“Baking. Why does it have to be baking?” Rainbow Dash tossed her hooves in the air with reckless abandon as she looked on at the various ingredients. “Of all things to learn, why baking?”
Her gaze was distinctly set on the first page of a massive cookbook. Her first reaction was to question why such a book even existed in the first place. That train of thought was quickly supplanted by another more unbelievable fact. The cake portrayed in the book as the ‘final’ product had to at least be as tall as three ponies standing on each other’s backs and as wide as a buffalo.
“Why does it have to be a cake?” Dash asked nopony in particular. “Why not something simple, like cupcakes or brownies? Hay, I would even settle for a pie!”
“Because cakes are fun to bake and are very, very tasty!” Pinkie Pie suddenly replied in her usual festive self. She merrily hopped into the kitchen counter—just as she usually did—balancing a tray of cupcakes she had baked just earlier that day on her head—just as she usually did. To say that Pinkie Pie was elated about the prospect of more baking would be an understatement.
“Tell me again why you’re ‘forcing’ me to learn baking?” Dash asked her overly thrilled friend before reluctantly picking up a bag of flour from the pantry. “Last I checked, future Wonderbolts don’t need to know how to bake cakes.”
Pinkie smiled at Dash’s words. “Well,” she started, “you said that Spitfire ordered you to learn something other than flying to expand your, uh... what did she call it?” Pinkie said as she put a hoof on her chin. “Re-pe-tire? Re-pa-tury?”
“Repertoire,” Dash expressionlessly corrected her friend.
“Yeah, that!” Pinkie enthusiastically said, pointing a hoof at a blank faced Dash. “And since I don’t really see you as the party-planning type, I decided that baking would be the next best thing!” The enthusiastic filly gave a giddy hop at her multicolored friend. “Baking’s fun. You’ll see!”
[“Yeah… fun for you, maybe…” Dash sourly yet softly retorted through clenched teeth. She didn’t quite meet Pinkie’s gaze. For her part, Pinkie only looked on with a wide and innocent beam. Dash had only to gaze into her friend’s pure and innocent eyes to realize she wasn’t going to talk her way out of the baking lessons. In the end, all she could really do is sigh in defeat. “Alright, let’s get started...”
“Okie doki Loki!” Pinkie replied with yet another smile and hop. She flicked her head and gracefully sent the tray of cupcakes flying into the nearest open pantry before grabbing on to the nearest bag of flour and pouring its contents directly into a large magenta bowl that she had somehow pulled out of thin air. Dash didn’t even question it.
“First,” Pinkie started, “we pour the flour, careful not to spill any of it.” Somehow, she managed to turn the bowl over and re-empty it into the bag, only to once again pour the flour back into the bowl before finally tossing the empty bag aside. Again, Dash didn’t stop to question what she was seeing.
Dash looked at the bag, and couldn’t help but notice something odd about it. She quickly shook her head. Why bother with a bag? She harshly thought to herself. I mean, sure, it makes it easier to store, but flour’s flour for Celestia’s sake. Bags don’t exactly make flour any more appealing to the eye. If anything, they make it so drab and boring. Kind of like baking as a whole. She had to resist the urge to yawn.
“Next,” Pinkie continued, snapping Dash out of her train of thought. “We pour the other ingredients alongside the flour. We have vanilla, sugar, some baking soda and a few cups of milk.” She poured all the ingredients named in the exact order she had called them.
Dash had to at least stand in awe at how Pinkie used hooves with such dexterity and finesse. It was almost a show in itself. Ponies didn’t normally use hooves for such tasks. Unicorns had their magic, while pegasi had their wings. The closest she had ever seen to anything ‘prehensile’ on earth ponies was their tails however, and even that was still a long-shot.
“Now,” Pinkie started as she handed the bowl full of batter to Dash, taking her old one. “We stir.”
“And how am I supposed to do that?” Dash snarkily asked. “You don’t exactly have mixing spoons.” She pointed to the utensil rack which in fact, had nothing that could be used to mix. “And don’t you dare say ‘use your hooves Dashie.’ ” She pointed her right hoof at Pinkie’s face. “Because I’m not going to do that again.”
“Oh you silly filly,” Pinkie replied with a coy smile. “We don’t use spoons anymore! We use industrial-grade mixers now.” She pointed to a pony-sized white machine that looked a mighty too complex to be in Pinkie’s immediate vicinity. “Mixing by hoof would take ages, and while it would probably be fun, there just isn’t enough hours in the day for it. Though, can you imagine if there were? Why, we would be able to do so much more! We could even throw a party while we mix!” A wide smile formed on her lips.
Dash didn’t like that one bit. To her, it probably meant another of Pinkie’s hair-brained schemes, and frankly, Dash was still recovering from the last “idea” Pinkie had sprung on her back in the academy.
“Yeah,” Dash replied, feigning a smile as she did. “Let’s focus on mixing the batter right now though, okay?” Boy, there’s something I never thought I’d find myself saying, Dash thought to herself. Just keep Pinkie occupied with the idea of mixing.
Pinkie smiled and gave a hop. She then pushed a reluctant Rainbow Dash towards the mixing machine. “Did I mention how mixer speeds up productivity? Yup, no more sore forelegs!”
“Pinkie,” Dash snapped, her voice full of uncertainty. “Should I, you know, be operating that… thing… without reading some sort manual first?” she validly asked her overly excitable pink friend. Not that I’m at all thrilled about the prospect of reading anything that isn’t Daring Do, she thought to herself.
“Nope!” Pinkie happily replied. She quickly hopped towards the mixer’s controls. Dash couldn’t help but notice how its controls were disturbingly accessible, even to a foal. “Industrial grade” wasn’t exactly a designation known for having strict regulations. After all, anypony could literally purchase a machine labeled “industrial grade;” case in point, that one hair dryer for pets Applebloom kept in one of her family’s barns. Thing looks like it could skin a pony alive…
“Simple!,” Pinkie cheerfully started. “Pour the batter into this bowl, set the speed to ‘moderately high.’ ” She stretched her neck so she was within whispering distance of Dash. “That’s about the fifth speed by the way.” She quickly retreated and brought her hooves to the mixer’s controls—a pair of knobs that, again, even a foal could easily reach and turn. “And finally set the mixer going.” She turned to Dash’s bowl of raw and unmixed cake batter and smiled. “The batch today shouldn’t be mixed for more than fifteen minutes. If we do, then the batter will get all gooey and nasty. That’ll make the cake hard, and we don’t want a rocky cake.” She stuck out her tongue to show displeasure at the thought. “Besides, rock cake is a very different recipe. I can teach it to you some other day, but definitely not today. Unless of course, you want me to teach it to you right here and right now, in which case I’ll need a batch of fresh rocks and a couple of pounds of—”
“Pinkie, please!” Dash raced up to her friend and quickly placed a hoof over her muzzle. Her face was contorted into a pain-stricken scowl as she did so. “Can we just focus on the recipe we have now!?” She asked. Because there is no way I’m going to bake anything that has the title ‘rock’ in it, Dash followed in thought. She quickly removed her hoof from Pinky’s mouth, bracing herself for Pinkie’s relentless barrage of words.
“Okie dokie loki then,” Pinkie cheerfully replied. “As I was saying, too much mixing’s going to result in gooey batter. Too little mixing and the batter will be watery and flabby, making the cake soggy and very, very unappealing.” She flopped her hoof about before pointing at the speed switch, which went from “off” to the number “eleven.”
“Just turn the knob here and set the timer here.” Pinky pointed to a small egg timer sitting on the counter. Dash was actually surprised Pinkie didn’t actually have some kind of complex—and potentially dangerous—mechanism to tell time.
“It’s all real simple,” Pinkie cheerfully quiped with yet another hop. She’s was just about ready to leave the room when she stopped in her tracks and turned to face Dash. This time, her face wasn’t as cheery as it once was.
“One last thing,” she suddenly started. “This recipe is precise when it comes to the speed. Because of that, we never, ever, EVER,” Pinkie emphasized the word ‘ever’ in her sentence in a grave tone that Dash found very unsettling. “Turn up the speed to eleven. Very, very bad things happen at eleven!” She near instantaneously closed the gap between Dash and herself, pressing her forehead against her friend’s. “Pinkie promise me you won’t go beyond eleven!” she demanded in a tone that wasn’t exactly ‘pinkie.’
“Come again?” Dash asked, still unsure as to what was unfolding before her eyes.
“Pinkie promise me you won’t go picking the eleventh speed on the machine!” Pinkie repeated as her eyes grew narrower. “Promise!”
“Alright, alright!” Dash quickly and exasperatedly replied. “I won’t go picking the eleventh setting on the machine.” Not that I’m even interested in messing with something that looks like it could easily blow up in my face, she thought to herself. Seriously, who invents these things?
Pinkie gave her friend one last near-glare before once again returning to her beaming state. The sudden change from graveness to goofy joy unnerved Dash enough to reconsider her being in Sugarcube Corner in the first place. She smiled back awkwardly. Better not encourage her further. One crazy obsessed pony in town is enough for me.
“Okie dokie loki then!” Pinkie replied to Dash in her usual over-the-top manner. “I’ll leave you alone to mix the batter then. I gotta get the decorations for the sweet cake you’ll be baking! I’ll be back in a few minutes. Have fun!”
With that, the pink party pony zoomed out of the kitchen while humming a very merry song Dash had never heard before, but was quite sure had been adapted from Pinkie’s infamous “Chimey Cheery Changas” idea. At that, she felt a shiver run down her back. No need to have a repeat of that…
Dash turned to the machine and sighed. Let’s get this over with.
---~---~---~---
Five minutes had passed by, and Dash had quite literally done nothing except hover in place and eye the mixing machine with the greatest of mistrusts. She looked down at the bowl of slowly hardening batter in her hooves and then back to the machine. Her eyes kept narrowing as she approached the apparatus with the same care Twilight approached one of her strange contraptions.
“Okay, guess I should pour the batter into this… whatever Pinkie called it,” Dash said as she slowly approached the mixer’s silver basin.
Gently, she emptied the bowl of batter, smoothly placing the now empty bowl back on the counter. She then landed on the floor and walked towards the Mixer’s controls. She noticed the ‘off’ knob. Well, guess I should turn this thing on or something, she thought to herself.
She gently wrapped her wing around the small knob and spun it straight to the fifth digit, just as Pinkie had told her to.
The machine suddenly rumbled as its rotors began to spin. Dash gave a small hop backwards at the machine’s sudden motion. She quickly blushed in shame as she realized she was getting scared over nothing. She walked up to the machine gave it a small kick. Dumb mixer, she thought to herself.
Fifteen minutes passed by, and Dash could only look on at the steadily churning batter and yawn. To her, the batter wasn’t getting mixed fast enough, and would certainly not be ready in the allotted fifteen minutes.
“Well,” she said, “this is taking forever.” She walked up to the controls of the mixer and looked at the numbers. Her eyes set themselves on the number eleven. “Now, what did pinkie say about eleven?” Dash asked herself. She placed a hoof on her chin and tried to recall Pinkie’s exact words.
“For this recipe, we ever, ever, ever, EVER turn the speed up to eleven!”
“Ever, ever, ever?” Dash said to herself. “Did she like, mean always or what?” She looked at the number eleven on the machine. “On the one hoof, I know what’s going to happen if I break my Pinkie promise.” She shuddered. “Celestial help me if Pinkie ever finds out.” She then looked over the slowly hardening batter. “On the other hoof, I am not going to stand here and wait fifteen minutes when I can just set the speed to max and be done in five.” She set her gaze on the number eleven again. With a sigh, she grabbed the knob with her wing and turned it up, all the way. A few minutes shouldn’t cause too much harm…
The mixer whirred violently, spinning faster and faster until it was spinning so fast, the rotors were little more than blurs of white and silver. Dash smiled as she walked away from the machine, content that the batter would be ready in time. She noticed the discarded back of the flour bag and picked it up. “Boy, Pinkie can sure be messy sometimes…” She said to herself. She looked at the bag more carefully, this time paying close attention to the name.
Bomb-Bomb Cake Flour
Strange name for flour, she thought to herself as she turned the bag over to read the back.
Bomb-Bomb cakes—a treat guaranteed to put a delightful sizzle in your mouth. Fun for all ages.
Dash smiled. Only Pinkie would want to bake something with such a preposterous name attached to it. She quickly went over the baking instructions, at which point she noticed a label in the lower section of the bag.
Warning! Bomb-Bomb cake flour contains traces of HMX, once used for the cooking of ‘exploding pancakes.’
While HMX is non-toxic, it is highly volatile. Do not store in places of extreme heat. Do not drop from an altitude higher than thirty feet, avoid contact with any type of fire, magical or otherwise, and under no circumstance should this product be mixed in an industrial-size mixers with a designated speed of eleven or higher.
Dash gulped as she lowered the bag and looked at the mixer, which was still spinning rapidly. She could hear what sounded like light rumbling coming from it though, and the bowl was already starting to glow a faint orange. She took a step back, suddenly realizing Pinkie’s actual words.
“Never, ever, EVER…” Dash mouthed to herself, sweat forming on her brown.
---~---~---~---
Pinkie Pie happily hopped back towards Sugarcube corner, basket of decorations in mouth. She beamed and hummed in ways that only she could do. To her, the day was perfect. The sky was clear and extra blue, the grass soft and moist, and everypony was extra happy. Better yet, one of her bestests of friends had agreed to learn something from her. Though she had not quite expected it, Dash wanting to learn how to bake was one of the highlights of her already wonderful day.
Her day just couldn’t get any—
There was a sudden blast from Sugarcube Corner.
Pinkie Pie stopped in her tracks and looked up at the sky. A gigantic geyser of batter was shooting upwards and falling back down to the ground in cascades, causing it to rain all over the vicinity.
Naturally Pinkie’s reaction was rage. She could feel her body heat up as a single thought crossed her mind: “Rainbow Dash broke her pinkie promise!”
That thought however, was quickly overshadowed by another, one particularly grimmer than the prospect of a pinkie promise breaker.
Quickly, she raced towards her home.
---~---~---~---
Dash emerged from a pool of raw batter, coughing and spitting. She wiped the semi-liquid from her face and looked at the kitchen. Or what was left of it anyway.
The roof had a large hole on it. The mixing machine was little more than a twisted and badly beaten wrecked, and the batter was everywhere and on everything. Dash quickly stood up and gulped. How was she going to explain this to the Cakes? What would Pin—
Oh goddess, Pinkie Pie! My pinkie promise! Oh Celestia, what have I done?
She quickly looked to Sugarcube Corner’s doorway and saw Pinkie. She stood on the entryway with a somewhat neutral expression. She walked up to Dash, who was already expecting some kind of reprisal. Would she start yelling? Would she grow furious and have another “episode” of instability? Would she start crying?
Oh no, please don’t start crying! Dash thought to herself.
Pinkie looked around at the kitchen and sighed. She turned to dash and smiled. “And that is why we don’t use the eleventh speed on the mixer.” She walked up to a closet, opened the door, and took out two brooms, two mops, two pails and two large shovels.
“Well,” pinkie said with a smile. “We better start cleaning. Whole area is covered in batter. Hopefully we’ll be finished by sunset.”
“Uh, Pinkie,” Dash started with a look of slight confusion. “Aren’t you mad at me for, you know…” she sighed. “…Breaking your pinkie promise?”
“Well, yeah. Of course I’m mad at you.” Pinkie replied with a broad smile. “But, you’re my friend, and it’s kind of a small mistake you know. Mistakes happen, and nopony got hurt, and that’s all that matters. Besides,” she said, looking at the hole in the ceiling, “this is nothing compared to the first time I made Bomb-Bomb cake.” She pointed at the roof. “The roof’s still mostly there, and so are the walls.”
“Pinkie Pie,” Dash said as she begun to scoop batter of the floor with the shovel, “you are so random.” She smiled broadly.
“Nope,” Pinkie happily replied. “I’m just Pinkie Pie. Now let’s hurry. We don’t want the cake batter to set.”
“Right,” Dash agreed, quickly picking up the nearest mop. “By the way Pinkie, is this batter still ‘explosive’?” Dash asked.
“Well, it’s already blown-up, so it’s pretty un-explosive now.” Pinkie Pie replied. “However, I think dragon’s fire can still set it off. Or something.”
“That’s good to know,” Dash said, quickly starting to mop up the mess.
---~---~---~---
Outside Sugarcube Corner stood a batter-covered lavender alicorn. On her back was an equally batter-covered purple dragon. The alicorn looked on at Sugarcube Corner with an exasperated look. “Pinkie Pie…” she fumed to herself as she used her magic to wipe the batter away.
Spike couldn’t help but laugh.
That is, until he felt a sneeze coming on. He put a claw over his snout and tried to hold back the sneeze, but it wouldn’t do.
I’m sure I won’t breathe fire this time… Spike thought to himself. He smiled somewhat goofily.
Then, he finally sneezed.
