South Florida Sun-Sentinel Palm Beach (Sunday)
Cooking show turns deadly in ‘The Golden Spoon’
Allusions to popular reality series such as “The Great British Bake Off” and “Top Chef” with an homage to Agatha Christie provide the right recipe to Jessa Maxwell’s clever debut “The Golden Spoon.”
Maxwell steeps her smart mystery in food. Despite its mouthwatering descriptions of preparing breads, pies and cakes, “The Golden Spoon” is not a culinary mystery. No recipes are included nor does the food determine the plot. “The Golden Spoon” has more in common with any Christie novel and a soupçon nod to Nan and Ivan Lyons’ 1976 novel “Someone Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe.”
No great chefs are in “The Golden Spoon,” just six amateur bakers, each of whom hopes to win the title of America’s best baker as they compete on the decade-old TV reality series “Bake Week.” The winner receives a contract for their own cookbook and the Golden Spoon trophy. They also will be judged by the revered Betsy Martin, creator of “Bake Week” and reverently called “America’s grandmother” because of her warm, appealing on-air personality.
The contestants also will be staying in Vermont at Grafton Manor, Betsy’s family estate where she has lived since childhood. Keeping with the rules of most reality shows, cell phones and outside contact are not allowed during the week, making “The Golden Spoon” a locked-room mystery.
Upping the competition — and the ire of Betsy — the show’s producers have arranged for her ‘THE GOLDEN SPOON’ archenemy Archie Morris, host of “Cutting Board,” to co-judge.
Betsy appears to be the epitome of a spoonful of sugar as “Bake Week” is known for gently nurturing its contestants and offering a kind of visual comfort food to her viewers. Archie has the reputation of a bulldog. His “Cutting Board” is known for aggressive, “cutthroat competition,” pushing its contestants to the edge.
The contestants are a mixed stew with myriad backgrounds, ambitions and secrets. Each gets the chance to narrate various chapters. Kitchen woes begin as soon as the cooking begins — salt placed in a sugar container; a stove on low turned to high boil as soon as the baker turns away; gasoline substituted for orange essence. Sabotage ramps up as the competition stirs a variety of emotions, grievances and resentments with an old grudge leading to a death.
Maxwell includes a roiling boil of humor. Savvy readers will be amused that one character has a name suspiciously similar to the long-running series by Joanne Fluke, though Maxwell’s baker is quite different.
Despite the comic bits, Maxwell adds just the right hard edge to the delicious “The Golden Spoon.”
Oline H. Cogdill can be reached at olinecog@aol. com.