“I’ll see you tomorrow morning, Spike.” Twilight said, as she stepped outside into the night. “Don’t forget to do all the things I’ve left undone: I made sure to-”
“Yeah, Twilight. I know you wrote down a list of them all.” Spike interrupted, rolling his eyes at her predictability. “Anyway, havefunseeya‘bye!” He said hastily, ushering Twilight out of the way as he pushed the door closed.
As soon as the thud rang out, Spike balled his fist and pumped into the air.
“Yes! That’s right, who’s the best? Spike’s the best. Aw yeah! Home alone, all night. I do what I want now!” He sang aloud, perfectly aware that no one could judge him for his obtrusiveness. Simply because there was no one around at all. No one to complain about the mess left in the kitchen. No one to do any favours for. No one to make him re-re-rearrange bookshelves, or sweep the floor, or to force him to do any kind of chore. Because this was his night. And Spike was going to make the most of it.
He hopped up a set of enormous and marvellous crystalline stairs with a skip in his step, eager to begin his night in.
‘Imagine all the things I could do! Play all the games I want - even find out what games Twilight plays with our friends when they’re over here for a sleepover! Finish reading my mint condition comic collection! Eat anything I want! Hmm… anything I want, eh?’ He wondered, mesmerised in the thought of a colossal banquet, with all of his favourite foods stacked high on the table before him, almost begging to be eaten.
‘No, Spike. Control yourself. You heard what Twilight said before. There are so many things that need to be done around here to stop this place from looking like a mess.’ He thought, as he walked down a main corridor, nodding in agreement as he took in all the dust and the random placement of books here and there, most lying face-down on the floor.
‘Oh, but I just can’t help it! I can do anything I want! Anything at all! And nothing - and I mean absolutely nothing - can stop me!’
“I have gathered you - a small collection of some of the finest dessert chefs in Equestria - here today into the majestic Friendship Castle kitchen, for what is certain to be one of the greatest challenges you will face in your entire lives.” Spike stood atop a large stool in the kitchen, just in front of the fridge, where he was addressing four utensils - a ladle, a spatula, a rolling pin and a lemon squeezer - each adorned with a miniature chef’s hat and apron.
“While the stakes are not high, you’re still putting your pride and renowned names on the line. If you don’t succeed, you will return home to your friends, family and restaurant colleagues as a failure.” The lemon squeezer nearly shuddered as all the contestants grew more nervous. Apparently.
“In this gruelling task, you will be preparing…” The announcer proclaimed, pausing for unnecessary added dramatic tension. All eyes (well, just Spike’s) were on the tablecloth on the kitchen benchtop, which concealed a stack of unidentifiable cylindrical objects.
“...ice cream.” As he whipped away the stolen tablecloth, the chefs almost gasped as they saw fifteen ice cream containers (each with its own distinct flavour inside), all awaiting their digestion-based destinies.
“But you’re not just making ice cream. Ooh no. This ain’t your run-of-the-mill gelateria.” Spike added, after wiping some saliva from his chin.
“Your challenge is to combine two of these flavours and make something special. Something extraordinary. Something that is more than merely a sum of all it’s chilled dairy parts. Are you ready?” The competitors tensed up and began preparing their minds for the challenge. They needed to be active in order to succeed. Well, active enough.
“You have fifteen minutes. Your time starts… now!” Spike shouted, as the contestants nearly leaped into action from their position on the benchtop, marking the start of their immensely difficult task.
“And your time is up!” Spike shouted, just as the finishing touches were added to each of the four desserts. The utensils almost sighed from exhaustion, as they dropped their things and went to lie back down on the bench. At least the tiresome cooking was all over.
Their ordeal in the kitchen, however, wasn’t yet through. They still had to face the tasting.
The judge for tonight would be none other than Spike the dragon. A careful critic, with plenty of experience in eating such dishes, and a good eye tongue for determine the good from the bad, and the bad from the ugly.
He walked up to the first dish, ‘made’ by the contender who entered the competition as a favourite to win: the spatula. And as far as presentation was concerned, it had already won. The two selected ice creams had been swirled together, with the green and pink stripes resembling a tiger’s coat (although no one knows exactly from what tiger); arranged into a pyramid of five very neat scoops - four at the base, and one being held up by the others. As a finishing touch, it was all covered in small sand-like particles of white chocolate, resembling snow on a mountain.
“Mmm. Mmmmm. Thish ish gooood!” Spike muffled through a spoonful and a half of a simply delectable fusion of two very contrasted yet perfectly matched flavours:
The first was a sweet sensation: the vibrant sweetness of Equestria’s finest strawberries came with a slight tickle of the tongue, as the frostiness of the dessert tried desperately to suppress the intense sugary delight that came naturally to the fruit, with absolutely no success.
The second came with a sensation of a completely different nature: An immediate hit of crisp mint, a plant far more likely consumed together with lime juice and rum (at least, that’s what he had was told), rather than frozen cream as tasted here. But it felt just right, as the refreshing nature of it perfectly complimented the dessert it was flavouring.
Licking his chops after finishing such a marvellous dish, Spike moved on to the next selected combination. Its chef, the lemon squeezer, lay still nearby, attempting to suppress it’s nervousness (apparently) as the adjudicator did his adjudicating. It was presented in a glass cup, with the flavours split vertically to create a retro two-tone look of a faded yellow and a icy white, topped with five raspberries and about a dozen very thin slices of lemon peel.
While not creamy as such, but icy all the same, the first flavour was a sorbet that wanted to punch his tongue right out cold - pun intended. The bitter mass of compounded frozen fragments fizzled in his mouth, like an acid with the potency to reduce Spike’s internals to a puddle of ex-dragon goo on the linoleum floor. Happily, the citric acid was only enough to continue his craving for more, and more, and more! That is, until he tasted the next flavour.
Creamy? Indeedy. What used to be a bunch of bent yellow fruits had been sliced, diced and spliced into a solid smoothie, so thick and refined. While the previous flavour wanted only violence, the second took a much more gentle side. As if it wanted to give his tongue a hug, then a soothing massage until all the addictive ‘damage’ from the other other flavour had gone away.
Spike nodded in satisfaction as he threw the cup into the sink. While quite contented with the desserts so far, he still hadn’t found something that was quite out there. That was soon to change, as he walked up to the next contestant: the rolling pin. Beside it, lay a shallow but wide bowl, containing so many scoops that it looked like a bright fuschia and cinnamon coloured foal’s ball pit, and covered with quite literally hundreds and thousands of rainbow sprinkles. Resisting the urge to jump in and start lobbing ice cream at imaginary evils that came lurking toward him, Spike casually dunked his spoon in and wrapped his mouth around a flavour he remembered very familiarly.
Some time many moons ago, when living in Canterlot, Spike loved the annual fairs that ponies held in the streets during the middle of spring. While there, he and Twilight would have absolute blasts taking nibbles of a vast range of lovely food. Everything from homemade cookies to exquisite foreign cheeses were on display. While all were great, only one thing really stood out in his memory. Cotton candy, or as he remembered from that night, fairy floss, was not only like a cloud of pure sugar, but also provided hours of laughs when Shining Armour told Twilight that actual fairies used it to clean the gaps between their teeth. Spike could only smile in delight as the memory came flooding back, while he munched down what tasted suspiciously like Pinkie Pie’s mane.
Soon afterward however, the over-the-top sugary explosion was surpassed in delight when he got a taste of what was, quite simply, the bee’s knees. Literally. He didn’t know what it was about it: the smooth and delicious sweet delicacy of the flavour it provided, or the way it melted away in his mouth almost immediately, washing away all of the other flavours and letting the loveliness sink in, before Spike swallowed it and repeated the cycle all over again.
While that was certainly an interesting match, there was yet to be a marriage of two tastes that stuck out in his mind as absolutely sublime. Happily, there was still one chef left: the ladle. Immediately, something was slightly off about it. Like it was trying to hide something. Spike narrowed his eyes as he glanced to the side. On the very edge of the benchtop were two tubs, marked: FOR TWILIGHT ONLY. His suspicious straight face turned into a sly smirk. This only made the ladle’s dish even more desirable. And he hadn’t even given the presentation a proper look over.
It was perched up inside a glass sundae cup that looked like a flower opening up its petals. The dark brown and light butterscotch coloured ice cream was topped gracefully with a waffle wedge, a drizzle of chocolate sauce and finished with a light sprinkling of fine black-brown granules. Put simply, the greatest looking ice cream sundae he had ever seen. The bar was set high. Very high.
He expected the usual things from the first flavour. A very creamy texture boosted by sweet and rich chocolate underpinnings? A must have; definitely on the top of the list. While he got that, what he didn’t expect was a big crunch as his sharp and very cold teeth cracked through a round and more solid object. Macadamia. The nutty hits helped fuel his newfound addiction to, what he would call from now on, ‘ice cream with, um, bits in it’.
But the best was yet to come. On the surface, it looked slightly odd: it looked like butterscotch, but laced with a dark brown swirl. Almost as if it were a fusion itself. But as soon as he let it touch his chilled tongue, Spike’s eyes widened and his mouth wrapped a smile around the spoon. He had tasted this flavour - it’s what kept him going on most early mornings Twilight forced him to take - but had never experienced it before in an ice cream. It was divine.
As he finished off the Tiramisu, riding a wave of caffeine-forged energy, he slumped into the seat in the kitchen and grinned heartily. Indulging. Wallowing in the flavour. Simply enjoying what was left of the ice cream in his mouth.
“Yes…” he sighed, rubbing his bloated belly. “Tonight’s going to be a good night.”