The Bee's Knees

Chapter 31

Anna, Reese, Norman, and Connor all lined up behind their desserts. Now that time was up, Anna's mind was flooded with ways she could have made her tart taste ten times better, but none of the contestants could touch a single crumb without getting disqualified.

"Today you will be judged based on three criteria," Ivan said. "Taste, presentation, and how well your dessert relates to your companions. Reese, you're up first."

They carried their dessert to the judges' table with their head held high and their skunk proudly waving its tail in the air. "I made you chocolate caramel cookies and cream ice cream sandwiches."

Perfectly gooey caramel dripped down cookies filled with chocolate chips. Crumbled Oreos and even more chocolate chips studded the vanilla ice cream sandwiched between the cookies. Just looking at Reese's dessert made Anna's stomach growl.

She wasn't the only one who thought their ice cream sandwiches looked delicious. "I don't suppose you made any extras?" Philip mumbled around a mouthful. His duck hopped into his lap to peck at the crumbs speckling his plate. "These are absolutely delicious!"

"We have to save room for everyone, Philip," Jessica chided. She turned her ice cream sandwich in her hand. "I love how you went with a more unusual cookie, especially since the toppings melted into the ice cream and made it extra flavorful. I wish the ice cream itself had something to give it some extra pizzazz, though. Some toasted nuts would have given it a unique textural component."

"It took so long to get the ice cream machine to behave I thought adding nuts would break it," Reese said.

"I'm guessing the element that's supposed to tie into your companion is the ice cream itself?" Ivan asked.

Reese nodded. "I used Oreos since Petunia's black and white, and she's always trying to sneak a bite of 'em."

Their skunk chattered and stomped its feet like a toddler who'd been caught with their hand in the cookie jar.

Ivan sighed. "It tastes like deluxe Baskin Robbins, and that's a problem. The chocolate and caramel from the cookies go together very well, but using Oreos, a pre-made component, is a huge disservice to your companion. If you must use something like that in a dessert, it cannot be the most important ingredient unless you do something to transform it into something more unique."

"Thank you for your feedback." Reese received Ivan's harsh words with a smile.

"Thank you, Reese." Ivan motioned for them to step back in line. "Next up, Norman."

His cupcakes received less than stellar reviews. While Jessica called the 'beaver dams' of chocolate-dipped pretzels that topped the blue frosting a fun way to tie in his companion, Ivan said his dense cupcakes were so dry it not even a lake of chocolate sauce could make them appealing.

Not even the ever-cheerful Philip had many good things to say about them. "The blue frosting was a neat touch, but I wish you hadn't used food coloring. There are so many techniques you could have used to get both that lovely color and more flavor."

Connor went next. "I made a cheesecake topped with raspberry sauce and a red velvet cookie shaped like my rooster's comb." He met the judges' eyes without so much as stuttering. His rooster clucked quietly at his feet, twisting its neck this way and that to observe the judges' birds.

"You dealt with a catastrophe in the kitchen today," Ivan said. "Not many bakers could salvage a cheesecake with so many cracks, but aside from a smear or two where you got sloppy with the spatula, you pulled this off quite well."