Cakewalk
Disclaimer: First of all, not mine. Not in the least. The only things I own are a nice little townhome, a dog, and enough clothing to make even Alice's closet look scant. Twilight, not so much. Although, if it has the Cullen Crest on it, I like to at least think it's mine.
Summary: Pure fluff. With extra fluff. This is slightly out of sequence with the stories but it basically somewhere in Eclipse. I wanted to do a Mother/Daughter fluff scene with Bella and Esme making a cake. The only reason I could come up with for Bella making a cake was to have a fund raiser of some sort so...hence the Senior Trip that never happened in the books! This is now totally family fluff. And yes, once this one is done, I already have another fluffy idea in my head.
Author's Note: Many, many thanks to CauldronCakeBaker! Your cake pictures really did help me with WAY too many ideas. I just hope I do this justice.
Chapter 10
Esme lead me into the kitchen. On the island was the mixing bowl that I wasn't terrified of breaking, all the spoons, and ingredients. There was also a large ball of…something wrapped in blue plastic wrap. It looked sort of like a really big jawbreaker but I doubted that was what it was. Esme caught me looking at the ball wrapped in plastic wrap and smiled.
"It's Fondant icing, sweetheart," she told me. Fondant? I hadn't ever bothered with something that…complicated before because it always sounded too hard and too long to make. I'd seen pictures though of what could be done with it. I was nowhere near coordinated or creative enough to do more than slap some buttermilk icing on a cake though. Knowing Esme, she probably could make any of my cakes look like something more fit for a wedding than for the Fork's High School Senior Class Fair. I sighed.
"If you don't want to use it, that's alright," Esme said, a hint of worry in her voice. I looked at her and gave her a slight smile.
"No, Esme, that's fine. I've just never worked with that before," I told her truthfully. Well, that, and I was sure that I'd somehow ruin Esme's perfect icing ball. I was good with buttermilk icing because I knew what I was doing with it. Fondant icing might end up looking like a poorly scraped animal hide if she let me roll it out and cover the cake with it.
Esme smiled at me, a renewed hint of excitement in her eyes. "Good. I would have loved your help with it this morning," she told me, turning to get the scissors on the counter behind her. This morning? As in hours ago? "The icing needs about 8 hours to cool," she informed me further. If it took eight hours then she must have made this long before the sun came up. I guess that's one of the pluses of being a vampire, eternal insomnia.
"You didn't have to do that, Esme," I told her. She was really working hard to help me with my project. The project I got tricked into doing really.
"I wanted to, dear," she said as she cut the white cake mix and put it into the mixing bowl. I got the oil and water to pour those in. Esme went to grab the eggs and I bit my lip.
"Esme?" I asked. I wanted to thank her. I wanted to talk to her like I use to talk to my mother. I knew I could but at the same time I couldn't. It was much to hard to express my feelings. I knew it was one of those traits I got from Charlie.
"Yes, dear?" she responded, about to crack the eggs. I realized she was just going to put the entire egg in, whites and yoke, like last time. I had to stop her.
"Oh, for this cake, we just need the whites," I told her, moving around the island to help. Esme looked confused but let me take over. I cracked the egg on the side of the bowl and carefully used half the egg shell to cradle the yoke while the whites dripped into the bowl below. My fingers got all gunky, of course, but it worked! Esme watched as I put the egg into the bowl.
"The yoke makes the color different and it makes it taste a bit different too," I explained. I motioned with my head towards the other egg. "Did you want to try that one?" I asked, my hands still above the bowl with eggs shells in one hand and egg dripping off of both. It was gross but the cake would taste good.
"Maybe you should do it and then we can clean you up," she said teasingly and reached for the paper towels. I nodded and grabbed the other egg to break it too. I made sure only to get the whites into the cake.
As I was trying to separate the whites of the egg from the yoke, and trying to get more of the whites into the bowl than on me, I saw Esme walk around the island towards the kitchen doorway from the corner of my eyes. "You are home early," she said happily. I could just make out the figure that I knew to be Carlisle.
Carlisle wrapped his arms around Esme and gave her a light kiss. "Dr. Snow got called in early and decided to take over my appointments for the rest of the day," I heard him say lightly. I could feel his eyes on me as I put the egg shells in the trash can and went to wash my hands. "Still cake making I see," he mused as both he and Esme walked back over to the island, his arm around her waist.
"Yeah. I needed three for tomorrow," I said, still not happy that I have to make three cakes. One would have been fine. And, technically, I made four but the spice cake didn't really count since it was just fun to do something with Emmett and Jasper for a while. That, and I did win the bet I never really entered.
I looked up at them and smiled a bit. "Thank you for letting me use the kitchen for all this," I told them both. I was really grateful. There was NO way I could have done this in Charlie's kitchen with the one 8"x8" pan. That, and without Esme's help, I'm sure I would have messed up and burnt one of the cakes or done something else wrong.
"Of course, sweetheart!" Esme said, coming over to hug my shoulders.
Carlisle smiled gently at me. "You are always welcome here, Bella," he told me. I blushed. I couldn't help it. It was nice just be around well, family.
Carlisle took a seat on the barstool. "So, what else is there to do in this cake baking?" he asked amused. He began to pick up the vegetable oil but Esme slapped his hand. Carlisle looked up at her, pretending to be hurt. Esme rolled her eyes slightly and Carlisle smiled back at her.
"Well, right now, I just need to mix all this up and then pour the batter into the pans," I told him, looking for the whisk or the wooden spoon. I know they were around here just a second ago.
"I'll get that, dear," Esme said as she picked up the bowl and, using the whisk – I knew I had seen it!- mixed up the entire thing in 30 seconds. It was probably less than 30 second but, including the time of me marveling over the fact that everyone was far better than me at stirring all the ingredients together, it was 30 seconds.
"Okay," I said and looked for the two cake pans I had spotted yesterday. I wanted to do a round layer cake.
Esme looked a bit worried when I turned to her to ask where the cake pans were. "I hope you don't mind, but I saw this lovely picture last night on the internet," she told me. Esme handed me a print out of a beautiful cake. It had a bigger cake on the bottom with a smaller cake stacked on top. Both were covered in white smooth icing and had red ribbons across them to make the cake look like two boxes wrapped together. It looked like the perfect, edible present.
"Wow, Esme! That's pretty," I said. I loved the simple but elegant lines and how the ribbons looked on this pretty cake. It was nothing I could do, ever, but it was pretty.
"I thought we might try that one," Esme said cheerfully. I looked up at her. There is no way I could do something like that. My cake would have wrinkles and the icing would be uneven. That's fine with buttercream icing but not so much with fondant. Her face fell a bit when she saw my expression. I think I heard Carlisle chuckle.
"I don't know, Esme. I haven't used that type of icing before," I told her. I hated the look on her face. I didn't want to disappoint my second mother. I also didn't want to hear Lauren for the rest of the school year go on about the horrible cake I handed in for the cakewalk that looked like someone had left it in the freezer and just taken it out.
"Why don't you try it?" Carlisle said. I looked up at him, sitting there on where I normally sat. "If it doesn't work out, you can always make another cake, correct?" he more stated than asked.
I groaned at that. I didn't want to make another cake. I wanted to simply have this one done, somehow magically get all three of these iced and into the gym for the fair…and not tripping or otherwise destroying them in the process. Both Esme and Carlisle looked at me funny.
"Don't you like baking?" Esme asked me, worried. She was wringing the kitchen towel as she spoke. She must have thought I didn't want to spend time with her and that I didn't like this whole cake making thing.
"Oh no! It's not that," I said quickly to alleviate her worry. I felt both Carlisle and Esme's eyes on me. I looked down at my hands. "I'm just worried that…if I do it…it won't look right," I almost whispered. I'm glad they were vampires, they'd have no problems hearing me.
"It will look fine, Bella. But that's not all, is it?" Carlisle questioned. Darn perceptive vampires… I shook my head and felt Esme's arm back around my shoulders. They were both waiting for me to say something more.
"I just…" I bit my lip, thinking it over. How could I explain? "Lauren made a comment and that got Alice all mad. And then Lauren said that if I was really as good as Alice said at baking that I should make all the cakes for the cakewalk and she's now expecting me to fail. I totally know I will because I might just trip and fall into the cake like Lauren said or something like that," I muttered the last part. It came out in fast and I looked back down after my mini rant. I didn't have to look at Carlisle to know he was trying very hard to bite back his laughter. Esme squeezed my shoulders.
"Bella, sweetheart, don't worry about Lauren," she told me. I looked up and could tell that Esme and Carlisle were talking to each other even though I couldn't hear it.
Carlisle smiled at me. "Don't worry, Bella," he said after a minute. I fought back the urge to mumble an easy for you to say and just continued to pout a bit. "We'll have Edward and Alice carry the cakes in for you in the morning," he continued. It wasn't hard to hear the humor in his voice.
"Thanks," I mumbled.
"Do you want to try to make this cake," Esme started, gesturing to the print out, "or do you want to make something else?" she asked. I really didn't want Esme's hard work to go to waste but I also knew that if I tried to do that, her hard work would go to waste anyway. As soon as I thought about speaking again, Carlisle stood up and started to come around the island.
"If you use the fondant icing, could I also help?" he asked. Wait my two vampire parents both wanted to help? Well, maybe, just maybe if they both helped it wouldn't look too terrible. Or was this part of the vampire conspiracy?
"Okay, but we don't have enough batter to do that," I said. "We can make the top portion and by using two cake pans of the same size?" I asked, seeing if either or both of them liked this idea.
"That sounds perfect," Esme smiled warmly. Carlisle pulled out two cake pans, both 8"x8"'s and put them on the island.
I went to pick up the bowl but Carlisle beat me to it. "Even batter in both?" he asked as he began to pour. "Um, yeah," I stammered. Esme gave him a scolding look.
Once he had the batter in both perfectly even, and I mean perfectly -I doubt that there was even the slightest difference between them-, he went to place the cake pans in the oven. Once the door was shut and the cakes were in, Carlisle turned to me and was about to say something when…
"Oh! Good! Bella, you've got to come with me," Alice said so fast, grabbing my hand to drag me out, that I barely caught it. Carlisle just shook his head at his daughter.
"Alice!" I lightly shouted at her. She stopped in the doorway and turned to me. "I need your help, Bella! Remember that game I told you about yesterday?" she said. I thought about it and I remembered something about Alice needing help with a game but I couldn't remember what for.
"Yeah…..?" I asked hoping she would explain more. She didn't.
"Good!" she stated as she continued to drag me out of the kitchen, away from her parents, and towards the front door.
"Where are you taking me?" I asked her as I stumbled while she dragged me to go outside.
"Just the front yard. I need your help, Bella," she told me as she stopped in front of me on the porch.
"With what, Alice?" I asked her, curious. All these vampires and needing my "help" lately...
"Well, I agreed to make one of the games," she started. "And I think it's okay but we need you to test it out," she finished, pointing to the front yard. There I saw Jasper and Edward swinging...hackeysacks at a board that was painted like a clown and had holes in it. I couldn't read it from here but I knew each of the holes in the board had a number above it. I've seen this game before. Normally, though, you were standing maybe twenty feet away, not a hundred. "So," Alice asked cheerfully, "will you help?"
Author's Note: Sorry if this is an off chapter. Today has been an off, unending, day. I promise to get back to the nonsense in the next chapter. After all it will have Alice and some sort of game! Then, back to Esme, Carlisle, and the white cake....with the two vampire parents trying to help her decorate it. It should be amusing.