Making Cake with Freida
The next morning, I left the bed for the first time and looked at the room I was using. Wooow... It’s like a hotel.
The canopy bed was in the corner of a decently sized, simple bedroom with just a table, three chairs, and a fireplace. But the floor had a thick carpet covering it, and there were curtains over the wavy glass window for privacy. The room may have looked simple, but it was clear that a lot of money had been spent on it.
Also, there was a servant girl standing by the chairs near the door. “Good morning. You may wash your face here. I will guide you to the dining room when you are ready.”
“O-Okay.”
She handed me a clean cloth and showed me where warm water had been prepared for me to wash my face with. The perfect hospitality honestly made me a little nervous.
“Forgive my rudeness, but as your normal clothes would look improper in this home, we have prepared a different outfit for you to wear.” She took out an outfit that seemed to be one of Freida’s hand-me-downs. My heart raced at the opportunity to wear clean clothing not made of patchwork for the first time in a long time. Then she brushed my hair for me, but I put my hair stick in myself. The servant looked at the stick curiously, but said nothing and promptly finished getting me ready.
By the time we reached the dining room, Freida and the guildmaster were already waiting for me. I first had to thank the guildmaster for all he had done for me. “Thank you very much, guildmaster. I appreciate your kindness and hospitality.”
He responded to my gratitude with a nod. Freida briskly walked up to me and touched my forehead, then my neck. Her cold hands sent a chill through my body that made me flinch, but Freida ignored that. “Good morning, Myne. I see that your fever has gone down.”
“Morning, Freida. I feel great. Like, so much better than I did before.” Oh, she was checking my temperature. I thanked her with a smile and she returned a happy one of her own.
We walked to the table together and the guildmaster let out a hmph. “It’s good that you’re well again, but don’t expect us to sell another magic tool. We’re saving them for Freida in case something happens to her.”
“Grandfather!”
“He’s not wrong, Freida. He bought all of them for your sake. I’m just thankful that he let me use even a single one of them.” The guildmaster had obtained the tools by using all of his connections and his wealth. I had paid for them, sure, but the fact that I was even given the chance to do so at all was nothing short of a miracle.
“Myne, you would do well to think hard about your future.” He gave me a sharp look that felt like it pierced right through me and I nodded with a tiny gulp.
“In any case, we need to report this to your family,” said Freida. “Is there anything you want to tell the messenger before we send him?”
The word “messenger” threw me for a loop, but then I realized that of course the guildmaster and Freida wouldn’t go to my place themselves. Sending a messenger was normal for them. I turned to face said messenger.
“I want to thank Freida for all her help, so could you tell them to bring some (simple all-in-one shampoo) with them?” We still called the rinsham by its full name at my place, but it wasn’t an easy phrase to memorize. The messenger’s face kinda scrunched up as he struggled to remember.
“All sinble what...? Erm, forgive me, but could you state that once more?”
“Ummm, it’s a hair-cleaning liquid. They should understand you if you just say rinsham. Thank you for doing this.”
“Hair-cleaning liquid, rinsham. Understood.”
I saw the messenger off after making sure he knew where I lived, then noticed the guildmaster looking at me while stroking his beard. I got the feeling I had seen a similar foreboding smile in the past.
“Freida. Myne certainly owns a lot of interesting things, doesn’t she?”
“She does. I’m quite disappointed we missed the opportunity to obtain her knowledge in exchange for the magic tool.”
It was scary being surrounded by the two of them in a situation where I had no allies. I felt like a rabbit in a lion pit.
“You know! I think I’ll go ahead and pay for the magic tool! With money!” Fearing that they would make up some excuse to raise the price, I immediately tapped my guild card against the guildmaster’s and finished paying him.
“He actually paid you that much... Curse you, Benno,” murmured the guildmaster in frustration. It seemed that Benno had managed to weave through the guildmaster’s web of traps with outstanding guile. Good job, Benno! You saved me!
“Eat as much as you like, Myne.”
“Absolutely.” I couldn’t stop smiling if I tried. ’Cause I mean, we were eating white bread for breakfast! White bread, made out of flour! I could put as much honey as I wanted on it too, which was crazy.
After having my fill of the sweet and tasty bread, I went after the soup. It had a nice salty flavor, but it felt like the broth was lacking in vegetable flavor. They were definitely boiling them and then tossing out the water. That destructive practice was thoroughly ingrained in the culture here. But the eggs and bacon tasted great, and they even had fruit for dessert. It was a hearty breakfast fit for Japan and I loved it. Breakfast at the guildmaster’s place was great.
I elegantly picked away at my food as the guildmaster looked at me with furrowed brows. “Who taught you those manners, Myne?”
“Nobody? This is just how I eat.” I had read several books on manners and experimented in restaurants back in my Urano days, but I hadn’t actually studied them anywhere, so I wasn’t lying.
The guildmaster’s brows furrowed deeper and it was clear on his face that he was doubting me, but I tried not to worry about it and just finished eating. Worrying about it would only hurt me.
The guildmaster left for work after breakfast and soon Freida and I were informed of visitors. My family had apparently dropped by just to see me before going to work themselves.
“Myne! Nguuh?!” Dad started to race towards me, but Mom got in between us and pushed him aside.
“I’m so glad you’ve woken up, Myne. I thought my heart was going to stop when Lutz told us you collapsed in Benno’s store and were taken to Freida’s home.”
“Sorry for worrying you. Freida used to have the same sickness as me and we needed her help to get me better.” I knew for a fact that my mom would pass out herself if I told her that they used a magic tool worth two small golds and eight large silvers on me.
“Miss Freida, thank you very much.”
“Mom, did you bring the (simple all-in-one shampoo) to thank her?” That was the only thing I could think of that we could use to pay her back other than money, and since her baptism was tomorrow, now was the perfect time to get her all cleaned up.
“Mhm. Though I’m not sure how much she will appreciate this stuff. Tuuli?”
“Thanks for saving Myne, Freida,” said Tuuli as she handed Freida a small jar.
Freida took it with a smile and curtsied by lowering her hips a little. “You’re quite welcome. I’m just glad to have helped.”
“We’re seriously thankful,” said Dad. “Lutz said that she was in a pretty bad spot. I don’t know how to thank you for saving my daughter. Myne, since you’re feeling better already, will you be coming home tonight?” Dad’s eyes were pleading with me to come home early. I would have said yes so my family wouldn’t have to keep worrying about me, but Freida stood between us with a smile.
“No, Myne will be staying here until my baptism so that we may keep an eye on her in case her condition worsens, as agreed upon yesterday. I would not like for our plans to be changed so suddenly.”
“...Alright.”
“Thank you for all your help, and sorry for the trouble.” Mom did a similar curtsy gesture involving lowering her hips. Wondering if that was this world’s equivalent to bowing, I took a step closer to get a better look when all of a sudden Tuuli hugged my head with both arms.
“We have to go to work now, but don’t bother these nice people and do all sorts of weird things like you do at home, okay?”
“I know that, Tuuli. I’ll come home after the baptism. Good luck at work.”
My family left quickly, busy as they were, and Lutz came right after as if he had been waiting for them to leave.
“Heard you finally woke up. How’s your fever? Did it really go down?” He touched my head and neck just as Freida had, checking to see how hot I felt. His hands were — almost unbelievably — colder than Freida’s.
“Aw, Lutz! Your hands are way too cold!”
“Ah. Sorry.”
“Well, don’t worry. I’m all better now.”
“...For a year at best, right?” Lutz, knowing the circumstances of the magic tools and my Devouring, frowned to show that he wasn’t celebrating just yet. But still, I had been in such a tight spot that even a year felt like a huge relief.
“I can use that time to think up a bunch of stuff and search for a solution. I’m going to make a book. Definitely.”
“That’s all you ever say, Myne. But alright. I’m gonna go tell Benno about this. He was saying yesterday that he might come see you this afternoon.”
The moment Benno was brought up, Freida’s expression morphed into a solid pout. She had been listening to my conversation with Lutz from behind, but that was the last straw.
“I’m afraid that won’t be a good time for us. We’ll be busy making sweets at about that time. Isn’t that right, Myne?”
I got the feeling that letting Freida and Benno meet right now wouldn’t be a good idea. I was the most likely to suffer and I could already imagine myself sitting helplessly between them as sparks flew through the air. It wouldn’t be good. “Sorry, Lutz, but could you tell Benno that I’ll drop by the store later?”
“Sure, but... what’re you making? Something new?” It seemed that Lutz was more interested in our cooking than in Benno.
I laughed and shook my head. “I don’t know, we’ll have to talk to the chef first.”
“Oh my, you won’t be deciding yourself, Myne?” said Freida, confused. But I couldn’t plan a recipe without knowing what ingredients and tools were available. Not to mention that if the chef was friendly, we could enlist their help to make more difficult things, but if they were not so friendly, we would have to settle for something simple.
“I can’t decide on anything without knowing what ingredients and tools they have here.”
“Does the same not apply to Lutz?” Freida pursed her lips, not satisfied with my explanation. But Lutz and I lived in similar conditions, eating similar things and using similar tools. It was an entirely different situation from Freida’s place.
“I didn’t make anything for Lutz. I just told him the recipes.” In Lutz’s place, his family used their own ingredients and made the food themselves. “Right, Lutz?”
“Yeah. Myne’s too small and weak to do any cooking herself.”
“We should be done by later afternoon, I’ll save some for you if you want to try it out.”
“Really?! Heck yeah, count me in!”
Freida, with her competitive spirit burning fiercely at Lutz, glared at the door for a bit after he left and then looked at me unhappily, her cheeks puffing out cutely. “You coddle Lutz too much.”
“I don’t think so. Really, it’s the opposite. He takes care of me way more than he has to,” I said, making Freida pout even harder. To be honest, I didn’t know why Freida was so unhappy about all this.
I faltered a bit, feeling awkward, and Freida shot a pointed finger in my direction. “Very well then, I will take care of you myself.”
“Wha? Why?”
“You are my very best friend, but I am not your best friend. It’s infuriating.”
Wow... What a cutie. I wanna poke her puffed-out cheeks. Now knowing that Freida’s unhappiness was born of jealousy, I couldn’t help but giggle a little. “Okay, think about it like this. We can do girl things together that I could never do with Lutz. Would that cheer you up?”
“Girl things?” Freida tilted her head in confusion. Her main hobby was counting and earning money. Trying to play with dolls together would probably just lead to a discussion about profit margins on toys or the like. That would be fun in its own way, but we didn’t have that much time to play together.
“We could bathe together, wash each other’s hair, roll around in bed and talk, all sorts of girl things. I couldn’t do any of that with Lutz, right?”
“My, how wonderful. Shall we go to the chef, then, so we can first discuss what sweets we will make?” Freida took my hand and guided me to the kitchen. Standing there was a plump-looking woman, who had seemingly just finished cleaning up after making breakfast. She seemed to be about as old as my mother and resembled Lutz’s mom, Karla.
“Leise, Leise. About the sweets today...”
“Yes, yes. You’re going to make some with your friend, right? You’ve already mentioned it more times than I can count.”
“May I ask what ingredients we have to work with here?” I asked, making Leise raise an eyebrow.
“Ingredients? Just what’re you planning on using?”
“Ummm, flour, butter, sugar, and eggs. We don’t have any sugar in my home, so we usually use jam or honey as a substitute, but maybe you have some here?” The kinds of sweets one could make varied heavily based on available ingredients and tools. There was a good reason why I mainly just made pancakes and french toast variants at Lutz’s place.
“We’ve got sugar.”
“Really?! Wow! U-Um, also, do you have an oven?”
“Yup. Can’t you see it?” Leise shifted a bit and a large firewood oven came into view. My heart bloomed with growing anticipation.
I looked up at Leise, squeezing my hands tightly in front of my chest. “That means you have pans for cooking in an oven too, right? Do you have scales?”
“’Course we do.” Leise shrugged as if telling me not to ask questions with obvious answers and I honestly wanted to jump for joy.
“Yes! That means we can probably bake a (cake)!” Recipe after recipe for sweets came to mind. There were more than a few recipes I had memorized down to the exact measurements.
...Wait. I know the recipes, but I don’t think people around here measure weight in grams. What should I do? I had forgotten this crucial fact in my excitement, but ingredients and tools weren’t enough to make sweets. You needed to measure the ingredients down to the wire.
I had made the parue cakes in Lutz’s place like normal pancakes, going by instinct and thus getting pancakes of different size and thickness each time. That was fine since the boys just wanted quantity, not quality, but real baking needed precise and accurate measurements. Freida was letting me use an entire firewood oven here, I couldn’t let myself fail. Trial and error was out of the question.
Mmm... Is there anything I could make that doesn’t need precise measurements? I tried thinking of sweets I could make without knowing any units of measurement, and soon remembered something that I had read about in a book on French confectioneries.
“Ummm, I’m going to make (pound cake).” Pound cake in French was quatre-quarts, which meant four quarters. It was a cake made using four ingredients of the same amount: flour, eggs, butter, and sugar. I could make pound cake without any precise measurements as long as I had a scale to weigh each ingredient.
“I’ve never heard of that. What kinda food is it?”
“It’s a sweet made from mixing together an equal amount of flour, eggs, butter, and sugar.”
“You’re actually gonna make something like that?” Leise’s eyes widened in surprise, so much that I faltered and backpedaled immediately.
“...Well, I don’t have to if it’s not okay.”
“It’s fine, but are you sure you know what you’re talking about here?”
“Yes.”
We set up a time for our sweet-making and Leise started preparing the oven, so we left the kitchen and started hunting for aprons to wear while cooking. Freida had never helped with the chores before and thus had never worn an apron. Eventually a maid found two for us and we put them on, wearing large handkerchiefs folded on our heads to hold back our hair. We were ready to go.
Once it was time to cook, we returned to the kitchen. Upon seeing us, Leise burst into surprised laughter. “Goodness, ma’am. Looks like you’re pretty enthusiastic about this.”
“Indeed. I will be doing the cooking myself this time.”
Naturally, they didn’t have a cake pan, so I decided to use a small circular metal pot instead.
“Okay, how about you share this recipe of yours with me now? I won’t know how to make it unless you go through the steps.”
“Okay. First, we measure the ingredients and heat the eggs and sugar until they’re as warm as our body temperature.”
“And how are we gonna do that?”
“Um, I was planning on filling a larger bowl with hot water and putting the pan in it.”
“Ah, water-heating. Alright then, we should heat the water before measuring the ingredients, then.” In a world without gas stoves and such, hot water couldn’t be made so quickly. That was obvious, but since I had never made sweets in this world before, it was hard for me to notice ahead of time.
“The most important thing is that the sugar and eggs are mixed together thoroughly to the point of foaming a bit. Once that’s happening, put in the flour and mix it all together with a chopping motion. Then, put in melted butter and stir gently so as to not break the foam.”
“Melt the butter, alright. We start baking once it’s all mixed together?”
“That’s right.”
Leise, having gotten a grasp on the recipe, took out a scale and put it on top of the counter. The next step was measuring the lined-up ingredients. She taught me how to use the scale while Freida and I tried to balance the ingredients on them, then she started heating the water in the meantime.
We measured the eggs and sugar first, then Leise mixed them together with fervor as the water beneath heated it all up. The foaminess of the mixture would change the size and flavor of the cake for the better. Meanwhile, Freida and I measured the butter.
“Once everything’s measured, we put butter on the sides of the pan so the cake will be easier to take out.” We smeared butter in the pot and I decided to sprinkle some flour on top as well. Without cooking paper, this was our next best option.
“Let’s sprinkle flour on it next. It’ll be more fluffy if we let lots of air inside.” Making sure not to get it all over the counter, Freida and I sifted the flour. In the end, I gave it three sifting passes.
“My my. The eggs used to be yellow but now they’re getting white, and bigger too.” Freida enviously watched Leise beating the eggs.
It was clear she wanted to try beating them herself, so Leise gestured to the bowl and mixer with a grin. “Want to try?”
“Oooh?!” Freida immediately began beating them with happy enthusiasm, but got tired out and gave up before long. It took a lot of strength to hand-mix cake ingredients. It was too heavy a burden for us Devouring girls.
“Myne, is this about right?”
“It is! Now we can add the flour.” I prepared the bowl by sprinkling in a layer of flour, then poured in the rest while using a wooden spatula to separate chunks and mix everything together. “You just keep mixing it like this. We’ll put the butter in next. Has it melted yet?”
“Yup, I put it next to the hearth while the water was heating up.”
“Leise, please take over here. My arms are at their limit.”
“Good grief. Neither of you girls got any strength to ya.” Leise took my place with a grin. She put in the butter and got back to mixing.
Freida brought over the pot we were using as a cake pan and watched us finish the mixture, eyes gleaming.
“Once we pour the mixture into the pot, we need to pick it up and kind of drop it to push out the extra air. We don’t want too much.”
The pot was heavy enough that I left all that to Leise. She picked it up without hesitation, clearly having never expected for a moment that we would be able to do it ourselves.
“Now we just have to bake it in the oven and we’re done.”
I didn’t know how to use wood ovens, so it would be best to leave this step to Leise. She set the pot into the hot, crackling oven and shut it tightly. “It should finish baking while we’re cleaning up,” Leise said.
While helping Leise clean up in such a clumsy and ineffectual fashion it could hardly be considered helping, a nice sweet scent began drifting through the air. It was so cute how Freida was wiggling eagerly in front of the oven, asking whether or not it was ready yet.
“Not yet,” I answered, feeling nervous myself about whether or not we had succeeded. We had used a lot of valuable ingredients to make this pound cake, and on top of that, it was the first time Freida and I had made sweets together. Failure just wasn’t an option for me.
“...I think I’ll check on it.” Leise opened the oven and peered inside. The cake had risen nicely. However, the backside of it seemed darker than the front.
“Leise, it looks like the back half of the cake is cooking more. Could you turn it around for me?”
Leise spun the cake around and pushed the pot back in. Personally, I wouldn’t stick my hand into that hot oven even with the thick mitten-esque gloves she had. I was moved by the skill and courage it took to be a professional chef.
After shutting the oven tightly again, Leise looked down at me. “How do you tell when it’s done?”
“You can stick a thin, pointy stick made of something like bamboo to check. Do you have something like that?”
“Mmm, yeah, but they’re for skewering meat.” She rummaged through a shelf and produced two long iron skewers, like the kind you would use to stick through meat and vegetables together at a barbeque.
I had never used a skewer to check if a cake was done before, so I honestly didn’t know how well it would work. That’ll poke a big hole in the cake, but um, I guess we don’t have much of a choice here. I used chopsticks to check once in my Urano days, so it should be fine.
Leise stuck a skewer in and then pulled it out, revealing some wet dough stuck to it.
“Looks like it’s not cooked on the inside yet.”
“How can you tell?”
“There’s a little dough stuck to it, right? It’ll be done cooking once the skewer comes out clean.”
The top of the cake was kinda turning dark brown by the time the inside was cooked, which meant the oven was probably too hot. But unlike the ovens I was used to, it wasn’t that easy to control the heat. I would have to rely entirely on the experience and instinct of those trained in these matters.
“I think I’ll be more careful with the oven next time,” murmured Leise as she took the pound cake out of it. Once the pot was outside, I could see a fluffy well-cooked cake inside that looked just like a castella.
“Simply amazing!”
“Yup, it sure looks good.”
The two of them both looked at the finished cake with shining eyes, and I felt an indescribable sense of satisfaction welling up in my chest.
“These usually taste better if you wrap them in tightly wrung, damp cloth and leave them out for two or three days, but we should be fine taste-testing this one first.”
Leise chopped the cake into fine slices. I grabbed a piece and tossed it in my mouth. The nice thing about taste-testing as a chef was that you got to eat a little before everyone got attracted by the smell.
“Mhm, this is exactly what I was going for.”
Once I was done, Leise — who was very used to taste-testing things — did the same herself. Freida had been hesitating to put a bit of the cake into her mouth, but after seeing Leise eat some, she hurriedly threw it in.
“Goodness!”
Two pairs of eyes widened in surprise and Freida and Leise spun around to look at me simultaneously. They had a predatory look to them that reminded me of the guildmaster this morning, and I got the feeling that I might have put myself into real danger. It would probably be smart to flee before they asked me any weird questions.
I grabbed Freida’s hand. “Freida, let’s eat this at teatime, or after a meal. Now’s a good time to take a bath.” We hadn’t really done much in the way of helping her bake, but due to us sifting flour, our sleeves were fairly dirty. We had plenty of time, and the sooner I cleaned her up with rinsham the better. So with all that said, we left the kitchen.
But I stopped in the door and turned around, not wanting to forget to thank the chef. “Thank you for your help, Leise.”
No Comments Yet
Post a new comment
Register or Login