Piece of Cake? (Elise x Takumi)
Prompt: Elise x Takumi fluff where Elise bakes a cake with him but fails?

Takumi sighed.

"All right, let's get this over with."

"That's the spirit!" Elise cheered. "We'll make the best cake this army has ever seen!"

The archer pulled out a sheet of paper. "All right, then… We're making vegan chocolate cake."

Elise raised her eyebrows. "Whoa is that, like, double the chocolate or something?"

"What? No, it just means there won't be any dairy or eggs."

"Huh? I don't get it. How can we make a cake without any of that?"

Takumi had to keep from sighing. "That's what the recipe is for. Now, can we get started? First, we need one-and-a-half cups of unbleached flour."

"Un-what?"

"Good question… Okay let's come back to that later. Grab three fourths of a cup of sugar."

"Youuuu got it!"

Elise went over to the canister while Takumi continued to scan the paper he was holding. Vegan dessert would not be his first idea, but the prince fancied himself mature enough to just go with the flow, after all that had happened to him.

"There you go!" the princess chirped. Takumi took a closer look at the cup.

"… That's flour."

Elise's eyes widened. "It is?" She took a closer look. "Oh, guess it is. Oh well, we were gonna use flour anyway, right?"

"Well… yes, but we'd need more of it, then."

Elise shrugged. "Well okay, no problem!" She skipped over to the canisters to get more flour. Unfortunately, she made the reverse mistake… Instead of adding more flour, she had finally found the sugar. "This'll be a piece of cake! Heehee! Literally!"

Takumi rolled his eyes at the joke while Elise poured the flour and sugar from the same cup into the bowl. "Next, one 'tsp' of salt. … Tablespoon?"

She pouted. "Hey, I thought you were gonna help too! Reading the list doesn't count as baking, I could just look at it by myself if I wanted!"

"All right, fair enough." Takumi was really not in the mood for this, but still did not want to make a scene. He went to the spoon drawer and winced. "Hmm…"

It dawned on Takumi: He had no idea what a tablespoon was. He had never properly baked or cooked before. "Well… this spoon looks the largest, maybe that's why it's called a tablespoon…" He said, picking up a wooden ladle.

"Makes sense to me!"

Takumi went to the salt canister and poured out enough salt to fill the ladle, and then poured it into the bowl. Elise looked at the recipe again.

"Hey, are we sure that 'tsp' means 'tablespoon'?"

"Uh, yes? Why wouldn't it?" Takumi vaguely challenged her.

She kept her eyes on the paper. "Because later on in the recipe, 'tablespoon' is written out, but in other places, it keeps using 'tsp'!"

"Well maybe whoever wrote it was just lazy or something."

"Xander wrote this! He has the best handwriting ever!" Elise defended. "That's not even hero worship, he's actually won contests!"

"All right, all right! Look, let's just keep going. It's probably something that only makes sense to chefs anyway." Takumi took the recipe from Elise. "One t-s… one tablespoon of baking soda."

"What's that?"

Takumi gave Elise a flat look, but then stopped. "Actually… I don't know. Let's just skip that one for now. Three tablespoons of cocoa powder."

"Yay chocolate! I already have some chocolate sweets in my room, what if we just put those in the bowl? I know it's more than three spoons, but that just means it'll be even sweeter!"

Takumi put a finger to his chin. "Hmm… I don't see why not. Okay, you do that while I grab… a tsp of vanilla."

The princess gasped. "Don't say that Takumi, you might disappear!"

"No, I said 'vanilla', not… that place. Just go get your sweets." Takumi directed. Elise nodded while Takumi looked for the vanilla.

…

On the way to her quarters, Elise ran into an unexpected person. "Hey! You're Mr. Saizo's son!"

She had caught Asugi carrying a tray of sweets. "… Yeah. I am."

Then the lights came on in Elise's mind. "Say, it'd be faster if I just asked you! Asugi, may I please borrow one of your chocolates? Pretty please? We're making a cake!"

Asugi raised his eyebrow. "And what do you need a whole sweet for? Look, I know a thing or two about baking, and that's-"

Here comes the lecture, Elise thought to herself.

…

Takumi had his own hands full. He was not sure what vegetable oil was, so he had to improvise. Leo had once taught him how to make tomato soup, so Takumi was able to try some for himself.

Interpreting the soup as a form of vegetable oil, Takumi poured the completed product into the bowl, after adding some vinegar and water. Unfortunately, he had forgotten to go back and add baking soda and more sugar in the process, not that the prince had noticed.

"Sorry I'm late, Takumi! I tried getting some sweets from Asugi since he was closer, but he just kept ranting the whole time. But I got some eventually!"

She simply tossed the sweets into the bowl. "Wow, you got a lot done without me!"

"Aha!" Takumi found another ladle. "This tablespoon should do. The recipe said to stir it all with a fork, but I think this might work better."

Elise smiled. "That makes sense! This is so much fun!"

Takumi smirked. "You know what? It really is. This recipe isn't so hard once you get into it."

Takumi went to put the mixture into the oven. "The recipe said to preheat, but I'm not sure why, it'd just be too hot."

"Oh yeah, I had a really hot dessert once, and it burnt my tongue for a week!" Elise shuddered at the memory. "This is so exciting! Everyone's going to love our cake!"

"They sure will!"

They sure didn't.

A/N:

This was the first one I'd written since actually joining on as a mod. And it was right up my alley. Elise and Takumi were meant to screw up at making a cake. Since I don't know how to make a cake, that actually gave me quite a bit to work with. Also it had a good dynamic between the two, with Elise being the sillier one and Takumi being the serious one. In spite of that, they're both pretty foolish here.

The reason they're making vegan chocolate cake is because I searched "cake recipe" on tumblr and that is what I found.