Bakery Bonding

Leona's Roomates want to give her a study break so they can all get together and bake a cake.

It had been a cold day as Leona sat at the kitchen table looking outside at the people scurrying hither and yonder below.  Most wrapped in coats , tightening their scarves as they made the short dash between the clinic and their cars.  She had made herself a cup of hot lemon honey tea and was sipping on it to combat her sore throat.  Next to her lie her Immunology Textbook and a notepad scrawled with notes on one side and her own hand drawn diagrams on the other.  A grey pencil lay in the center of the book, next to a box of coloured pencils and a fine point red pen.  Her blue pen was in her hand, top on, creating imaginary doodles of what she saw outside.

The door flew open with a bang, nearly causing her to spill her tea and drop her pen.

"Leo!" a woman of pale complexion and long, flowing red hair cheered her name in a singsong voice.  "Just the woman we were looking for!"

Leona groaned as she put her tea cup down and two others filed in behind the redhaired woman.  The redhaired one was named Charlie.  One was a much taller brunette they called Jessie and the other was a blonde they called Georgie.  The group were all roommates living in the apartment, splitting the costs while in school to allow them to have a bit more spending money and not completely cut corners on things like nights out.  Not that Leona had many of those.  She had taken up Nursing and had started to down in notes and deadlines.   Charlie was a chemical engineer major, though she didn't take studying nearly as important as the rest of them, and preferred nights out to nights in.  Jessie, actual named Jessica, was taking up finance.  She was probably the quietest of the three who just walked in, meekly surrendering to whatever whims the other two had in store for her.  How she ever thought she'd make out in business was beyond Leona, but to each their own.  The final roomie was Georgie, actual name Georgina, who had taken up Computer Science.  She had been christened apartment mother due to being often times the one who kept order in apartment.  The three had all decided to shorten their names to male versions for times they may have been in trouble, they could call each other and it sounded like they were talking to boys instead of another girl.  Not that any of them were overly concerned, but Peruna had had its fair share of missing university students over the years.  Not to mention the creepy old men at the bars who thought they were still young.

"Leo! We're making a cake, so you're going to pack up your books for thirty minutes and help out," Georgie demanded as she shut Leona's book.  Leona sighed and looked at Georgie who wore a smug grin on her face.  "You've been studying all day and need a break.  And since we're not going out, you're going to help us make a cake."

"Do you even know how to bake a cake?" Leona asked.

"Nope!  That's why we're drafting you in to help us!" Charlie chimed in as she went around behind Leona.  "Besides we know you didn't get these from eating angel foods," she added as she reached around and groped Leona.

Leona clamped her arms down on Charlie's hands, yanking Charlie towards her so she got the full effect of the ear piercing scream in her left ear.  Once the scream had been delivered, she released Charlie's hands and let her stagger backwards a few steps before picking up her tea cup.  "Do you even have all the ingredients for a cake?" 

Georgie nodded and showed her the recipe they had found on Gelgoogle Search.  Leona put down her cup and looked over the recipe.  It was a plain cake, a little lacking in ingredients to be a pound cake, but a bit heavier than angel cake.  Leona returned the phone back to Georgie and started clearing the table.  "I'll pack up, get everything ready and we'll see how good you are at baking when I get back."

"Ok," the others answered almost in complete unison.  Leona left the room and rubbed her forehead as she moved her books to her room.  What had she just agreed to?  Aside from Georgie, the other two couldn't be trusted to make rice in a pot without burning it.  She sighed again, this will either be a really good experience or a really bad experience.  She was hoping for the former, but preparing for the latter and she took a paracetamol and drank some water she had resting on her nightstand next to the bed.   Mmmm, that felt a bit better.  She left the room and headed back towards the kitchen.

To her pleasant surprise they had gathered all the ingredients next to a mixing bowl and had a wooden spoon ready to go.  Charlie had designated herself the mixer and had the spoon in hand, while Georgie and Jessie were preparing to put all the ingredients together and measure them.  Everything went smooth, except for the cracking of the eggs and the addition of the flour.  As they were cracking the eggs, they wound up putting half the shell in the mixing bowl and had to fish out the pieces.  Though somewhat clumsy about it, Leona couldn't help but chuckle a bit at them and remembered her first egg, which she had the misfortune of trying to mimic her mother and crack it on the side of the bowl instead of using a knife.  Promptly spilling the bowl contents on the floor.  She showed them how to use the bowl's edge to crack the egg and they applauded at the skill and not even losing a single shell fragment into the bowl.  The addition of flour brought with it the infamous cloud.  Jessie had tried pouring it into the measuring cup and it came out in a bunch, with some portion missing the cup completely and the rest creating a thin cloud of flour.  Leona showed Jessie that the bag curved into a funnel and made it easier to pour.  She was then going to say put it in bits to the mix, but before she could Georgie had grabbed the cup and dumped the whole thing in on Charlie, who coughed through the resulting cloud as did the rest of them.  Charlie also complained she was unable to mix it without furthering the mess.   Leona took the spoon and did quarter turns, then half turns, then a slow full turn, slowly, ever so slowly, mixing the flour into the batter.  Soon enough was mixed in that she was able to hand it back to Charlie to finish stirring it all in.

The mix went into the cake pan and then popped in the oven.  Leona sneezed a few times from the remaining flour in the air as the others began to wash up the dishes.  "What do you think it'll taste like?"  You think it'll taste good?  I bet you it'll be almost as good as Leo's!"  "We can open our own shop and make more money!"

"Whoa, whoa, lets not get too far ahead of ourselves," Leona said after getting some tissue to blow her nose.  "Do you have any icing?"

"Uhm...."

Leona shook her head and pulled out her phone, "You guys are hopeless.  Here use this," she added with a chuckle.

"A recipe for icing!" Charlie shrieked, nearly repaying back the favour from Leona earlier as she hugged her roommate.

"Yes, icing sugar is on my shelf in the cupboard and you can use the baking cocoa," she said as she tried to stop the ringing in her ears.

The trio gingerly retrieved the additional ingredients from Leona's cupboard.  This time lessons learned from the flour were not repeated with the icing sugar, though to Jessie's credit, she scooped it out with a spoon into the measuring cup.  Charlie once again mixed it and then offered everyone a taste.  "Pretty good," Leona admitted. 

"Hells yeah! It has Leo approval gals, we're on our way!" Charlie cheered as she highfived the other two.  Just then the timer went off for the oven and they took it out.  It was a nice golden, yellow look to it but Leona produced a knife.

"What's that for?  You're cutting it already? While it's still hot?" Charlie asked

"No, silly, you stick a knife in the center to make sure its cooked."  She jabbed the knife in the center of the cake and then slowly withdrew it, "The more cooked it is, the less liquid the knife comes out with.  If for instance you put the oven too high, the top cooks like a shell and the inside is still liquid."  Leona noticed the others intently watching as she paused a moment.  "You guys can breath still you know."

"But the suspense is killing us!" Charlie added.

Leona grinned and pulled the knife up a little more, some crumbs were sticking to the blade, but no liquid.  A collective sigh was heard as the knife fully emerged, with almost nothing on it.  "Congratulations, your cake is fully cooked.  Now put on the icing and we can consider it done."

Georgie needed no further invitation and had the icing in a flash with another knife to spread it across the cake.  Leona set about making another cup of tea while they did that.  Chuckling to herself as they debated on how much icing was too much icing and attempting to spread it out evenly.  As she was about to sit down at the table with her newly heated cup of tea, a small plate landed next to her with a fork.  "It's only proper that you get the first slice for helping us out," Georgie grinned. 

Leona looked at Georgie and then back to the plate.  It certainly looked and smelled lovely.  The other two gathered around as she put her tea cup down and grabbed the saucer and drew it near to her.  They all once again seemed to stop breathing as she took a piece and put it in her mouth and started chewing.  She wanted to remind them to breath but remembered she couldn't with the cake in her mouth and simply decided to swallow it without further commentary.

"Well?  How was it?" Charlie asked as Leona put the plate back down on the table and picked back up her tea cup.

"Pretty good," she responded after taking a sip of her tea.  "A little dry, but that's probably for us overcompensating on that flour storm we had."

"WOOO!!" Charlie cheered.  "We're bakers now!  We should do this every weekend!"

Leona choked on her tea at the suggestion.  However the choking turned to laughter with the rest of the group.  Maybe once a week wouldn't be so bad, after all, she was stuck with these people for the rest of the year and might as well have fun with them instead of isolating herself.  Afterall, isn't that what university is for?  Meeting and enjoying the company of different people?  "Sure," Leona wheezed at the end of it all.  "Once a week we can have apartment baking.  By the time exams roll around we'll be able to make our own comfort foods."  The women all laughed as they all part took in a slice of cake and tea.