jumpers and says it's now cool again. That
makes we wonder if Richard ever realized he was dressing his daughter
like a child porn star.
*Claudia's dad drives her
to a cooking supply store where she buys a chef's hat and paints it
with random cooking images.
*Mary Anne is so proud of
Logan that she runs up and kisses him when he wins his prize in front
of a bunch of people, which seems super out of character for her.
*Is it mean that I don't
think Mary Anne should have just stated the name of the cake? It
seems like something they all should have agreed on upfront.
*Marty is old enough that
he's doing an internship, so he's at least a college junior. Him
dating a 16 year old high school student is pretty icky.
*The kids' “restaurant”
has a menu with prices on it, but they don't charge for any of the
food they serve. Kristy says that since the parents provided the
ingredients that they don't think it's fair to make them pay a second
time, but then a bunch of other random people stop by the restaurant,
so it doesn't really seem fair.
*One of the dishes is a
bug salad, which is half a canned pear with carrot curls for legs and
raisins for eyes. Nothing about that sounds appealing to me. They
also go through five economy size jars of peanut butter because PB
sandwiches are their best seller.
*The contest is just
plain weird. They have five days to make anything they want. They can
make the same dish every day or something new every day. The judges
pick the five best teams to compete at the very end for the top
prize. Why wouldn't they have brackets or something?
Maybe I'm mean but I didn't think Claudia should feel bad about naming the cake after herself. They were both coming up with names for the cake without discussing it with each other.
ReplyDeleteThe contest really is weird. Shouldn't they have to make something different every day? And the best from each day move on?
That's exactly what I thought! It's not like her mom came up with the recipe all by herself, and the contest was just strange. You'd think they would have like different theme days where you make a cake one day, cookies the next, etc. instead of just baking anything they wanted.
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