The whole thing starts because Cass eats like a raccoon in a dumpster behind a five-star restaurant.
Watching Cass eat is in fact a process that is one part fascinating, two parts horrifying, and two parts tragic when it's examined too closely.
But no, really, it's also horrifying.
Cass will eat anything. Sure, she has preferences. She'll eat the newest, freshest food first, and she'll eat her favorites before she works her way down, but she will eat the moldy half-sandwich, the apple with a bite out of it, and the box of stale cookies and wash it all down with expired milk right out of the carton.
She has a cast-iron stomach and food hoarding tendencies and hollow bones. Or at least Steph assumes she has hollow bones, because she just eats like there's no tomorrow.
The solution to stopping Cass from eating brown, squishy bananas, Steph finds, is to make sure that there's food she likes within range at all times.
Steph witnesses this after her first proper team up with Cass when she invites Cass to come back to her place and have a midnight snack. She's broke right now, so she can't take Batgirl out to eat, but there's food in the fridge, and apparently Batgirl doesn't have a wallet in her costume.
"You should talk to Oracle about that," Steph says, sticking her hands into the fridge and coming out with eggs. "Help yourself to fruit while I scramble these."
And then she turns around in time to watch her new friend eat an apple. Core, seeds, stem, and all.
Steph nearly drops the eggs.
To be fair, it probably takes a lot more cyanide than is in a single apple to justify calling poison control, but Steph kind of wants to, because what the fuck?
This pattern continues. Cass will eat whatever Steph puts in front of her, but if she decides she's still hungry afterwards, she scrounges. And nothing is off limits.
Steph meets the man who Robin refers to as "Agent A" a few weeks into her friendship with Cass when she breaks into Cass's apartment through the second story window with a pan of brownies under one arm and a bag of fruit from the corner store dangling precariously from her shoulder.
She stares at the man; tall, dignified, older, wearing a suit, his arms full of Cass's laundry.
"Uh… hi?" She asks, one leg resting on Cass's counter, the other dangling over the side of the building.
The man stares at her, then sighs. "Miss Brown, I assume?"
"Uh… yes?"
"I'm Agent A," he informs her. "You might as well come in."
"Oh! Nice to meet you," she says, swinging her other leg over and scooting forward off the fancy granite countertop. "I just wanted to bring Cass some brownies."
He looks at her in a distinctly bemused way. "And you decided to come in through the window?"
"Cass disabled her doorbell two weeks ago, and when I asked her for a spare key, she told me I should just pick the lock. This way is moderately less likely to get the cops called on me."
There's the faintest hint of a smile on the man's face. "I see."
She nods. "So you're doing her laundry?"
"As far as I can tell, she's not even aware this building has a washer and dryer," he informs her.
"That tracks," Steph admits. "Oh, so you're the guy who buys her food!"
"That's correct," he says.
"What's your method?" She asks. "I'm trying to figure out her favorites but so far it's been pretty much indiscriminate except for chocolate." She sets the brownies on the counter and peels back a corner of the tinfoil so that Cass can smell the chocolate. She then checks over the fruit and puts some of the overripe bananas in the freezer to make banana bread with later, and then swaps them out for the perfectly ripe ones she'd bought. "Also! Not to criticize your methods, but you shouldn't buy her green bananas. She eats them right away. It's kind of gross, actually."
The man is looking at her. She blinks. "What?"
"Nothing," the man says, but he's smiling, and it's a sneaky smile, so she's… not sure what to do about this.
"Do you need help with the laundry?" She asks, instead, because Crystal Brown didn't raise a hooligan.
"No, thank you Miss Brown."
"Steph," she says.
"Miss Stephanie," he compromises.
She squints at him suspiciously, but nods and goes on a dirty-dishes hunt. It's a difficult prospect, because most of the time, Cass doesn't remember that dishes exist, and eats with her hands and drinks directly from the tap, which was actively distressing until Steph stole Cass's credit card and bought her the Gotham-City-Grade sink filters that Wayne Enterprises sells to filter out all of the… everything that Gotham City's tap water has in it, since Cass didn't seem to understand how to use the Wayne Filter pitcher in her fridge.
"If I ever meet whoever raised her, I'm going to punch them," she informs Agent A. "Like, I know manners are a social construct and everything. But hygiene."
"I believe he's in prison," Agent A tells her.
"Oh. That tracks." She starts cleaning the dishes. Cass has a dishwasher, but it's almost never worth it to run it, given how dishes Cass is using.
The man nods, smiling at her before leaving through the front door.
A few days later, Steph spots freshly folded clothes in Cass's open drawers, and she knows that Agent A is back.
She also finds an awesome banana bread recipe attached to Cass's fridge with a little Batman magnet.
So she thinks she's doing okay.
"Hi Agent A, hey Cass!" Steph greets. This time, she's got an entire pie in her hands, so she took the risk to go through the door, because she is not gonna drop this sucker on her way down.
"Hello, Miss Stephanie," Agent A says, holding up a pair of scissors as he cuts Cass's hair.
"I brought the books again, Cass," Steph says, dumping her backpack onto the table. "And I tried a new recipe for the cherry pie, but I think I screwed up the crust, so it's not my best work. So want to do reading lessons after Alfred does your hair?"
"Yes!" Cass says, giving her a thumbs-up and a wide smile.
"Awesome," Steph says. "Do you have case files for me to read?"
"Counter," Cass says.
Steph sits down on one of the kitchen chairs, flips open the file, and then begins to read out to Cass the details of the case she's working on.
Cass listens intently, asking questions sometimes, before nodding. Oracle made Cass a program that reads out the files for her, but Cass likes this better, and Steph doesn't mind, since helping out means she gets to help with the mission itself.
After the haircut and the briefing, the two of them leave Agent A to do whatever it is he does, and do their reading lesson and then fighting lesson in turn, before Steph staggers up the ladder to the apartment again while Cass does her solo training.
She finds Agent A examining her pie with a critical eye.
"Uh… hi Agent A," she says, feeling sheepish. She hadn't remembered to put the egg wash on, and she'd forgotten to cut the vents, and the whole thing was kind of patchwork.
"Miss Stephanie," he says. "I think I see where you went wrong. Would you like me to show you?"
"Uh… sure?" Steph says, a bit baffled. "I'd like that. I'm mostly just working out of one of my mom's cookbooks, she's not really much of a baker."
He smiles at her. "Well. There's no reason you can't be."
The pie they make with some of the less-great apples that Cass hasn't eaten yet is delicious, and Cass is absolutely delighted with it, so Steph vows to make it again.
"Where'd you get that recipe?" She asks Agent A, writing down the instructions he's giving her onto the back of an envelope from Cass's junk mail.
"Superman," he says.
She stares at him.
"The worst part is, I know you work for Batman, so I can't tell if you're joking or not."
He gives her something that's not quite a smirk.
"Rude," she informs him, but she grins.
The next time she comes back, a nice version of the recipe, written on a proper card in elegant penmanship is waiting for her on the counter along with the ingredients.
It's signed Alfred.
Baking is relaxing. And the food is calorie and carb heavy, which, honestly, after a long day of vigilantism, is exactly what she needs.
She cooks her way through the cookbook that Mom owns. Cass rates the recipes. Alfred's are the best, obviously, but patterns do emerge. She prefers chocolate over everything, she likes brioche bread, she likes cake over pies, but apple pie is her favorite pie.
Robin likes the snickerdoodle cookies that Alfred teaches her, Oracle loves the blueberry and white chocolate chip scones that Alfred disapproves of because they're American scones, not British scones. After she teams up with Huntress, Steph leaves a three-layer chocolate raspberry cake on her doorstep.
After Black Canary beats up her dad, Steph spends an hour asking Oracle questions before making the best tiramisu of her life and presenting it to the woman.
"You don't need to bribe people," Oracle tells her.
"Yes, but baked goods smooth over most social situations," Steph says. "Also, the more food that's around, the less likely we are to find Cass eating pizza crusts out of your garbage.
Cass makes a face at her. "I haven't done that in weeks," she says, which would have more effect as a protest if her cheeks weren't chipmunking out with freshly baked break that Steph has produced.
"Weeks is still too soon,' Steph says severely. "And try that with butter."
"Do I smell fresh bread?" Robin pokes his head through the door.
Steph grins, triumphant. "Alfred showed me this new recipe. It's a tear apart loaf."
"Wait," Robin blinks at her. "You know Alfred?"
Steph, Babs, and Cass all stare at him. "Yes?" Steph says. "He's been giving me baking lessons?"
"He told you his name?" Robin presses.
"Uh, yeah?" Steph doesn't see why that's such a big deal. Sure, she doesn't know Robin or Batman's names, but like… why would Agent A's secret identity be such a big deal?
He opens his mouth, and Steph decides she's had enough of his nonsense, and stuffs a piece of buttered bread into his mouth.
When she first meets Nightwing, she nearly beams him with a Tupperware full of cupcakes.
It's still slightly better than her nailing Tim with a brick the first time they met, but not necessarily by much.
"Sorry!" She yelps as he catches it, and flinches, because her frosting is gonna be so screwed up now.
"Oh," he blinks at her. "You're Spoiler, aren't you?"
"Yeah, sorry, you just startled me," she says. She pauses. "Which like, happens a lot given my social circle, but I still shouldn't have thrown the cupcakes at you, so. Sorry."
"What kind are they?" He asks, handing her the container back.
"Oh!" She cracks open the lid and shows him. "They're pumpkin with cream cheese frosting. I'm testing out the recipe. If it works, I think I'm gonna make another batch with the leftover pumpkin, only this time I'm going to decorate them with the Batman logo for Batgirl's anniversary of being Batgirl."
He blinks at her, as if she's said something completely crazy, so she just offers him a cupcake.
"Oh, these are—these are great!"
"Not too much nutmeg?"
"Nah." He chews, thoughtfully. "Maybe needs more cinnamon, though."
"Ooh, noted! Why do these recipes always lowball spice amounts?" Steph complains, putting the lid back on. "I'm not a coward."
Nightwing grins at her. "You're good at this baking thing," he tells her.
"Thanks!" She says. "Agent A's been really helpful."
He blinks at her. "Wait…"
She waves at him. "Gotta go, I'm gonna be late for Batgirl's reading lesson!"
Cass's anniversary as Batgirl is going to be a big deal. She doesn't know when her birthday is, so they're treating it like a birthday. Alfred and Steph have put their data together and compiled a comprehensive list of all of Cass's favorite foods, and they spend all day in Cass's kitchen.
Steph's not as good with cooking as she is with baking, but she's been cooking for herself while Mom has night shifts for years, and so she knows her way around.
The pumpkin cupcakes, while a success, were voted to be less good than the chocolate ones, so it's those, covered in little bat-shaped sprinkles that Steph piles up on a display tray that Barbara got for the occasion.
Cass's little apartment has never been so full, and Steph is happy to help with that. When she's not helping Alfred with the chili or checking on her bread, she darts around the apartment, helping Tim and his Young Justice friends with the decorations. The "adults" which are Oracle, Azrael, Nightwing, Huntress, Black Canary, and Green Arrow, are keeping Cass distracted with some sort of really elaborate training course, but Cass is smart enough to know what's up, even if the smell of chili isn't wafting throughout the entire building.
The party is a roaring success, in Steph's humble opinion. Cass has a great time, and she clearly is really thrilled to have everyone here.
After they're all getting ready to go on patrol, Steph thinks she sees Batman coming out of the training room to leave a present on the counter.
And she thinks she sees him take a cupcake and smile.
But also, that seems highly unlikely, so Steph submits herself to Alfred for a concussion check.
Steph finally learns Tim's name. Which is great, because that means she can now send him packages of cookies whenever she stress-bakes too many of them again.
One day she wakes up to a hungry speedster named Impulse on her doorstep. She loads him up with an experimental meat pie, and three dozen oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, and he eats it all faster than she can pre-heat her oven, and tells her, earnestly, that she's his favorite non-Robin Bat.
She's flattered, even if she's not remotely a Bat, and tells him so.
He ignores her and leaves, but she finds flowers on her doorstep every day for the next week, looking as if they'd been brought there through a small hurricane, so she takes the compliment.
Superboy, who she eventually is told to call Kon, is a pie snob, as it turns out. He has opinions about crust flakiness and the exact spices to season an apple pie with and no matter how much she tries to adjust to his exacting suggestions, it's never quite as good as the hypothetical pie she's supposed to be aiming for.
In the end, she gives up, and bakes him an apple cake instead, and he's a big fan of that. He brings her mason jars full of applesauce from a farm somewhere, which he swears is the best applesauce ever for the recipe.
It does turn out pretty good, so she assumes he's at least somewhat correct.
Cassie comes over next, and Steph ends up sharing with her the cinnamon bread she'd had rising in the fridge overnight, because it's Wonder Girl, she's worth breaking out the long-risers for.
The others—Anita, Cissie, Traya, and Greta, who come over after a disastrous team-up which nearly end up with Greta nearly killing Steph ("I said I was sorry!") end up sharing red-velvet cupcakes which had used up the last of Steph's food dye. Greta sulks about not being able to eat them, but there's really not that much that Steph can do about that.
Red Tornado, who Steph meets a few months later, declines the chive-and-garlic dinner rolls she brought with her, although Traya snags half of the batch to bring home to her mom.
Later, Steph is informed that Superman is also a fan of her apple cake.
She's not entirely sure what to do with that information.
Batman doesn't tell her his name.
She figures it out when she finds an article about Alfred Pennyworth's guest-starring role on one of those baking competition shows that are absolutely ridiculous but also really kind of addictive to watch.
The next time she sees him at Cass's place, she has a baking sheet full of British-style scones with fresh raspberry jam that she got from Kon in exchange for a chocolate Swiss Roll.
"Can I call you Alfred now?" She asks, after he makes the tea and they sit down to eat them.
He smiles at her. "I believe we can manage that."
Somehow, she realizes six months later, when Tim is retired from being Robin and Steph has sewn her own costume and she breaks into the cave with a box full of lemon cream cheese cookies under her arm, Bruce Wayne has somehow, despite her knowing Alfred's identity, Tim's identity, Cass's identity, Babs's identity, and the location of the Batcave, which is below Wayne Manor… is under the impression that she does not, in fact, know who he is.
Steph looks at Alfred, who shrugs.
"I thought about making cupcakes with the Robin logo," she said. "But I still haven't found a good way to transport cupcakes across the city without ruining the icing."
Bruce grunts. But he takes a cookie, and she starts her training as Robin tomorrow, so… win!
Being Robin is amazing and wonderful, do not get her wrong. She loves it.
But there's also something really nice about finishing training for the day, and being sweaty and sore and exhausted, and getting to go up the stairs to help Alfred bake to wind down before going to sleep.
She's not going to be staying at the Manor forever, just until Robin boot camp is done, because Bruce is really putting her through the paces, so it's easier if she doesn't have to deal with the commute right now. But while she's here, she and Alfred might as well have fun.
She learns his chocolate chip cookie recipe, and the two of them have a lot of fun experimenting with cake decoration. The two of them rapidly become fascinated with elaborate decoration on petit-fors, and general French patisserie.
But also, on the other hand, there are bagels.
Bruce's mother apparently had an amazing bagel recipe, and Steph and Alfred are having far too much fun with it, much to the very vocal appreciation of Dick and Cass. Bruce's appreciation is silent, but he definitely is eating them with gusto, so Steph is chalking it up for a win.
Tim comes over, two weeks into her Robin training, having snuck over after school, and is surprised that she's training, which, as she points out, makes sense, since he's been grounded and so can't take calls, and she's been too busy to visit him during the school day.
They argue about it for a while, but then she throws a stick of butter at him for being an asshole who thinks he gets to dictate her life choices, he apologizes, and then she feeds him sausage rolls and they call it good.
And so, things are good.
Until the Red Hood comes to town, and Steph is forced to sacrifice an entire sheet of chocolate chip cookies in the name of getting Jason Todd to calm-the-fuck-down-and-come-home-already.
It sort of works. It does get him to come home, at least, even if it's to track down Steph to complain about how she got Alfred's chocolate chip cookie recipe and to steal the last slice of sour-cream-coffee-cake that Steph had been saving for her mother.
Steph bans him from the kitchen after that, and act which was broadly viewed in the Bat Family as something akin to the death penalty.
After a long, drawn out war of attrition, featuring several baking heists, for which Jason recruited a new kid named Duke Thomas, who had apparently solved Bruce's identity and picked up vigilantism in his own time, before Steph lured Duke over to the light side ("We've got cookies!"), passive aggressive baking, the fiasco that was store-bought sugar cookies, a meat pie with laxatives which was labelled "poison, do not eat," but was consumed anyways, and a water pistol filled with leftover bacon fat, a truce was finally declared, brokered by a very bemused Alfred.
For the truce dinner desert, Steph baked a pie shaped like the Red Hood's helmet and cut it while staring directly into Jason's face.
It was ruled to be not a re-starting of aggressions, because the cake was, in fact, delicious.
The tie-breaking vote is Duke, who happens to be a huge fan of Steph's German-Chocolate, which she might have discovered over the course of the weeks-long-bakery-war. Duke looks very pleased with himself as he digs in, ignoring Jason's death glare with the confidence of a brand-new younger brother.
Steph does, however, slip Jason the recipe card for the chocolate chip cookies afterwards. He looks like he could use it.
After the dinner, Cass sidles up to her. "You know," she says. "I think I've figured out what my favorite food is."
"Oh?" Stpeh says hopefully, turning towards her.
Cass leans in and presses a kiss against her lips. "Anything you bake."
Steph stands there for a moment, a big, sappy smile on her face, before her words sink in. "Wait, that doesn't help me at all!"