• • •
“How did that toothpaste get in my frosting?” George said miserably.
It was around four o’clock in the afternoon. Hannah had picked up the girls at Le Gourmet Cooking School and brought them to the park. The girls were swinging on the swings. Hannah was sitting underneath the shade of a nearby tree. She was reading a cookbook of French cuisine.
“You’re sure you didn’t accidentally put toothpaste on your cupcakes, by mistake?” Bess asked her cousin. “Did you have a tube of toothpaste in your backpack or something?”
“No way!” George replied.
Nancy leaned back and pumped her legs. Her swing rose higher and higher in the air. She liked the feeling of the wind whipping through her hair.
“That means somebody put the toothpaste on your cupcakes,” Nancy called out to George.
“I bet Kenny Bruder did it!” Bess exclaimed. “He thinks he is so funny!”
“Or it could have been bratty Brenda,” George pointed out.
Hannah came by. “Time to go, girls! I have to get back home and start making dinner. I found a wonderful recipe in here!” She held up the French cookbook.
“What is it, Hannah?” Nancy asked her eagerly. She dug her feet into the dirt to stop her swing. Bess and George did the same.
“Escargot,” Hannah replied. “I hope I’m pronouncing that right. My high-school French is a little rusty!”
“Es-car-go? What’s that?” Nancy asked her.
“Snails baked in garlic butter,” Hannah replied.
Nancy, Bess, and George stared at each other. “Ewwwww!” they all cried out at the same time.
• • •
During Tuesday’s dessert-making class, Nancy bumped into Midori at the sink. Nancy almost dropped the bowl of strawberries she was carrying.
“Sorry!” Midori cried out.
“Sorry!” Nancy said at the same time.
Midori’s cheeks turned bright pink. She looked uncomfortable.
She seems kind of shy, Nancy thought.
“What kind of smoothie are you making?” Nancy asked Midori. Today’s recipe was for smoothies.
“Ohhhh. I still haven’t decided. Maybe a mango-lime smoothie. But maybe that would taste really yucky, I don’t know.” Midori shrugged.
“A mango-lime smoothie? That sounds yummy!” Nancy said eagerly. “I’m making a strawberry-pineapple smoothie.”
“That sounds really yummy,” Midori told her. “Way yummier than mine.”
Midori said good-bye and returned to her workstation. Nancy washed some strawberries in the sink, then headed in the direction of her workstation.
On the way she passed one of the small storage closets. She overheard a voice coming from inside. Surprised, she stopped to listen.
“He is so bossy, Alexis. I hate this job! I wish I was working at the Burger Barn with you.”
Nancy peeked through the door. Annabelle was sitting on a cardboard box. She was twirling a lock of her long red hair and talking quietly into a purple cell phone. She didn’t notice Nancy.
Annabelle went on talking. “But he’s getting what he deserves! Wait’ll you hear what . . . ”
“Annabelle! Where are you?”
Nancy glanced around. Monsieur Jadot was looking around and calling for his daughter. She clutched her bowl of strawberries to her chest and kept on walking.
A second later, Annabelle came rushing out of the closet with an armful of supplies. “Coming, Papa!” she exclaimed. The purple cell phone was sticking out of her jeans’ pocket.
What was that all about? Nancy wondered.
Nancy returned to her workstation. George and Bess had all their smoothie ingredients packed into their blenders.
“What took you so long?” George asked Nancy.
“I’ll tell you later!” Nancy replied.
Soon the entire kitchen was filled with the sound of whirring blenders. Monsieur Jadot and Annabelle showed everyone how to use the blenders properly.
Nancy’s blender already had pineapple chunks, pineapple juice, and vanilla yogurt in it. She added the just-washed strawberries into the mix. Then she put the top on and hit the BLEND button.
The blender whirred to life. The fruit, yogurt, and juice mixture inside quickly became a pinkish-red mush.
Mmmm! Nancy thought. My smoothie is going to be awesome!
The smoothie continued bubbling . . . and bubbling . . . and bubbling. Nancy stared at it. Her smile froze on her face.
Something was wrong. There were way too many bubbles. In fact the bubbles were pushing against the top of the blender.
A few seconds later the top fell away, and the bubbly mixture came pouring out of the blender and onto the counter.
Nancy gasped. Her smoothie was going out of control!
4
A Salty Surprise
Nancy clapped her hand over her mouth. Her smoothie was bubbling out of the blender and onto the counter. It was even spilling onto the floor!
It looked like an erupting volcano!
“What is going on here?”
Nancy turned around. Monsieur Jadot was standing there, his hands on his hips. He looked mad.
“I . . . that is . . . my smoothie exploded!” Nancy sputtered. She could feel her face turning red.
Monsieur Jadot reached over and pushed the OFF button on Nancy’s blender. “Mademoiselle Drew, the top is supposed to be on, not off,” he scolded her.
“It was on,” Nancy explained. “The bubbles made the top fall off.”
Some of the other kids gathered around Nancy’s blender and stared at the mess. There was strawberry-pineapple smoothie everywhere. It was a disaster!
“What did you put in there? Bubble bath?” Brenda teased.
“Yeah!” Kenny snickered. “Yesterday, George put toothpaste on her cupcakes. Today, Nancy put bubble bath in her smoothie. Maybe tomorrow, Bess will put hair gel in her Jell-O!”
“That’s enough, Monsieur Bruder and Mademoiselle Carlton,” Monsieur Jadot snapped. “In the meantime I don’t want anyone tasting any of their smoothies until I’ve investigated this situation.” He began inspecting everyone’s smoothies.
“Why did your smoothie go crazy like that?” Bess asked Nancy.
“I’m not sure,” Nancy replied worriedly. “I followed the recipe exactly. I don’t know what happened!”
Then Nancy noticed something strange. Behind her blender, a red box was peeking out from under a stained white dishtowel.
Nancy pulled the box out from underneath the dishtowel. The front of the box read: BAKING SODA.
“Baking soda?” Nancy said out loud. “What’s that doing there? I didn’t put baking soda in my smoothie!”
George put her hand on Nancy’s arm. “Nancy, remember that experiment in science class?”
Nancy frowned. “Huh?”
“A couple of months ago in science class we made volcanoes out of papier-mâché,” George reminded her.
Nancy nodded. “Oh, yeah! And we made them erupt with baking soda and dishwashing detergent!”
“Exactly!” George said.
“Maybe someone put baking soda and detergent in my blender to make my smoothie erupt—like a volcano!” Nancy said angrily. She glanced around the kitchen. “And I’m going to find out who!”
• • •
Right after class that day Nancy, George, and Bess headed over to Nancy’s house.
As soon as they got there they rushed upstairs to Nancy’s room and flopped down on the bed. Then Nancy pulled her detective notebook out of her backpack.
“Do you girls need snacks, or are you all too filled up on fancy desserts?” Hannah called from downstairs.
“Snacks, please!” all three girls shouted.
Nancy flipped through her blue notebook until she found a clean page. She reached into her backpack and found her favorite purple pen.
Across the top of the page, she wrote, “The Case of the Messed-up Recipes.”
“Okay,” Nancy said to George. “Someone in our class messed up your recipe and my recipe. The question is who?”
“And why?” George added.
“I think it’s Kenny Bruder,” Bess said. She twirled a lock of her blond hair around and around on her finger. “He sent you that nasty airplane message, remember? He really wants to win the Top Chef prize. Maybe he’s messing up other kids’ recipes so he’ll win for sure!”
“He’s definitely a suspect,” Nancy agreed. She wrote:
Suspects:
Kenny Bruder
He really wants to win
the Top Chef prize!
Then Nancy remembered Annabelle’s cell-phone conversation. She told Bess and George about it.
“Maybe Annabelle’s the kitchen bandit,” George said when Nancy had finished.
“No way! She’s super-cool. Besides, she wears really cute clothes!” Bess protested.
George giggled. “So what? Monsieur Jadot is really bossy with her. Maybe Annabelle’s trying to ruin his class to make him mad!”
“Hmm. You could be right,” Nancy said.
Under Kenny Bruder’s name in the Suspects column, Nancy wrote:
Annabelle Jadot
Her dad is super-bossy.
Maybe she wants to get even!
Just then, Hannah came through the door. She was carrying a tray.
Bess craned her neck to see what was on the tray. “Mmm, chocolate-chip cookies! And lemonade!” she said eagerly.
“Maybe we should check to make sure there isn’t any toothpaste or something in the cookies,” George joked.
Hannah looked confused. “Toothpaste? In my cookies?”
Nancy told Hannah about the cupcake incident and the smoothie incident. When she had finished, Hannah said, “Oh, my! That’s a real mystery, isn’t it?”
Bess nodded. “Yes. But that’s okay because Nancy is the best detective in the whole wide world. She’s going to solve the mystery!”
• • •
Wednesday’s class assignment was butterscotch brownies. Because of what had happened on Monday and Tuesday, everyone was very careful with their brownies.
“Stay away from my bowl!” Nancy heard Alison say to Kenny. Alison grabbed her bowl of brownie batter and hugged it tightly.
Kenny glared at her. “I wouldn’t go near that if you paid me. It looks gross!” he shot back.
“Please, children, enough!” Monsieur Jadot snapped his fingers. “We cannot become great dessert chefs if we are playing silly games and pranks.”
Nancy listened to Monsieur Jadot. She mixed flour into a bowl, then baking powder, then baking soda.
Seeing the red box of baking soda made her think about what had happened yesterday. Who put baking soda and detergent in her smoothie? Was it Kenny? Or Annabelle? Or someone else altogether?
“Are you done with that sugar jar or what?” Brenda snapped at Nancy.
“Here, use this one,” Jared said, passing his sugar jar over to Brenda. “I’m done with it.”
“Hey, I was waiting for that,” Kenny said. He intercepted the jar from Jared.
Kenny dumped a ton of sugar into his bowl without measuring it. Then he passed the sugar jar to Brenda. “Here, you can have it now.”
“Gee, thanks,” Brenda said in a sarcastic voice.
An hour later, everyone’s butterscotch brownies were done. Monsieur Jadot and Annabelle helped the students take their brownies out of the oven.
Nancy tasted a sample of hers. It was still warm from the oven. It was yummy, too!
“These are awesome,” Bess said, popping a butterscotch brownie into her mouth.
“Mine are too,” George agreed, munching on one of hers.
Just then, Brenda let out a shriek. Nancy looked up, startled. “What’s the matter, Brenda?” she asked her.
Monsieur Jadot rushed across the kitchen. “Now what, Mademoiselle Carlton?” he demanded.
“Someone put tons of salt in my brownies!” Brenda screeched.
Alison began making a choking sound. “Mine too!” she cried out.
5
The Chocolate-Fingerprint Clue
Nancy was speechless. The kitchen bandit had struck again! Someone had put salt in Brenda and Alison’s butterscotch brownies!
Then Jared and Kenny started making gagging noises. “S-S-S-Salt!” Jared sputtered, pointing to his brownies.
“Mine too,” Kenny said, pointing to his. “These are totally gross!”
Monsieur Jadot frowned. He looked really confused. “What is this? What is going on?”
He picked up one of Brenda’s butterscotch brownies and took a small bite. He spit it out. “Bleh! You are right, mademoiselle. Salt! Perhaps you confused the recipe and put in salt instead of sugar?”
Brenda gaped at Monsieur Jadot. “No way! I followed the recipe exactly,” she huffed.
“So did I,” Alison insisted.
“Me too,” Jared said.
“Me three. I mean, me four,” Kenny piped up.
“Hmmm,” Monsieur Jadot muttered.
Monsieur Jadot went around and sampled everyone’s butterscotch brownies. After he was done, he said, “Four batches are fine: Mademoiselle Drew, Mademoiselle Fayne, Mademoiselle Marvin, and Mademoiselle Tanaka’s. The other four batches are not fine: Mademoiselle Carlton, Mademoiselle Wegman, Monsieur Stein, and Monsieur Bruder’s. This is most mysterious!”
Bess turned to Nancy. “What does that mean?” she whispered. “Our brownies were okay, and Midori’s, too. But Brenda, Alison, Jared, and Kenny’s brownies were not okay.”
Nancy thought long and hard. What could it mean? The guilty person, whoever it was, ruined four batches of brownies. But he or she had left the other four batches alone.
And then Nancy thought of when Monsieur Jadot just said to Brenda about mixing up the sugar with the salt.
“Where’s the sugar jar?” Nancy said suddenly to Bess and George.
“You mean the one we used?” George asked her. She glanced around, then pointed to Midori’s workstation. “There! It’s the jar with the red lid. It says ‘sugar’ on it. Midori used it after the three of us did.”
Nancy rushed over to Midori’s workstation.
Midori was sitting on her stool, looking anxious. “Hi, Midori,” Nancy said.
“Uh, hi,” Midori replied. “What do you want?”
Nancy pointed to the sugar jar. “I just need to check this out,” she said.
Nancy twisted the lid off the sugar jar and sniffed. She put her pinkie finger in the sugar and tasted it. It was definitely sugar!
Then Nancy remembered that there was another sugar jar that some of the other kids had been using. It had a blue lid and had the word “sugar” on it.
She glanced around the room. The jar was sitting on the counter at Alison’s workstation.
“Thanks, Midori,” Nancy said breathlessly. She rushed over to Alison’s workstation.
“What are you doing?” Brenda snapped when Nancy picked up the blue-lidded jar.
“I’m just checking something out,” Nancy explained. She opened the jar and tasted the sugar with her other pinkie.
Except it wasn’t sugar—it was salt!
Nancy took the jar over to Monsieur Jadot and Annabelle. “Monsieur Jadot!” Nancy said excitedly. “I figured it out. Someone put salt in this sugar jar.”
“Impossible!” Monsieur Jadot cried out. He pronounced it like “am-po-see-blur.” He tasted what was in the blue-lidded jar. “Oui, you are correct, Mademoiselle Drew. It is salt!” he said, looking shocked.
Then he narrowed his eyes and turned to his daughter. “Did you put salt in the sugar jar, Annabelle?”
Annabelle’s jaw dropped. “No way! I did not do that. I remember putting sugar in both those jars.” She looked really annoyed.
Nancy glanced around the room. Kenny snitched a butterscotch brownie from Bess’s pan and popped it into his mouth. When he saw Nancy looking at him, he stopped chewing and turned a
way.
Nancy frowned. Kenny was one of the four kids whose butterscotch brownies had gotten messed up. He was also on her suspect list.
But now Nancy wasn’t so sure. Would Kenny have ruined his own brownies?
• • •
“Kenny could have put salt in his brownies to keep people from suspecting him,” Bess suggested the next day as she, George, and Nancy walked to the Le Gourmet Cooking School.
It was a cloudy day. Next to the sidewalk, a row of yellow daffodils swayed and bobbed in the wind. It looked like it might start raining any second. Nancy was glad she had worn her special blue rain boots and blue raincoat.
“I still think it’s Annabelle,” George piped up. “I forgot to tell you guys. Yesterday, just after class was over, I saw her putting a container of salt in the cupboard!”
“So?” Nancy said.
“So maybe that was the box of salt she dumped into the sugar jar!” George said eagerly.
Nancy nodded. “Hmm. Maybe.”
Bess kicked a pebble on the sidewalk. “Hey! Did you guys remember to bring in your favorite dessert recipe?” she asked Nancy and George.
Today was Bring Your Favorite Dessert Recipe day. It was also the second-to-last day of class.
Nancy nodded. “Yes. I brought Hannah’s recipe for hot-fudge sundaes.”
“I brought my dad’s recipe for blueberry crisp,” George said.
“I brought my grandma’s peanut butter-cookie recipe,” Bess said.
The girls continued buzzing excitedly about their recipes until they reached the cooking school. They ran into Brenda at the front door.
“Hi, Brenda,” Nancy called out.
Brenda flipped her hair over her shoulders. “Hi, guys. Well I guess you should start congratulating me.”
George frowned. “Why?”
“Because I brought in my aunt Maria’s extra-special chocolate-fudge recipe. It’s going to help me win the Top Chef contest!” Brenda bragged.
“Oh, yeah, right,” Bess said. She rolled her eyes.
The other four kids were already in the kitchen when Nancy, Bess, George, and Brenda walked in. Some of them had already started working on their recipes.