Second Floor Common Room, Tuesday Afternoon

[endsthegame]

To say that Ender was Not Amused when he came home from classes to find all of Karla's books (as well as his copy of the Complete Works of Shakespeare, his books by Nietzsche and Kant and other philosophers, and any number of biology texts) reduced to romantic drivel would be a severe understatement. His laptop was not a credible alternative because he was still trying to come up with a good way to deal with Jane, and so the only option left to Ender was to head into the common room, and at least hope there were some good documentaries on.

"Oh, you have to be kidding me," he said, when the 111th channel also turned out to be playing... something by Jane Austen? No, even that was too much to hope.

This was not his week.

[[ open! ]]

Comments

[endsthegame]

"I haven't volunteered to supervise you," Ender said, feeling a headache coming on. "I don't even know how to cook."

However, he was miles better than Ben and Karla at following a recipe. That should probably worry people.

[glacial_queen]

"It's easy," Karla said, never loathe to offer encouragement. "You just mix everything up and throw it into the oven!"

That could hardly be a terrible plan or anything!

"Oh, I should preheat the oven. And only to 350 degrees, because cookies don't bake faster when you cook them at a higher temperature. They just burn."

Look at that, ladies and gentlemen. Actual progress.

[endsthegame]

And Ender would be proud of it, too, if she wasn't currently trying to go into about fifty other cooking sins. "You mix everything up according to a certain blueprint," he said, "You can't just throw together all the ingredients you like and hope for the best."

[glacial_queen]

"I'm not just tossing in anything," Karla retorted. For one thing, there were no pine nuts anywhere. "But I've baked cookies before. I know what goes into them."

It was what shouldn't that kind of stymied her.

"And if you're so concerned about my cookies, you can remember that no one's going to force you to eat them," she added, a touch crossly. "They're for someone else."

Who would soon learn the perils of being a good Samaritan.

[endsthegame]

"And they have to be special," Ender said, throwing his hands up. "Fine. I'll help you poison whoever it is."

It just wouldn't be his fault. Seriously, not his fault.

[glacial_queen]

"I'm not going to be poisoning anyone," Karla said. "Mother Night, I am a Black Widow, after all. If we're going to poison someone, it would be deliberate and I have no reason to hurt Wesley. I'm thanking him."

She pushed the bowl of eggs (and shells) at Ender, along with several dozen more. She at least knew how likely she'd be to go through a few before she got anything usable.

"Start cracking," she said. "I need four. No, five. I'm going to double the recipe."

[endsthegame]

"One, you don't have a recipe," Ender said, sighing as he washed his hands and then started fishing for bits of egg shell, "Two, doubling it is a little beyond our abilities."

It was futile. He was Ender. He was putting up a fight anyway.

[glacial_queen]

This time, Karla did toll her eyes. "You know what I mean. I never get enough batter to make twenty-four cookies anyway, so I'm doubling all the measurements."

She pulled out several pounds of butter and a pint of heavy cream. Because creaming the butter was a phrase she'd run into several times.

The fact that one usually did it into sugar, not flour, was beyond her. As was the actual definition of the phrase.

[endsthegame]

"What," Ender said, as he succesfully managed to keep a long-suffering sigh in, "is the cream for."

[glacial_queen]

"The dough," Karla said airily. "It's in most cookie recipes I know."

So saying she dumped the pint of cream into the flour and began mashing the butter up. It was a good thing those cupfuls had been so heaping, as flour dust went everywhere.

[endsthegame]

"I don't think cream actually belongs in cookies," said Ender, but he sounded a little dubious. Look, he really wasn't a cooking expert.

... Maybe he should become one just to save the world from Karla's cooking.

[glacial_queen]

It would give him something new to focus on!

...You know, when the books were working again.

"I'm creaming the butter into flour," Karla explained. "Honestly, it's in almost every cookie recipe I know."

[endsthegame]

Well, god knew that at the rate he and Ben were going, he could use every distraction in the book.

Ender pinched the bridge of his nose, and thought back to the handful of recipe books he'd seen the inside of. "That means you stir the butter in until it gets creamy," he said, after a moment.

They were swiftly approaching the edges of his expertise on the subject.

[glacial_queen]

"How are butter and flour supposed to become creamy?" Karla asked. With all due logic. "They're both solid. So you have to add some real cream to get it going."

She sounded like she knew what she was talking about. That was the terrifying part.

[endsthegame]

"Butter melts," Ender said. He was starting to long back to the old, uncomplicated days of bland cafetaria food and food-inna-tube.

[glacial_queen]

"Of course it does," Karla said, clearly not getting his point.

[endsthegame]

"And then you mix it with the flour...?"

They had officially hit the edge of his knowledge about cooking.

[glacial_queen]

"I'm pretty sure that if the recipe wanted me to use melted butter, it would say so."

The recipe they didn't have, of course.