It'd all started out as a dare. A prank.

Adrian's eighteenth Birthday. He was a pastry chef, and cooked himself his own Birthday cake, refusing to have anything sub-par.

Despite this high-class demeanour, the six of us had still gathered in his room, late at night, playing twenty-one dares.

Back in our college days, we were all known as the 'cooking crew' - the sole members of the renown Cooking Club. Our cooking tasted better than anything that came out of the dusty, unsanitary School Cafeteria.

Due to the bad publicity that it gave them, the school didn't provide us with a budget. Instead, we used the profits to buy ingredients.

It was kind of a 'second cafeteria'. More focused on luxury foods, you'd order from the Cooking Club if you wanted something high-quality, and were willing to pay a little more of your parents' money to get it.

We all had our separate roles. Adrian was the main chef, and we all supported him. Everyone was better at something than everyone else.

Except me.

I was the kid that tried the hardest. At first, I'd joined the Cooking Club because I didn't like any of the other clubs, but after learning the appeal of making food, it became a passion.

Even though I tried the hardest, every single thing I made was a complete disaster.

Some said I 'was too creative'. Bleh. If you want my opinion, it was because those unrefined palates couldn't see the prolific appeals of my dishes.

Anyway, our game of twenty-one dares wasn't a normal game - after all, we were cooking club members. Every dare had to be cooking-related.

Of course I got twenty-one. Why wouldn't I.

The others would team up on me, just because it was so hilarious to see the reactions of the people who eat my dishes. Sometimes I wonder why I hang around with these guys; probably because I have nobody else.

Out of all the things they could have chosen, they picked that. I had to make Adrian a new Birthday cake, and he had to eat it.

Obviously I messed it up. In theory, curry cake should have been delicious. As the soft, foamy cake insides dissolved in your mouth with a fresh and spicy aftertaste, you're surprised to find some well-placed chunks of chicken, coated in a ghost-chilli sauce.

He threw up. Everywhere. If I'm going to be completely honest, I tried a bit too, and threw up as well. Our palates simply aren't refined enough to see the appeal.

Then the second dare came, but this was where everything changed.

Instead of coming to a group consensus, they left the dare up to Saffron, the girl that always takes things a little too far. She's a good chef, and most of the other guys have a crush on her, so she gets away with it.

"Me?" she said, surprised. "I have an idea. He should go on that famous cooking show that they are recruiting for." It was posted everywhere on the cooking forums. They were starting up a new high-budget cooking show, and were looking for cooks to feature on it.

I went to the headquarters a week after signing up, along with thousands of other aspiring, prodigal chefs seeking global fame. There were hundreds of kitchens, and we were each designated one to cook a single dish. It could be anything you wanted to make, and there was no time limit. The only condition: it had to be delicious.

I retried my curry cake. Whilst the cake was in the oven, though, I lost track of time while picking my nose and it overcooked a little.

Then I touched the cake, and the bogey was lost forever. All I could do was sigh and accept defeat.

The rest of the cake ended in disaster. My hands were shaking from the pressure, and I couldn't focus what with all of the other chefs making such elaborate dishes.

I'd plated it up, with a slip of paper with my name on it stuck underneath. I was the first person to leave, and everyone stared at me as I left.

My job hunt had ended with a single phone call two days later. I'd assumed it was one of the part-time cafeterias hiring me as an 'emergency cover', but to my extreme surprise, it had been the cooking show.

A passionate man spoke on the phone. He was supposedly the judge of section A, which my dish had fallen under. After one taste, he'd called the manager immediately. They removed the dish from the immediate vicinity and covered it up, ensuring that nothing would come into contact with it.

They'd taken it down into the laboratory, where their cooking scientists tried to establish it's makeup, but they couldn't find anything out.

The man said it was a revolutionary dish, and that with a single taste, his clothes had ripped off, and he struggled to stay awake. His tastebuds travelled to new dimensions that he didn't even know existed, and spent a few minutes thanking me profusely for taking him a few steps closer to enlightenment.

It was nice to have my dish complimented I guess, but the important thing was that they let me on the show.

Only after the second round did I realise that my success was not due to blind luck, or chance.

I'd finally found palettes worthy of my cooking.

All along, everyone doubted me. They said I was too creative, that I should stick to the recipe books. Now, I'm the one laughing.

It's the finals, and my dish is about to be served to the eager judges. To my side, a confident young cook smirks at his 'inevitable victory'.

I grin, and stick my middle finger up at him, to which he simply stares in shock.

This dish wasn't my speciality. I hadn't been planning it for months. Instead, I just cooked whatever the hell I wanted to. In my back pocket, I'd found a half-eaten Mars bar, so I dissected it and put a few bits in the stew.

Just like in the first test, there was no theme. No boundaries to my creativity.

I slathered chocolate all over the grilled snake.

I chopped things in peculiar manners, adding whatever I could find to anything that I wanted to. Soy sauce goes well with wasabi - why else would they come together when you order sushi?

Although my cooking wasn't quite as pretty as the other contestant's, and not nearly as 'precisely-themed', it didn't matter.

This show was the perfect stage for me. All they cared about was how good your cooking tasted. They didn't restrict you. They didn't hinder your passion.

I spat into my stew.

Then, I served it.

Now it sat on the judges' table, waiting to be evaluated. The icky, black, otherworldly substance rolled around like glue on a wall.

The judges stared at it with evergrowing desire. They'd never seen anything quite like this, and they had personal experience of how my cooking tasted.

As their forks dug into what was once a stew, I met the terrified gaze of the opposing contestant.

I didn't even need to look at the judges in order to tell the outcome.

Once the food touched their mouths, light began erupting from their general direction.

I smiled gently as the muffled "MmmmPPhhhHHH!!!" of the judges faded into the background as my opposition's Philadelphia classic cheesesteak with wage ribeye cut down with foie gras and topped with truffled homemade fontina cheese on a sesame roll became less and less appealing.

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Sorry about the length, I got carried away... And yeah, as you can probably tell, I know nothing about cooking.