The Baking Life of Amelie Day (13 page)

I cough on and on. Can’t seem to stop. I could do with my inhaler right now and a nice steadying breath of oxygen.

When I come up for air there’s a woman standing over me with a look of concern on her face.

‘Are you alright?’ she says. ‘You don’t look terribly well.’

She’s tall with blonde hair and has a name badge on which says ‘Elaine McDonald, Floor Manager.’ I glance at the shiny floors around us.

‘Your floors look very well managed,’ I say, trying to be polite, even though I’m finding it hard to catch my breath.

The woman stares at me for at a moment. Then she sees me looking at her name badge and bursts out laughing.

‘Oh,’ she says. ‘I see. Well – actually I’m the floor manager in the studio. It means that I direct everybody as to what to do when the cameras are rolling. Make sure everyone is in the right place. Anyway, I take it you’re here for
Best Teen Baker
? Don’t you have a parent with you?’

I nod. My eyes are watering from the last bout of coughing but I stand up and shake the woman’s hand.

‘Nice to meet you,’ I say. ‘Sorry. I’ve just got over the flu. And my mum is coming along later.’

Wow. I could lie for the Olympic Games, I’m getting so good at it.

I follow Elaine into the black lifts at the back of the building and she takes me down endless long corridors and up more flights of stairs until I’m gasping for breath again but I do my best to hide it. We end up in a big space full of cooking stations and people setting up cameras and microphones.

‘Here we are,’ says Elaine. ‘We’ll be having a rehearsal when everybody’s here. That means you’ll get to run through your recipes before we start the cameras rolling. OK?’

I nod. That sounds like a good idea. I’m so tired and nervous that my brain has gone blank. I finger the recipe book in my pocket for comfort.

‘The main competition will be filmed at four,’ says Elaine. ‘It won’t go out on TV for a good few months yet. We get you to sign an agreement not to tell anybody about who gets through and who doesn’t. That way the viewers keep watching TV to find out.’

I nod again. I like Elaine. She seems friendly and capable. If only she also doubled up as a CF nurse and I could tell her I desperately need some oxygen. I catch a glimpse of my own reflection in the shiny door of the giant fridge on set and I swear that my lips are actually turning a bit blue round the edges.

‘Can I get you a drink?’ Elaine is saying. ‘It’s very hot outside. Great air con in here, though.’

In fact I feel frozen. Because I’m thinner than a girl my age should be, I feel cold even in the middle of summer. The air conditioning in here is sharp and vicious, blowing great gusty drafts of ice-cold air around my aching bones.

‘Something warm would be good,’ I say. Elaine sends another girl off with orders for a couple of coffees and then her attention is distracted by the arrival of another group of competitors, so I take the chance to sit on a stool and steady myself.

I take a look at the cooking stations. They’re really cool. There are twelve of them dotted about the large studio, each with a built-in cooker and plenty of granite work surface for chopping and food preparation. Shiny steel spotlights are angled over each station and as I look around, a man comes in with a huge trolley and starts unloading ingredients. I recognise mine when he starts putting out a load of dark chocolate bars and sugar for my mini-chocolate fondant puddings, golden syrup and treacle for my sticky gingerbread and boxes of eggs and tubs of cream for my Chantilly crème and vanilla custard. Then he puts out flour, cocoa powder, chopped nuts, eggs and butter for my macaroons.

My heart gives a little thrill of excitement and nerves. I made it. I’m here. I’m actually going to take part in the competition!

That’s if my chest doesn’t seize up first.

It really hurts.

I’m trying to ignore the pain but I’m wondering if I’ve started another chest infection because my head feels a bit giddy and, although I’m shivering, my head is burning hot. I’ve lost my appetite, too. Even the thought of a biscuit makes me feel sick.

I gulp on the hot sugary cappuccino that Elaine’s PA brings me and lick the froth off my lips. It’s not as good as the ones I make at home but I feel a bit better, even though my stomach feels twisted and tender.

I wonder who it was who stole my leather bag?

I reckon they got one heck of a disappointment when they opened it and found a load of useless tablets and medical gadgets, rather than a big purse full of money or an expensive iPhone.

‘Serves them right,’ I mutter.

Then we’re all beckoned over to the cooking stations with our ingredients on them.

I take a look at the other contestants.

There are five other girls and six boys, most of them about the same age as me although one or two look older. The girls look very assured and confident. They’re all in jeans and pretty tops with shiny hair tied back into fluffy ponytails and loads of lipgloss.

I hadn’t thought to put any make-up on for today.

My t-shirt is plain and red and boring. I was saving the best outfit for if I got through to the final. I tug at my hair and try to let it fall over my face in what I hope passes for a sophisticated and confident manner, but it just lies in lank strands over my shoulders.

I’m just wondering whether I should make the effort to go and talk to the other contestants, when Elaine bears down on me in a cloud of sickly perfume. Great. Another cough trigger.

‘You’ll have to tie that up,’ she whispers, pointing at my hair and passing me an elastic band. ‘Food hygiene, I’m afraid.’

I gather up my hair and shove it back into a thin pony-tail. I hate having my hair tied back so now I feel as if my pale, ill face is even more on show than it was before.

A whole load of new lights are flicked on. They’re so bright that I almost can’t see for a moment.

‘OK, folks,’ shouts a man behind a camera with a black and white board in his hand. ‘We’re doing a dummy run just to see how you all look on camera and to get you used to cooking on this equipment. Just relax and cook your best recipes. You’ve got two hours.’

Elaine is standing next to him with a clipboard in her hand. She gives us all the thumbs-up and the man shouts, ‘AND… ACTION!’ Before I know it I’m deep into measuring out flour and melting butter and treacle for my sticky German gingerbread.

I lose myself in what I’m doing. It’s amazing, cooking in the TV studio with all the beautiful pots and shiny gadgets. I’m so immersed in the joy of it that I jump out of my skin when a buzzer sounds and the man behind the camera shouts, ‘AND… CUT! Well done, everybody.’

Elaine comes over and has a word with each of us in turn.

When she reaches my station she smiles.

‘You did very well, particularly if you’ve still got the flu,’ she says. I know I’m looking pretty rough because I feel dreadful. ‘So what will happen later at this stage is that the judges will call you forwards with your three dishes and they’ll try a mouthful of each and tell you what they think. Then they’ll decide who’s going through to the semi. OK?’

She’s about to pass onto the next contestant and say the same thing again but I stop her.

‘Elaine,’ I say, ‘what happens now? It’s ages until four o’clock.’

‘You’re free,’ says Elaine. ‘You need to be back here at half-two for hair and make-up. Other than that, the afternoon is yours! Go and enjoy London!’

I can’t think of anything worse. My heart sinks into my black ballet pumps as I trudge out of the building and back into the hot, smelly streets of London. I haven’t eaten a proper meal for over twenty-four hours and my head is throbbing.

I find a cafe nearby and order a fried egg on toast and a cup of tea but my throat seems to be closing up and cafes never seem to be able to cook a fried egg the way I like it. When I do them at home I use super-hot olive oil and cook the egg on a high heat, spooning the oil over the white to avoid that horrid jelly bit around the yoIk. I like the edges nice and frizzled and crispy and the yolk soft and hot. This egg is all the wrong way round. The white is soggy and cold and the yolk has turned to thick yellow rubber. I find it hard to shove the greasy food down my throat and without Creon it’s not going to get digested properly anyway, so in the end I give up and just have the tea.

I feel another mega-coughing session coming on, so I pay and leave the cafe straight away. Then I find a small square of green in the centre of the busy streets and sit on a bench. I hack my guts up, rattling and retching and gasping for breath and then everything goes kind of spinny, so I clutch at the edge of the bench and tell myself not to panic, but it’s no good.

I’m really struggling for every breath now. I’m not sure how I’m going to even stand up straight, let alone get back to the TV studios and cook my three recipes again in front of the cameras for real this time.

I sit with my head buried in my hands, trying to think.

In the end I do the only thing I can think of doing.

The thing I didn’t want to do at all.

I fumble in my jeans pocket and open my mobile phone.

Sticky German Gingerbread with Vanilla Custard

For the gingerbread, you will need:

230g (8oz) butter
230g (8oz) soft brown sugar
170g (6oz) golden syrup
60g (2oz) black treacle
340g (12oz) self-raising flour
2 eggs, beaten
2 level dessert spoons of ground ginger
1 level dessert spoon of ground cinnamon
A pinch of salt
1 level teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda
230ml (7 fl oz) warm milk

For the vanilla custard, you will need:

200ml (7oz) milk
200ml (7oz) double cream
1 vanilla pod, split seeds scraped out (you can find vanilla pods in the baking section of most supermarkets)
75g (2½oz) caster sugar
2 free-range egg yolks (you can use non free-range, but these do taste better and are much kinder to the hens)

Preheat the oven to 150°C/300°F/gas mark 2. Grease and line a two-pound loaf tin (or an 11 ½ x 7 ½ inch round tin) – you can line it with greaseproof paper which is easily found in the supermarket.

Get a large saucepan and slowly melt together the treacle, sugar and butter on a low heat. When the mixture is nice and gloopy, remove from the heat and stir in the beaten eggs. Sieve the flour, salt, cinnamon and ginger into the melted mixture.

Sieve the bicarbonate of soda into a mixing bowl and pour the warm milk over it. Add this to the treacle mixture, stirring well to combine all the ingredients. Pour into the tin and bake for about 1 ½ hours.

Allow the gingerbread to cool in the tin before removing.

If you like the top of your gingerbread to be extra messy and sticky and delicious – which, let’s face it, I do, because I’m obsessed with this stuff – then brush some more golden syrup over the top while the cake is still warm.

To make the vanilla custard, place the milk, cream and the vanilla pod and seeds into a saucepan on a low heat. Bring gently to the boil, then remove from the heat and remove the vanilla pod.

Whisk the sugar and egg yolks together in a large bowl with a hand whisk (or a fork if you haven’t got one) until pale and frothy. Pour the egg mixture over the milk and cream and whisk together. Pour the mixture into a clean saucepan and continue whisking over a low heat until a frothy custard is formed. Then pour into a jug and serve with a big, thick slice of the German gingerbread.

Chapter Fourteen

Harry answers on the first ring. He never usually does that so I know I’m in trouble.

‘Mel!’ he says. ‘Where are you? I’ve been trying to call you all morning.’

I sigh and swallow down great lumps of mucus in an effort to be able to talk to him. Just hearing his low, kind voice is making me want to sob for England.