I do not own Yumeiro Patissiere

The cake grand prix begins

A few weeks after the New Year started, there was an announcement that the cake grand prix will start soon. "So it's that time of year already huh?" said Rumi. "I better prepare myself for this, since Kashino, Andou and Hanabusa asked me to be on their team this year" said Ichigo. "You better Ichigo," said Rumi "the cake grand prix is not something to take lightly". "I know," said Ichigo "I found out on the school computers about what happens in the cake grand prix; like you have to win a lot of different rounds to get to the finals, and that you end up with opponents that are at a higher skill than yours like the high schoolers". "Yes and you must not make any flaws, not one, when you are making the sweets either, or you lose points" said Rumi. Just then the sweets princes turned up. "In the school kitchens pronto Amano" said Makato. Ichigo had a feeling that the boys wanted to chat with her about the cake grand prix, so she went with the boys.

"This is about the cake grand prix right?" asked Ichigo, when they went into the kitchens. "Yes, the grand prix is only 15 days away," said Makato "so you will be practicing under our guide". "I thought it would come to this," said Ichigo "which is a good thing why I did a lot of studying and practicing myself". She opened up her school bag and took out a few notebooks out. Inside were a lot of notes about the basics of sweets like the differences with sugar, like brown sugar and caster sugar, the differences of butter with salted butter and unsalted butter etc. There were also notes about the makings of different sweets like what you should add and what to do with the ingredients before you make the sweets. And there were also important things like temperatures, timings and other stuff. "Wow Ichigo you certainly have studied a lot about the basics" said Satsuki. "These are what I learnt ever since my grandma first taught me how to make sweets," said Ichigo "and even I know that taking notes of things is very important, especially when it comes to studying". Caramel, Chocolat and Café were impressed too. Vanilla smiled proudly; she had seen the notes already. Makato looked through the books. "Good," he said "you understand the basics, but you will be practicing with making things like chocolate, candy sculptures, mousses and piping". "Got it" said Ichigo. Ichigo knew that this would be tough, but if she was going to be in the cake grand prix, she understood that she would have to go through lots of harsh training.

The first thing to do was exercise to build up the muscles; it included running 1 lap around the school grounds, fifty set ups and fifty push ups in the mornings and the evenings. This was Makato's set up and he intended to make it harsh. Ichigo started to smirk. "Let's show him Vanilla" she whispered. "Yeah show him what we had been doing every morning ever since you entered this school" smiled Vanilla. Ichigo did the fifty push ups and fifty set ups with no complaining and when it came to the running, she stayed in pace with Kashino, but near the end she ran fast in front of him. "Eat my dust!" she shouted. "Hey!" shouted Makato. Ichigo and Vanilla found it funny. When it was over Ichigo explained to Makato that she had practiced running on the school grounds every morning ever since she entered the school. "What?" gasped Makato. "Sorry Kashino, but I am not as weak as you think I am so there" smirked Ichigo. "That's right" said Vanilla. Kashino felt she should make the training harsher.

The next part of training was learning the differences with eggs, flour and sugar with Sennosuke. Ichigo easily passed that because she had studied that lot of times. With Satsuki, the training was making things like rose petals out of icing and piping cream and icing to make cake decorations. Makato also trained Ichigo with tempering with chocolate. "What temperature is the temperature when melting chocolate?" he asked as a quiz question. "No more than 60c" answered Ichigo. "And white chocolate?" asked Makato. "No more than between 35c and 40c" answered Ichigo. Makato could see that Ichigo had been studying well. Soon the first day of training was over with.

"You did very well Ichigo-chan" said Satsuki. "Yes and you know much I didn't need to teach you much" said Sennosuke. "I didn't lie when I said that I was going to study and practice a lot for this cake grand prix" said Ichigo. "I'm glad you are taking this seriously" said Makato, bluntly. "Ichigo became cross with that comment. "Listen to me Kashino," she said "I can understand that you don't want any mishaps to happen in the cake grand prix, like with Koshiro last year. But let me tell you something; I am not Miya Koshiro and I already know how serious the cake grand prix is". "Ah ha" said Vanilla, crossing her arms. Makato just stared; he already knew that Ichigo was no Miya Koshiro and how she was serious on studying to be a patissiere. But being a proud and stubborn type, he couldn't put it down to words. Over the next ten days Ichigo studied and practiced more for the grand prix.

One night Ichigo was coming out of the school nurses office. She had blisters on her hands and just put blister plasters on them. "I'm glad the nurse had lots of blister plasters" said Ichigo, looking at her blistered hands. "It's common though for patissiers to get blisters as well as cuts," said Vanilla "they are proof of your hard work as a patissiere Ichigo". "Maybe so, but I hate blisters," said Ichigo "they feel itchy and uncomfortable, and if they burst they sting like hell. I got a burst blister one time and it was the most painful experience of my life". Just then she saw Mari practicing on something in the cooking room. Ichigo entered the room and asked Mari if she was entering the cake grand prix too. Mari said she was; she didn't enter last year but this time she was. "I have seen you do a lot of training for the cake grand prix," she said "and I hope that you will make it to the finals". She noticed Ichigo's blistered hands. "You defiantly have the hands of a patissiere Amano". Mari felt that this year's cake grand prix would be interesting with Ichigo participating in it.

After five more days, it was the time for the cake grand prix to begin. The chairman explained that a lot more teams from the middle school section had entered in the cake grand prix this year, so the middle school teams had to take a preliminary test to enter the grand prix. Karashima-sensei explained about the test; it was a test on what the students knew about basics of making sweets and they had to answer four questions right to past the test. Apparently this test was a very harsh one. If someone got just one question wrong it would be a failure, and if one member from the teams failed; the whole team would be disqualified. Ichigo did feel a bit nervous as there was nothing like this last year, but she stood firm. 'I have practiced and studied a lot for this,' she thought 'I will pass this test'. Vanilla told Ichigo that it was against the rules for the spirits to help their partners, but Ichigo told Vanilla not to worry.

Soon it was time for the test to start and the students went through the doors, three by three, to start. Ichigo calmly walked through the door when it was her turn. First part of the test was a tasting room and there was a piece of pound cake on a plate. 'This must be part of the cake, so I better pay attention to the taste of this cake' she thought. She slowly ate and savoured every bit of the pound cake. Then she went into another room called the butter room. There on the table were three blocks of different butters and the question was what butter was used. "I thought it would be this sort of test," said Ichigo "then it's a good thing I savoured the pound cake". Butter A was salted butter, butter B was unsalted butter and butter C was fermented unsalted butter. "It's C," said Ichigo "I recognize the taste of the fermented unsalted butter from the cake". The next room was the sugar room and the question was what sugar was used. Sugar A was granulated sugar, sugar B was johakuto sugar; johakuto sugar was a japanese sugar and was sweeter than granulated sugar. Sugar C was brown sugar. "It's A," said Ichigo "the butter was rich so granulated sugar would be used. As my uncle Hikaru told me; the richer the butter, the less sweet the sugar". The third room was the egg room and the question was what egg would be good to use. Cracking the eggs weren't allowed, but Ichigo knew how to tell because she had practiced eggs with Sennosuke. She spun the three eggs to see which one was a boiled egg; boiled eggs would keep on spinning but non boiled eggs wouldn't. Egg A was a boiled one but the other two weren't. Next she held egg B and C towards the light; this was to see if one egg was rotten and one was good. Egg B was good while C was rotten, so the answer was egg B. The last room was the flour room and the question was which flour. "Okay," said Ichigo "these three bowls of flour would be brad flour, all-purpose flour and cake flour. Now, different flour has a different amount of glutton in them, and the way to find out which flour has the most or least glutton is to knead it to see which one is more or less flexible. There was a bowl of water on the table and Ichigo used it to knead the flour. She needed to hurry because her time was nearly running out. Flour A turned out to be bread flour because it was flexible. Flour B was all-purpose flour because it turned out so and so. Flour C was cake flour because it was soft and hard to keep together. "It's C" she said.

Ichigo and Vanilla prayed that door C was the correct answer.

Ichigo should have practiced as soon as the boys chose her to be in their team for the cake grand prix. I also don't think she was serious enough when she started. To let you know Kashino and Ichigo will be a couple but won't admit their feelings till later.