Thoughts before reading:
I couldn't find a picture of this one anywhere that wasn't cropped weird, for some reason.
This one looks and sounds vaguely familiar, so even though I don't really remember it I think I read it at some point.
The basics:
While at the mall with Stacey, Jamie, and Charlotte, Claudia sees a flier for a baking contest with a $1,000 prize for the winner. She eagerly starts working on some recipe inventions, but her early tries are all terrible.
At the next BSC meeting, someone from the baking contest calls to ask if they can run an on-site daycare center for the kids of contestants. Excited, they agree. The job will be from 8-5 for two weekends, watching twenty kids. Kristy will also be a "cake cop", watching the work area and enforcing contest rules. Mary Anne and Claudia also decide to enter, working together. Logan also enters, teamed up with his sister Kerry and Austin Bentley. Shea Rodowsky joins Claudia's team. Cokie, Grace, and Mari Drabek are also in the contest. (Mari's dad is a professional baker at Chez Maurice.)
For the first round of the kid's contest, Claudia's cake falls flat and Logan's burns. She discovers someone tampered with his oven, and switched her baking soda for flour. Grace and Mari win that day, with their perfect pan of cinnamon rolls. (Cokie got sick and dropped out of the contest.)
The second day, another case of switched ingredients causes Grace's oven to catch fire. Claudia's group makes a beautiful cake that tastes terrible. Logan's group wins with their fruitcake. (Really? Ick.) The girls notice some other odd things around the contest too: Jackie keeps vanishing, then turning up with flour all over him. Some of the parents are very competitive, and keep getting too involved... at least until Kristy kicks them out!
Grace sees Claudia buying ant poison for her mom, and accuses her of buying it for the cakes, to sabotage others. Both girls heatedly deny any involvement in all the tampering that's been going on, and they decide to investigate together. (They even find common ground in their love of Nancy Drew.)
For the third and final baking round before the finals, Mary Anne gets her mom's special recipe for Cherry Chocolate Cake from her grandma. Richard brings the ingredients and recipe at the last minute, and someone replaces their sugar with salt while they're distracted. Luckily, they notice before actually using it. The cake comes out great, and they make it to the finals, along with Logan's team, Grace's, and two others.
The morning of the finals, the girls see Marty, the guy running the contest, kissing Julie, one of the finalists. They immediately suspect that he's behind everything, trying to ensure a win for his girlfriend. Sure enough, after they set up a trap with a mirror to watch Claudia's team's station on the sly while feigning distraction, they catch Marty tampering with their oven.
Claudia's team wins first place, and gets their winning recipe in the Mrs. Goode's Cookbook: Alma's Memory Cake.
The side plot in here is about the kids from the daycare center doing a little restaurant of their own to serve their parents (mainly sandwiches), with help from the BSC.
Timeline:
It's mid-summer, and very hot out.
Misc. thoughts:
*Janine and Jerry are still together!
*I've noticed that Claudia's leg aching when it rains is never mentioned anymore. In the early books it was brought up quite a few times.
*This plot was really silly, but at least it's the type of mystery appropriate for kids to be dealing with...
*Just a few books ago, in #85, Claudia wanted a new hobby, but she never mentioned an interest in baking.
*This book made me really hungry, as it was stuffed full of descriptions of baked goods. That was really the best part of it too.
*Claudia gets a cordless phone for the first time, and can now roam around the house while talking on the phone! Just like a true 90s kid, I can also remember the joy of making this switch. Prior to cordless phones becoming common, I had to sit on the kitchen floor or lean against the counters to talk on our old phone.
*Mary Anne is now close to her grandma, and they talk often.
*Ghostwritten by Ellen Miles.
Books mentioned:
None
My rating:
2.5 stars. A much more appropriate mystery than most, but still very boring.
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