The War of the Bakers

The War of the Bakers

By: Zachary Shaw (12 years old)                                     

Kristopher and Maurice, two brothers who love baking, were making cinnamon tea rings in their recently bought new bakery in St. Nicholas, California in need of money. Then two women came barreling in babbling about some kind of contest. They couldn’t quite make it out, but it sounded like best pastry entered will win. All the customers went berserk. Who would bring news at 8:00 in the morning, and on a Saturday? Kristopher thought to himself.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” said Maurice. “Slow down. One at a time. What’s going on?”

“The Christmas fair is in town! There is a baking contest,” said one woman.

“And the largest and best Christmas cookie wins an award of $50,000. This is a perfect challenge for you. All you have to do is sign this here sign-up sheet,” said the other woman.

“Just a second. We’ll be right back,” said Kristopher.

Now in the back room, Kristopher said, “Do you want to sign up for this contest? I do.”

“I don’t know, Kristopher. We don’t want to be too greedy. We don’t have much experience-”

”But we could really use the money!” he interrupted.

“Other people might need this money more than we do,” Maurice commented.

“Come on, Maurice. This is might be our only chance to get everything we’ve ever wanted.”

“Okay,” Maurice sighed. “Let’s go sign up.”

“We’ve decided!” the both announced when they reached the lobby again. “Where is that sign-up sheet?”

“Right here,” said the women. “The judging is in 48 hours at the city cafeteria. The address is 1248 Stocking Dr.” They started at 10:00 a.m. the next day.

They worked out what cookie they should make, deciding to make a gingerbread cookie. “Let’s make the cookie three times bigger than a normal cookie,” said Kristopher.

“Now, now, Kristopher. Settle down. Why that big?!”

“Most people are going to think it will take too long to make it three times bigger. Baking takes time, you know.”

Okay,” said Maurice. “But if we lose, you’ll regret it.” So they gathered 3 times the ingredients that the recipe called for.

“That should do it,” Kristopher said after 12 hours of baking. “We should get to bed. It’s late, and we have an exciting morning ahead of us!”

“I agree,” Maurice said, yawning. “Good night, Kristopher. Sweet dreams.”

“Good night, Maurice.” So they went into their separate rooms, climbed into bed, and turned out the light. But Maurice couldn’t sleep. He tossed and turned. He tried to read his favorite book, The Prince Warriors and the Swords of Rhema. He tried drinking a cup of warm cup of milk. He tried to count sheep. Nothing worked. He looked at his alarm clock on his bedside table. 2:30 a.m. it read.

The next morning at 7:30 a.m., Kristopher woke up bright and well rested, but Maurice woke up dull and drowsy. “Are you, feeling alright, Maurice?”

“No!” said Maurice. “I didn’t sleep at all last night.”

“Let’s grab the cookie and head over to the cafeteria. We don’t want to be late.”

At the cafeteria, they saw that there was one more team of two, Timberwolf and Kimberwolf that had an even larger cookie than theirs. Maurice started to have a lot of worry and doubt in his eyes.

“Man, their cookie is BIG! Do you think ours is good enough to win?” Maurice panicked.

“We just have to hope that ours tastes better than theirs. It may look tasty on the outside, but it might not be as good on the inside.”

Then Timberwolf and Kimberwolf walked over to Maurice and Kristopher’s table. They made a disgusted face.

“Yours will never win. You are never going to be as good of a baker as Peter Reinhart was. Your cookie is paltry,” said Timberwolf.

“You aren’t going to be surprised when the judges automatically announce us the winner,” said Kimberwolf.

“We’ll see about that!” said Kristopher with competition in his voice. “Bring it on!”

“Let the judging begin!” declared the judges. First, they judged Timberwolf and Kimberwolf’s chocolate chip cookie. “Yuck! What’s in here?!”

“Um, olive oil, chunks of Hershey’s, and soy sauce. It took us fifteen minutes to make,” said Timberwolf.

“Your cookie might be big, but it doesn’t taste good. To make a cookie with care, you have to take the time to do it right,” said the first judge.

Now the judges tasted Maurice and Kristopher’s cookie. “This tastes amazing, you young bakers. How long did you take to make this fantastic gingerbread cookie?”

“Twelve hours,” Kristopher and Maurice chorused.

“You put a lot of effort and care into your masterpiece. Well, it’s time to announce the winner of this year’s Christmas baking contest,” said the judges. “The winning team is-Kristopher and Maurice!” They walked to the front table to receive their reward.

“What?!” shouted Timberwolf. “We should have won!”

“Yeah! Ours is bigger!” proclaimed Kimberwolf.

“But yours wasn’t made correctly, and it didn’t taste as good as ours,” Maurice announced.

“I don’t care!” Timberwolf yelled. “We’re trying to earn money so we no longer have to be homeless.”

“Oh,” said Maurice. “We had no idea.”

“We’ve had no baking lessons,” said Kimberwolf.

“Maybe you can come to our bakery and take a few baking lessons. Then you can have tremendous baking skills,” said Kristopher.

“That might not be such of a bad idea as I thought,” said Timberwolf with excitement. “When do we start?”

“Maybe you can stay with us until you earn enough money and practice your baking skills along the way,” said Kristopher.

“That’s a good idea,” said Kimberwolf. So they rode to the bakery.

When they got back from the baking competition, Timberwolf asked, “What shall we bake first?”

“We first need to look for the emptiest container,” said Maurice.

“I think I found the emptiest container,” said Kimberwolf.

“That’s the container for the cinnamon tea rings,” said Kristopher. “Now I remember. We were making cinnamon tea rings when we got the news about the baking contest, and we didn’t have time to finish the batch we were making.”

“Well let’s go make a batch right-“ Timberwolf was interrupted.

“Wait, wait, wait!” said Maurice. “Kristopher, didn’t we use up the rest of the salt when we got the unexpected news?”

“Yeah, we did,” said Kristopher, “but we can get some more, can’t we?”

“Of course we can,” Maurice replied. “We just need to run to Walmart. Let’s go!”