CELPIP Listening Part 4 Practice Test: Prize-Winning Apple Pie

NARRATOR: A sixteen-year-old from Saint John has beaten more than forty experienced bakers to take first prize in the pie competition at this year's provincial fair. Hailey Bourque entered an apple pie based on her late great-grandmother's recipe, which she discovered last winter, handwritten on an index card tucked inside an old cookbook. The card, however, was missing half of its instructions, so Bourque spent months experimenting, baking nearly thirty pies before she was satisfied. Her family, she admits, eventually began quietly leaving the kitchen whenever another one came out of the oven. The judges praised her remarkably flaky crust, and one described the filling as perfectly balanced, neither too sweet nor too tart. Bourque credits a single unexpected ingredient: a spoonful of maple syrup in place of some of the sugar. Her prize includes a ribbon, $500, and a professional baking course in Moncton next spring. Bourque intends to put the money toward a new oven for her grandfather, whose kitchen she borrowed throughout the summer. The original recipe card, meanwhile, is now framed and hanging above that kitchen's stove.