{"id":9546,"date":"2026-04-13T12:33:46","date_gmt":"2026-04-13T12:33:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/readingmate.co.uk\/littlereads\/our-library\/the-worldwide-dessert-contest\/"},"modified":"2026-09-24T06:35:21","modified_gmt":"2026-09-24T06:35:21","slug":"the-worldwide-dessert-contest","status":"publish","type":"our-books","link":"https:\/\/readingmate.co.uk\/littlereads\/our-library\/the-worldwide-dessert-contest\/","title":{"rendered":"The Worldwide Dessert Contest"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Dan Elish&#8217;s The Worldwide Dessert Contest is a gloriously silly story for 8 year olds about a chef whose apple desserts keep turning into other things.<\/p>\n<p>John Applefeller loves making apple desserts. He&#8217;s entered the Worldwide Dessert Contest every year for ten years and come last every single time. Not second to last. LAST.<\/p>\n<p>Why? Because his desserts change at the last minute. His apple souffl\u00e9 puffed up into a giant balloon. His apple ketchup turned into red house paint (he sold it to paint the local primary school, so it wasn&#8217;t all bad).<\/p>\n<p>This year he&#8217;s made an apple pancake ten feet wide. With his ten-year-old assistant Stanley and his little horse Morocco, he wheels it into the stadium.<\/p>\n<p>The contest is wonderfully bonkers. The champion, Sylvester Sweet, arrives on an elephant in a purple tuxedo with nuts for buttons. The head judge has had a caramel apple stuck to his cheek for ten years (guess whose dessert that was?). And one reporter keeps demanding that everyone give it to him straight.<\/p>\n<p>What does the pancake turn into? Let&#8217;s just say the queue to have a go on it gets VERY long!<\/p>\n<p>Then a scruffy old janitor shouts that the greatest dessert chef ever is Captain B. Rollie Ragoon, who makes magical apple pies. And Sweet goes pale&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s pure silliness, the kind you&#8217;ll probably want to read aloud. But it has a big heart too. Applefeller keeps going while the whole crowd laughs at him, and Stanley never stops telling him to ignore them. Any child who&#8217;s kept at something they love while other people giggled will be rooting for him.<\/p>\n<p>A couple of the rival chefs are played for laughs with put-on foreign accents, which reads as a bit dated now.<\/p>\n<p>If it&#8217;s the sweets that got them, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is in the library too. Charlie gets one bar of chocolate a year, on his birthday, and has to walk past shop windows piled high with it every day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dan Elish&#8217;s The Worldwide Dessert Contest is a gloriously silly story for 8 year olds about a chef whose apple desserts keep turning into other things. John Applefeller loves making apple desserts. He&#8217;s entered the Worldwide Dessert Contest every year for ten years and come last every single time. Not second to last. LAST. Why? [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":10740,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"lr_next_read_post_id":7065,"lr_next_read_anchor":"Charlie and the Chocolate Factory","lr_seo_hook":"A chef whose desserts keep changing, a ten-foot pancake and an elephant."},"book_tag":[23],"age_group":[26],"book_type":[1044],"book_author":[219],"class_list":["post-9546","our-books","type-our-books","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","book_tag-funny-books","age_group-books-for-8-year-olds","book_type-paid","book_author-dan-elish"],"yoast_title":"The Worldwide Dessert Contest by Dan Elish | Little Reads","yoast_metadesc":"A chef whose desserts keep changing, a ten-foot pancake and an elephant. 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