It was morning in Sweet Pop as Rose and Violet came over to the cafe for their get-together with their friends. Smidge picked up a candy tree from a cake and roared like a giant.
"Must eat fairy woods!" She yelled.
"No Smidge." Poppy said before copying her. "Must eat fairy woods together!"
Everybody started digging in as they ate all the candy replica of fairy woods. Rose picked out only the flowers and ate it while Violet took the gingerbread versions of the pods that were hanging on the candy trees.
"Sorry gingerbread Cooper." Cooper said before eating the gingerbread version of himself. "There can be only one."
As everybody gorged in, Branch piped up.
"I gotta say, this is good." He said. "But nowhere near is as good as my grandma's Fluffleberry cake."
"Grandma's Fluffleberry cake, what's that?" Poppy asked him.
"Only the best dessert ever." Branch bragged but he started remembering his grandmother with a soulful look on his face. "Once a week, we go to the pixie market and afterwards, she served me the same slice on the same little plate. But unfortunately, she never wrote down the recipe and now, all I have is that one last piece."
"What do you do?" Rose asked.
"Each morning, I woke up craving it but if I ever give in to the temptation, it will be gone for good." He added, remembering how his elemental powers would stop him from eating the cake.
"That sounds awful." Poppy said.
"Oh, it's torture." He said right before he goes back to the kitchen to help out the employees in there.
"How sad." Rose sighed. "But I seem to remember my mom would buy me a Fluffleberry cake on my birthday and only elves love that flavor. It's so strange that a sprite like him loves that."
"Poor Branch, so close to tasting that memory with his grandma and never getting to." Poppy sighed. "Can you imagine?"
"Yeah, it's not great." Cooper said.
"Well, that settles it." Poppy said confidently. "I'm gonna surprise Branch with a new Fluffleberry cake if it's the last thing I do."
"How? We don't know the recipe." Guy piped up.
"I remember scrounging in my aunt's cookbooks and I found the Fluffleberry cake recipe in it but I was a kid when that happened." Rose said.
"That's a bummer." Smidge sighed.
"We can't stand by while Branch suffers." Poppy said.
"I better wait here for my fluffleberry cake delivered from the elf bakery to my apartment and I have to get home, bye." Rose said as she flew away like a dragonfly back to Pop Village Apartments.
"Good luck with your cake, but we'll be going to sneak into Branch's apartment and steal it." Poppy said.
"So, how will we do it?" Smidge asked her.
"While we work, Guy Diamond and Satin and Chenille will sneak into his apartment and get the fluffleberry cake." She whispered. "We'll distract him with a lot of orders."
It went as they planned. While Guy Diamond and the twins flew to Pop Village Apartments with a spare key they loaned from Poppy and sneak it in to steal the cake, Poppy, Violet, and the Snack Pack kept Branch busy and distracted with a lot of orders from the customers. Guy and the twins sneaked past a sleeping Gary and got the cake from it's safe until they flew back to the employees lounge in time. Poppy held the cake on her hands as a flower-like device was brought in. Rose arrived with her fluffleberry cake.
"Well, it certainly aged but I'm confident we can still figure out the ingredients using a DNA test." Poppy grinned.
"What's a DNA test?" Satin asked.
"A dessert nutrient assessment test." She answered as she tossed the aged cake into the device. "As soon as this device connects to the cake, we'll compute the data."
The device started to compute the data within the cake. It took a bit long until it printed out the recipe.
"Got the recipe, now time to bake." She said as they started baking in the kitchen.
The recipe is strange, with weird requirements to bake it but the team followed the recipe anyway. When the cake is finally baked, they celebrate by trying it out but it was foul tasting that the sprites reacted to their horror. Rose, on the other hand, had no reaction in eating it but she gave them a foul-tasting removal potion to help them out.
"I told ya that only elves love the cake." Rose said with an embarrassing look on her face. "But now you know what it actually taste like."
"What did we do wrong? We followed the recipe exactly." She cried.
"Or did we?" Smidge asked them, showing a word that says "plushroom".
"Oh, one of the ingredients was printed on the back, plushroom." Guy said. "What's a plushroom?"
"Plushrooms are found in the slippery slope of soap summit, in the Dragon Mountains." Rose informed them from her cellphone. "Only flying species and races can get there but harvesting plushroom is a challenge."
"Aww, it looks kinda cute." Guy said.
"Well, as might as I want Branch to taste fluffleberry cake again, I guess we might as well return this cake to Branch." Poppy sighed as she got the cake out but she tripped on her wing, sending the cake outside the cafe, forcing the snack pack to chase after it. The cake almost fell into a manhole but it got disintegrated by the breath of the sleeping dragon nearby.
"We have no choice but to get the plushroom from the Soap Summit." Poppy said.
"We can all fly but Cooper and Violet can't." Rose said.
"I could get my jet pack." Cooper said.
"I'll get my broomstick." Violet added.
Right after they have prepared, they started proceeding to go through the obstacles of slippery slope. They flew through the banana peel grove and crack falls until they reach soap summit. Poppy spread her wings and started flying past the bubbles and through the crater to get the plushroom but more bubbles rose up.
"Hurry, it's gonna blow!" Smidge warned.
Hurriedly, Poppy flew past the bubbles and avoid each of them to reach the plushroom but as soon as she got to the plushrooms and grabbed one, a giant bubble appeared. Cooper was mesmerized by his reflection in the bubble.
"Big bubble!" He said as he punched the bubble but it popped and everybody got covered in suds but Poppy slipped with the plushroom and fell down but Branch swooped down like an eagle and saved her.
"Branch?" She was shocked. "What are you doing here?"
"I had a tracking charm casted in my cake and I've been watching your every move." He said.
Poppy was shocked about the time the cake was destroyed, revealing that Branch was screaming from the rooftop.
"I'm so sorry, Branch but I can make you a new one with a plushroom." She said.
"Poppy, I can live without the cake but I can't live without my best friend." He said as they flew out of soap summit and into the mouth of the crater where, the others are waiting.
"Thanks for saving me, Branch." Poppy thanked him. "But at least I got the plushroom to get the recipe right."
"Plushroom? I doubt there was any plushroom in the cake." He said. "Plushroom is what my plate was made of."
"That means the cake that we made is the right recipe?" Poppy realized it.
"I copied the recipe in my cellphone but we could add it in the notebook of recipes we collected." Rose said. "It would attract all the Castle City to taste it."
Back at the cafe, the fluffleberry cake is added to the list of cakes they displayed, and added a sign "For elves only" on top. It not only warned the other species about the foul taste, it attracted elves into the cafe too. Branch took one of the last pieces of the cake that Poppy made awhile ago and ate it while Rose took the other piece.
"Just like Grandma used to make." He sighed.
But having tasted how horrible it is, the others find it hard to watch.
"I can't even watch." Cooper gasped.