Upper Crust

“Cookie, in all honesty do you think The Princess of Friendship, Twilight Sparkle. Is going to walk into our bakery?” Pinny asked, rolling his eyes in disbelief. The two were sat at home after another day of work, just resting for the evening. It was the only quiet time they got to themselves.

“Well you read it too! Look!” Cookie said, shoving the article back towards Pinny in a slightly panicked state, crumpling the paper a little in the process. “Oops.”

“Yes yes, I know - the royal visit. But all it says is that as part of her tour of the city Princess Twilight will be spending a day in Bronclyn. It doesn’t say where in the district she’s going to go. It’s a huge district honey, she’s most likely going to visit ponies she knows or has specific destinations in mind. She’s hardly going to be trotting down the road at lunch time, see our bakery and walk in is she? I mean does she even walk, I’d have thought a Princess would be taken everywhere in a carriage…” Pinny started to get side tracked, Cookie bringing him back to the matter at hoof.

“Well it could happen! We should be prepared just in case!” Cookie started to say. “Princess Twilight is one of the smartest ponies around! If we serve her one of the special baked goods and she puts on weight she’s going to get suspicious!” Cookie said.

“So we have three choices.” Pinny said.

“I hate it when you simplify everything.” Cookie retorted.

“Hear me out. Choice one is we carry on business as usual and hope she doesn’t come in. Choice two is we prepare one of everything and keep it to one side and hope she doesn’t get suspicious when we don’t take her order from under the counter. I don’t really want to consider option three because we can’t afford it.”

“Close for the day?” Cookie asked.

“Mmm hmm.” was all Pinny replied.

“Yeah, lets not do that.” Cookie said. They still owed too much money and couldn’t afford it.

“What if...well, what if we did go with choice one? She’s a Princess isn’t she. She’s not going to order a huge batch of treats. I hardly think a couple of cookies is going to make her noticeably fatter.” Pinny suggested.

“Pinny, she’s royalty. She’s one of, if not the smartest pony in Equestria. I mean do you even pay attention to our leaders? She’d notice.” Cookie said.

“I was never much of a royalist.” Pinny drily replied.

“Clearly. Well...hmm…” Cookie thought for a moment.

“Look be realistic dear, like I said what are the chances she actually visits us? Slim to none?” Pinny reasoned with her.

“Well, yes I suppose.” Cookie replied.

“So I say we just do what we normally do. We carry on business as usual. If on the very rare, almost nil chance she actually walks through the door we serve her the couple of items she orders and she goes away thinking she probably just overindulged on her week trip to the city, and those city foods are oh so rich.” Pinny calmly explained to his now slightly less panicky partner.

“Fine, I’m just worried.” Cookie said.

“Darling, you always worry. It’s my job to make you worry less.” Pinny said, nuzzling close to her.

“Thanks.” Cookie replied back, giving Pinny a hug. “Oh, tomorrow. I want to show Doughy how to bake a few basic things when we’re quiet. I assume that’s okay with you?” she asked.

“Of course, but you know he’s from a bakery anyway. He might already know how to bake these things himself and we’ve just not asked him to. Might be worth querying with him.” Pinny said, reading some other articles in the paper as he settled in for some down time.

“Good idea. I’ll ask tomorrow.” Cookie said back, closing her eyes for a moment to rest.

The next day the store was as busy as usual. Once the morning rush had passed, Clipsy having bothered Doughy sufficiently enough that he gave her another couple of free treats, Cookie was finally free to pop the question towards their new staff member.

“So, it wasn’t something we completely covered in the interview and I know you’re from a bakery. But can you bake?” Cookie asked. “One of the things we asked about was helping out around the store whilst it was quiet, I thought now might be a good time as generally I start preparing for the lunch crowd.”

“Oh sure!” Doughy replied, sliding the hatch shut as no customers were present. “I do bake a little, but generally I got asked to clean things or make sure customers were being served. I can do simple things.” he said.

“What sort of simple things?” Cookie asked.

“Well, cookies, flapjacks, brownies, uhhhh…” Doughy thought for a minute. “I think I tried doing gingerbread ponies once but the icing for the features was a bit off.” he confessed, looking sheepish.

“Well we sell all those things, if you can bake them yourself it would be a great help to me. I can coach you through it and give you advice.” Cookie said with a smile.

She decided to start off with something simple and her namesake of course, the delightful chocolate chip cookie. Doughy was a fast learner which was helpful. He had a good basic understanding but Cookie had some tips that he didn’t know just to help the baking process along. There was one moment though in the whole process that put Cookie a little on edge.

“Woah!” she heard him exclaim, she wasn’t quite paying attention to what he was doing and hadn’t noticed Doughy had just straight up dabbed his hoof into the sugar and had a taste. Cookie froze. She wasn’t sure what to say.

“What is it?” she decided to ask.

“This sugar...I’ve never tasted anything like it.” Doughy said, going for another taste, Cookie slapped his hoof away to a frown. “What!?” he asked.

“We don’t ever ever lick our hooves, then the sugar. Somepony is going to eat that!” Cookie said, seeing that Doughy understood but he was still curious about the sugar.

“Okay, but - what sugar is that? I’ve never tasted something so sweet!” he exclaimed.

“It’s just our wholesalers sugar we use. I’ve never really thought much about it.” Cookie calmly replied, keeping her cool and not spilling the beans.

“Oh...well, it’s a lot sweeter than the sugar we used to have at our bakery. That’s for sure.” Doughy said, going back to making the cookies. Cookie was sure to keep an eye to make sure he didn’t try to sneak another taste, thankfully he didn’t and not before long the batch he had made was done and baked. Cookie inspected it by eating one.

“Mmm! Good job! There’s a few little things you can improve on but that will all come with time and as you do more baking. But for a first batch, pretty good. We can put these on sale.” Cookie smiled, taking the tray and starting to put them under the counter on display. “Thank you Doughy, oh I think I hear a customer tapping on the window for the Guzzle and Go. Can you serve them?”

With a dutiful nod Doughy took his usual spot and Cookie silently let out a sigh of relief.

“Did he do okay?” Pinny asked, just finishing up helping a customer at the register.

“Yes he did fine, in fact he baked these.” Cookie said, pointing her hoof to the cookies now freshly on display. “He took a lick of the sugar though, don’t worry I was calm and just told him I never really thought about it. But he kept saying he had never had something so sweet.” Cookie explained. “I only took my eyes off him for a second.”

“Well don’t worry, unless he starts eating the sugar out the bag he was probably just impressed with how sweet it was.” Pinny replied.

“Yes but, it was the sugar on its own, not mixed with anything. You remember they said it was more potent that way.” Cookie said, worried.

“We’ll keep an eye on him, just maybe make sure he doesn’t start trying to sneak it or anything like I said. With the royal visit coming, we’ve got enough to worry about.” Pinny said.

“Alright.”

He was right, with the possibility (albeit a very slim one) of Princess Twilight coming in, the two had enough on their plate to worry about for now. The visit was approaching fast.