She and Dustin had decided, for some reason, to bake a cake for their mother’s birthday - all of this despite the fact that neither of them were even close to expert on cooking. But the recipe had seemed like a nice idea, and their mother deserved something that took effort and wasn’t just some store-bought cake, no matter how much easier that would have been.
“On it,” Lea responded, flinging open the door to the pantry, “also you do know I could’ve managed those bowls, right?” She gave a sharp wave of her hand, floating the flour bag quickly over to the counter where Dustin stood, before moving her hand down, quickly, letting the bag drop, a light puff of flour emerging from the top. “Well, lucky for both of us, I’ve never gotten below an A in my English classes, so I think I can manage to read the recipe well enough.” She bit her lip briefly as she collected the other ingredients that they needed. “You’re good at Chemistry also, and I don’t suck at it, so we should probably be able to manage this.” Or I hope so, at least. Do something right.
Lea picked up the printed-out recipe and pursed her lips. “I think maybe in a little bit? I mean, it needs to be before we put the cakes in, because otherwise it won’t get heated up enough, but I don’t think it’s got to be, like, now or anything.” Lea grabbed a pair of scissors and began to cut the parchment paper for the pans, in near-perfect circles, handing them off to Dustin once she did so. “So, I think you put these right in the pans, and then spray them with cooking spray. That’s what seems to be in the instructions.”
She then plugged the mixer into the wall before turning around on her tight-covered-heels to face Dustin again. “How are we gonna divide up the work, because this isn’t going to work if just one of us,” she raised an eyebrow, “does all the work.” They still had plenty of time before their parents got home, but they still needed to get to work, given that the cake was fancier than any they’d ever attempted before. But this was good - and this was also a distraction - or at least Lea could hope that it would be. Give her something else to focus on with her brother - she could make sure he was totally safe and nobody was going to get injured during this - or have anything unpredictable happen.
“Y’know, I’ve always sort of wondered what red velvet was, so this is a bit of a learning experience too, huh?” She smiled before pursing her lips briefly - “Don’t call me a nerd for saying that, big brother. You’re just as big of one, and you can’t deny that.”
Dustin rolled his eyes at her. “Fucking show-off,” he muttered under his breath. What even was the point of being taller than his sister if she could get things off the high shelf using her magic? It was totally unfair. “You know baking involves way more skill than being able to read a recipe, right?” he asked, even though technically he wasn’t even the expert on baking himself. “That’s like saying that to become a rocket engineer, all you need is to be able to read the instructions.” He smiled when she acknowledged that he was good at chemistry. Often, his parents would see the near-fail grades that he did receive and assume that he was doing bad at school in general, which was simply not true. So getting grounded for receiving an F should totally be cancelled out by getting an A in chem or physics.
“I can do that,” Dustin said as he was handed the cut-out parchment, putting them in the forms before getting the cooking spray. This was easy-peasy. But would the rest of this work be just as straightforward? Hopefully. “In the bowl of your mixer, add the flour, sugar, cocoa powder, salt, baking powder, baking soda and using the paddle attachment mix everything together until well combined, on low speed,” Dustin read from the recipe. He paused. “And then it says in a large bowl mix together the buttermilk, coconut oil, eggs, and vanilla extract. Whisk in the coffee and food coloring.” He looked at Lea. “So maybe one of us could do the one, and the other one the other bowl?” he suggested, walking over to the bowl. “What the hell is a paddle attachment though? Fucking hell, this shit’s too complicated, and it’s only going to get a more complicated if we try to evenly divide up each step. Let’s just wing it, okay? What’s the worst that could happen?” he asked his sister.
Okay, maybe there were a lot of bad things that could happen. Including fires, poisoning, apocalypses, or vampire attacks. Even though the latter had to be invited in, right? So they could exclude vampires from things that could potentially go wrong and ruin this baking experience.
“Isn’t red velvet just cake batter with red food colouring?” Dustin asked. “To make it look really fancy? Because what kind of food even is velvet? It’s not a vegetable for sure.”
