day 21 - baking
Mary sat on the counter, paging through the cookbook. Cakes and pastries filled the pages that she flipped through, and she surveyed them with a critical eye.
"Find something?" Seto asked, pausing in the middle of taking ingredients out from the fridge. Since they didn't know yet what recipe they were using, he was picking out the things that most cakes ended up needing regardless of type.
Mary pursed her lips, unsure. "I like this one," she said, "but I like this one too. Look at the little icing flowers!"
She held the book out, and Seto obliged, coming over to see what she was talking about. There were two very cute cakes she was choosing between, keeping her finger firmly in between the pages so she didn't loose her place. Seto made a 'hmm' sound and tapped his chin. It was a difficult choice.
"I don't know if Momo likes flowers as much as I do, though," Mary said suddenly, lowering the book as the thought struck her. It was her friend's birthday, so the cake should be what she liked.
That didn't seem to Seto like it'd be much of a problem. "She'll like whatever you make," he told Mary, "because she'll be glad it comes from you."
Mary flushed, dropping her chin so her hair hid her face, and continued to study the book. "I think we should pick this one," she said after a second, pointing at a third cake she hadn't shown him before. Seto leaned over to look.
"Hey, good choice! Momo likes fresh fruit a lot, right?"
Mary beamed, nodding, and hopped down off the counter, laying the book down so they could see what else they needed. They didn't have much fruit at the moment, but they wouldn't need that until after they finished baking. She checked the instructions.
"Okay, first we need white eggs."
That sounded wrong, so Seto double checked. "Egg whites?'
"That's what I said."
Well, he wasn't one to argue; the last time he'd tried cooking he'd nearly burned down the house, with Kano's help of course. Plus, Kido and Mary spent a ton of time hanging out together. Surely Kido had taught Mary her cooking voodoo magic by now.
He found eggs on the counter, and they counted out the number the recipe indicated. Then Mary cracked one into the bowl.
Or tried, anyway.
The entire shell crumpled in her hand like a popped bubble, and the yolk exploded everywhere. Seto winced.
"It's okay, you can wash it off and we'll just use a different bowl." As Mary headed to the sink to wash raw egg and shattered shell pieces off her hand, Seto took up the challenge. He picked out an egg and rapped it neatly against the edge of the counter. It's what he'd seen Kido do.
Apparently there was more to it, because the counter edge chopped the egg in half, one half falling onto the ground and the other shattering all over the top of the counter. Slimy raw egg dripped onto his shirt as Mary giggled.
"Let me try," she said, and though she'd already shown her lack of talent at the difficult task, he passed her an egg before washing his hands and getting a rag to clean the floor. By the time he was finished, Mary had ruined three eggs but, as he watched, she successfully cracked one, and poured it perfectly into the bowl.
"It's like this," she explained, showing how she held the egg in two hands and broke the shell with her thumbnail before splitting it in half. Well, if it worked it worked. She wouldn't let him touch the rest of the eggs, however, stating that his hands were too big, so he left her to it.
In the meantime, the recipe called for sugar, so he found the container and a measuring cup. That was easier, though he dropped the knife at least twice while trying to level the top. He poured it in with the growing collection of raw eggs, and then stood back to admire their work.
"Now we whip it," Mary noted, her pointer finger on the relevant line in the cookbook.
The rest of the baking was an adventure, though nothing stumped them as hard as cracking the eggs had. As Seto added one of the last ingredients, Mary gasped in horror. He nearly dropped the bowl.
"We forgot to preheat the oven," she whispered, staring at the instructions.
"We can do it now, I think," Seto replied, racking his brain. "It doesn't make a difference. I think." Mary was obviously not convinced, but they set to figuring out the oven.
Several minutes later, and the cake was safely in the oven. They'd made a few mistakes and deviated from the recipe a few times, but surely it'd be fine. Right?