11. Alana
ALANA
“How have you never baked before?” I asked, frustration lacing each of my words as I threw away the first batch of fresh-out-of-the-oven cookies. They were burnt to a crisp.
I left the kitchen for two whole minutes, and Eden somehow managed to burn them in the meantime.
“I have,” he vetoed and leaned back against my kitchen counter. “Just not cookies.”
“So what did you bake before?” It was my easiest cookie recipe, but apparently still a tad too difficult for Eden.
I walked over to the kitchen counter and set the now empty tray back down, then reached for another sheet of parchment paper.
“Crème Br?lée,” he replied.
My hands froze mid-air, abandoning the parchment paper as my eyes met his. “Crème Br?lée?” I repeated, having a hard time believing him.
It wasn’t that Créme Br?lée was necessarily difficult to make, but it was certainly not beginner-level. Cookies were far easier.
“Don’t sound so surprised.”
“I am surprised.” I finally laid the parchment paper down on the tray, then went to get some more flour. “Did you burn the Créme Br?lée?”
“Nope.” He sounded surprisingly nonchalant about it. “I could make Créme Br?lée in my sleep, Ally-Bear. I thought you knew that my dad owns multiple French restaurants. He might not have taught me how to bake, but I’m pretty familiar with the French cuisine.”
My eyes narrowed at him. “So, can you bake croissants?”
His chest rose as he took a deep breath, and a guilty smile tugged at his lips. “Well… no.”
“What about Macarons?” He shook his head. “Profiterole? éclair? Chouquette?”
“I can… make whatever my father sells and taught me?”
“Impressive,” I said sarcastically, rolling my eyes.
Eden may have had a fancy background in French cuisine, but his lack of basic baking skills was astonishing.
I sighed, realizing it was going to be a long afternoon of attempting to teach him how to bake simple cookies. Or perhaps we should avoid cookies altogether.
I rubbed my palms together, the flour dusting off in a powder cloud. “Did your sister say she wanted cookies for her baby shower, or could it be anything else?”
“Uhm… Brooke didn’t specify. I just thought cookies would be the easiest to make.”
“How about we try something different?” I suggested, grabbing the pen and paper I used to show Eden what the cookies were supposed to look like earlier. Making my way over to a space with less flour on the surface, I sketched out a simple design for cupcakes.
Eden leaned over my shoulder, examining my sketch. “Are those cupcakes?”
“Yup,” I confirmed, feeling a spark of hope that maybe cupcakes would be more up Eden’s alley than cookies. I doubted it. “Does Brooke want the more traditional colors for her baby shower? Blue and pink?”
“I think so?”
Oh, God. He really didn’t make this easy for either of us.
I nodded, my mind already racing with ideas on how to make the cupcakes both adorable and delicious. Pastels would look the best, fluffy frosting, and intricate decorations.
“Okay, I’m thinking we can make vanilla or lemon cupcakes with light pink and blue frosting,” I told him, sketching out the design on the paper.
“Or we do white frosting and pink and blue decorations. Then inside, depending on the gender, we’ll do a strawberry filling for a girl, or a blue-colored lemon curd for a boy. What do you think?”
He was hesitant for a moment, though I was sure it was only because he barely understood a thing I just said. Eventually, he nodded, though. “Could we do raspberry if it’s a girl? Brooke’s severely allergic to strawberries.”
“Sure, we can do that,” I answered with a smile.
It honestly shouldn’t have been a question.
If his sister was allergic, then of course I’d teach him something else.
“That’d be vanilla cupcakes and a raspberry filling then, and lemon cupcakes with a lemon curd filling that we dye blue.
You don’t know if it’s a boy or a girl yet, do you? ”
Eden shook his head immediately. “Not yet. I honestly haven’t asked when Brooke will be able to find out, but I suppose she’ll let me know. She said something about asking her doctor to write it down, and then she’d give me the envelope so it’ll stay a mystery for her.”
“That’s fine. We can try getting you familiar with the process of both cupcake varieties in the meantime,” I said, trying to sound more confident than I actually felt about teaching Eden to bake.
We had a few more months before he had to be able to ace them anyway. I think he mentioned the baby shower being in July. Eden wasn’t graduating until May, so we had some more time to practice.
“I think it’d be cool if we had more than just cupcakes for the party, though,” Eden said. “I don’t think they have to have some special-colored filling. Just pastries the guests can eat, you know?”
My shoulders sagged slightly, knowing that branching out to various pastries would be more challenging than anticipated, but we had enough time, right? And it wasn’t like I had to bake all this for the baby shower. Eden was going to have to do it all by himself.
At least he never mentioned anything about me helping him bake all these things for the special day as well.
“Alright. What other pastries do you have in mind?” I asked.
Eden tapped his chin thoughtfully. “How about some fruit tarts? Those always look fancy and taste great.”
“Sure, we can do those. You just have to write a list of fruits you’d like to be included. Anything else?”
“Something French, perhaps?”
I chuckled. “You just want to look good in front of your family, don’t you?”
A sheepish grin spread across his face. “Maybe just a little bit.”
I couldn’t help but shake my head in amusement. “Alright. Anything in particular?”
He hummed as he thought about it for a moment, and in the meanwhile, I decided to jot down some notes for the fruit tarts on a separate piece of paper. They definitely had to be without strawberries, so I added an extra note for that, too.
“Mille-feuille,” Eden finally spoke, a hint of something exciting in his voice.
My eyebrows shot up in surprise, and the pen in my hand almost dropped. Mille-feuille was not an easy pastry to make by any means. It required precision, patience, and a certain finesse that Eden had yet to find in himself.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah. I think it’d be impressive, don’t you?”
Sure, I couldn’t deny that pulling off Mille-feuille would’ve been impressive, but it also seemed like a really bad idea considering Eden’s baking skills—or lack thereof.
I let out a long exhale, contemplating the level of difficulty that Eden was proposing.
When I agreed to our deal, I thought all I had to do was hand him a couple of easy recipes, show him how to decorate a cupcake, and then I was done with it. I didn’t think I’d actually have to teach him difficult things.
“We can try.” I guess that’s what we were here for anyway. I offered him a smile, trying to look more confident than I felt about this. “Do you want a more traditional and authentic recipe or something fruity?”
“What do you think?” He leaned against the counter, crossing his arms over his chest. His green eyes twinkled with curiosity as he looked at me.
“Well, since you already want fruit tarts, I think it’d be smarter to do something more classic and plain: vanilla pastry cream and chocolate drizzles.
But if you want something fruity in it, we could maybe add a raspberry coulis drizzle on top instead of chocolate,” I replied, trying to envision the delicate layers of puff pastry between cream already.
“It wouldn’t be too overpowering that way. ”
Eden nodded softly. “Yeah, sounds good. We’ll do that.”