Summary: Post KH3 - As she has nowhere else to go, Terra and Aqua take Naminé in and she starts living in the Land of Departure. As a thank you, she wants to bake a little something for them and Ven is the one who is going to help her decipher the complicated recipe.
Inspired by a sweet anon I got on tumblr. Implied Sokai and Terraqua.
Disclaimer: All characters belong to Disney/Square Enix.
"So... Here's a cute mental image for you, Ven and Namine baking cookies together, or baking a cake, or some other baked dessert that is viewed as cute. For comedy, imagine them not really understanding the abbreviations or being incredibly literal."
This is a message I got from a really nice anon on my tumblr and I just got carried away by their idea. So this fanfiction came to life. It's just a quick work, written down in one sitting and I only read over it once to catch the most obvious mistakes.
Please enjoy!
"A paopu cake?"
A smile spread on Naminé's face and she nodded excitedly, pulling a small yellow star shaped fruit with a single green leaf hanging from its stem out of her shopping basket.
"Wouldn't this be the perfect ingredient for my 'Thank you for taking me in' cake for Terra and Aqua? "
Ven bit his lip, unsure of what to say to the girl in front of him. She looked so happy and heaven knew how few occasions she had had in the past to be genuinely happy.
"I mean, I'm sure that they will appreciate it, but why a paopu? Why not… cherries or raspberries?"
"Why not a paopu?" She retorted with another smile, twirling around before putting the fruit down on the counter to reach for a mixing bowl.
"You know that Terra isn't fond of sweet things and apparently, paopus have a really special taste. Sweet, but not too sweet, fruity, but not too fruity. Well, Kairi's descriptions don't really seem to make sense, but she says it tasted amazing."
She turned back to Ven and winked at him. "And Sora apparently agrees."
A grin started to spread on Ven's lips and he jumped into action, helping Naminé to gather supplies.
"Really, they finally shared one? About time!"
He hesitated in the middle of pulling out the electric mixer.
"But that's what I mean, you know? Wouldn't eating this cake mean that Terra and Aqua would share a paopu, too? I mean, I'm all for it, but shouldn't they be able to decide to do it themselves?"
Naminé tsk-ed in response and took the mixer out of his hands.
"It's not like I'm making a secret out of it! Especially since I found this cute star shaped cake pan the other day, I can literally make a paopu cake! I'll just take the original paopu stem and leaf and push it into the cake and voilà!"
She danced around Ven back to the dinner table to fetch the products she had bought at the market half an hour ago and started unpacking them, too.
"Also, it's not like the two of them aren't connected already. They have been connected through fate, through your Wayfinders, through your memories to which I had access because I had access to Sora's memories and you were inside of his heart… it's not like a little paopu would change anything, right?"
"Well…"
"Oh come on, Ven! Please?"
Naminé pushed her lower lip out and made her best expression of a pout. With a sigh, Ven gave in.
"Fine!"
"Great!" She shoved the recipe into Ven's hands and turned to the sink to wash her hands.
"Can you read the recipe to me?"
Ven nodded and looked at the recipe.
"Separate one egg and beat the egg white and a pinch of salt until stiff peaks form."
His eyebrows furrowed in confusion.
"A pinch of salt? What in the worlds is a pinch of salt?"
Meanwhile, Naminé managed to separate the egg successfully and she clapped her hands in celebration.
"I don't know? I guess we… have to pinch the salt and whatever is between our fingers goes into the egg white?"
Ven stared at her in doubt.
"That doesn't make any sense though. My fingers are bigger than yours. Terra's fingers are bigger than mine. Whose fingers are they talking about? Wait, are we even talking about fingers?"
She tapped her finger against her chin in thought.
"Well, you can pinch with a pair of pliers, but they don't belong to the standard kitchen equipment. But wait!"
She easily glided over to one of the drawers and pulled out a pair of tongs.
"What about this?"
Ven mustered them critically.
"I've never seen Aqua use them. Quite contrary, she always hands the tongs to Terra and he uses them to turn the meat when we make barbeque."
He shook his head and pointed at the nooses at the ends of the tongs. "The salt would just spill out."
"Well if that's not it, I suppose we have to use our fingers. Since I'm the one baking, it's gotta be talking about my fingers, right?" Naminé looked at him expectantly, but Ven only shrugged, so she bravely reached into the pot of salt, pinched her fingers and pulled out. Several grains of salt fell into the egg yolk.
"This'll have to do."
After she beat the egg whites, Ven continued to read.
"Set the egg whites aside and grab another bowl to mix the egg yolk, lemon zest, fruit juice, yellow gel color, sugar and buttermilk until well combined. Do you want me to juice the paopu while you mix the ingredients?"
"Please," Naminé nodded and stole a glance at the recipe once Ven had pinned it to the fridge to retrieve the juicer.
"Ven? What does 't-s-p' mean? And what about 't-b-s-p'?
He hauled the juicer onto the dining table and returned to Naminé's side to check.
"One tsp. lemon zest and 1 Tbsp. juice… Wait, I think sometimes Aqua uses teaspoons and tablespoons to measure things like baking soda and cocoa powder!"
"Oh! So 'tsp.' is 'teaspoon' and 'Tbsp.' is tablespoon?"
"It would make sense, right?"
"Alright, but what exactly is a 'cup' then?"
Naminé opened one of the cabinets above her and stood on her tiptoes to reach for the tea cups inside of it.
"I mean, this is the cup Aqua uses for her morning coffee," she held up a standard sized azure coffee cup, "and this one is the one Terra uses," she raised her other arm, the red cup in it double the size of the first one. "So, which one is it?"
"Just a sec, I know the answer to this one!"
Ven turned to another cabinet and he pulled out a set of measuring cups that was held together by a small plastic ring
"I've seen Aqua use them for her cakes. Each cup is labeled, look," he spread the cups out, pointing at their inscriptions, "one cup, half a cup, one third of a cup and so on!"
"Wow, this is really handy! Thanks, Ven."
With a nod, Ven left Naminé alone with her ingredients and started working on the juicer once again, a little unsure whether he'd be able to put the pieces of the machine together correctly, but once he pressed the on button, the machine sprang into life. Satisfied with himself, Ven sliced the paopu into smaller pieces and dropped them into the machine. Juice slowly started to pour out of the machine's snout… right onto the table.
"Oh crackers!"
He jumped to the glass cabinet to get something to collect the juice with, accidentally jostling Naminé in the process and ignoring her surprised shriek to hurry back to the table, saving the precious juice from being wasted on the tablecloth.
"Ven!" Naminé grumbled and the boy turned around in surprise. He had never heard her grumble before. She stood in front of him, her arms propped up on her hips and her usually angelic face turned into a scowl.
"What's the matter?" Ven asked hesitantly.
"The recipe says one drop of yellow food coloring. One! Thanks to you, I added three!"
He winced.
"I'm sure it's not that important…"
"If it weren't, why would the recipe say to add exactly one drop?"
She turned away from Ven and stared into her bowl, trying to assess the damage
"Do you think I'll have to start over?"
Ven returned to her side and looked over her shoulder. The batter looked fine, a strong yellow color right in the middle of it since Naminé hadn't mixed the color in yet.
"…no? I honestly don't think so. It's food coloring. It doesn't taste like anything and two drops won't change the outcome either."
I think, he added in his head, not wanting to worry Naminé further.
"If you say so," Naminé replied, but it was evident in the slump of her shoulders that she wasn't too sure of her creation anymore and Ven felt incredibly bad about it, but there was not much he could do about it.
Still, the girl continued beating the ingredients and reached for the egg whites to add them to the mix before she hesitated once again.
"Ven? How do I fold in an egg white?"
"Fold in?"
"It says 'Fold the white into the yolk mixture until just combined'."
Ven pulled the recipe off the fridge and just like Naminé said, it told them to fold the egg whites in.
"How are you supposed to fold it in? It's not a piece of paper."
"Maybe we are supposed to spread it out onto a sheet of baking paper? That we can fold."
"Are you sure? It sounds very complicated and I can't recall Aqua ever doing anything like that."
"Well, can you think of an alternative?"
He couldn't and so he helped Naminé spread the cake mix on a large sheet of baking paper, adding the the beaten egg white into the middle, and then…
"And now we fold the sheet of paper."
"Won't the mixture leak out on the sides?"
"We'll just have to be very careful!"
30 minutes later, covered in flour and bits of cake mix and egg white, Naminé finally poured the finished batter into the star shaped cake pan, filled hot water into the baking dish and carefully pushed both into the pre-heated oven.
Both she and Ven slid down the cabinets until they sat on the floor, sighing exhaustedly.
"I underestimated how much work baking would be."
"I swear it looks so easy when Aqua does it!"
Naminé turned to Ven and caught his glance. She smiled shyly and nervously kneaded her hands in her lap.
"Thanks for your help. And sorry for getting angry at you."
Ven grinned back at her.
"No problem. Any time."
The cake Naminé and Ven are baking is this one! www . fiction-food 2014/ 12/ paopu-fruit-star-cake-for-kingdom . html