Toasts, Jam and Royal Pancakes
“Morning, Spike!”
Spike opened his eyes, rubbed them a bit with his fists and blinked a few times.
“Yeah,” he yawned, “morning, Twilight.”
Twilight Sparkle smiled at him and lit up her horn. Lavender aura of her magic caught the thick cream-colored curtains and pulled them apart in one swift motion.
The sunlight immediately flooded the interior of the Golden Oaks Library, shining bright through the large round window. It livened and refreshed all the colors, even the dark maroon inner walls of the library’s trunk, making everything around more bright and warm.
Owlowiscious, napping atop the wag-on-the-wall, emitted a displeased ‘woo-hoo’, flapped his wings and flew down to the first floor, where curtains were closed.
Twilight dropped onto her front legs slightly, then stood straight and slowly extended her hind legs one by one, stretching her statuesque unicorn body.
“So, what’s the plan for today?” Spike asked, while doing some warm ups of his own.
Twilight reached with her magic and an unfolded scroll floated up from a bedside table. It stopped in front of her face, her eyes darting back and forth as she reviewed its content.
“I’m going to study." she stated with absolute determination in her tone. "I found a couple of rather fascinating topics in that tome Princess Celestia sent here for me the day before.”
“Oh, I see." Spike nodded. "Anything in particular you want me to do?”
“Well, Spike, we have already reorganized the books a while ago, so…” she trailed off, scanning the list once more just to be sure, “no, nothing specific.”
“Got it, Twi. Well, I’ll go prepare some breakfast then.” he said, pointing down towards the kitchen, scratching his belly with his other hand.
"It would be sweet, thank you!” answered the unicorn mare, while returning the scroll to where it has been.
Spike descended the stairs, maneuvered between the bookshelves and pushed the door leading to the kitchen.
He surveyed the surroundings for a few moments, wondering.
"Well, first things first." he said approaching the stove.
Spike opened the shutter and exhaled a brief spurt of his green flame towards the firewood piled inside the burner, igniting it. A single vestige of his fiery exhalation touched the thick blackened metal of the burner’s encasing making the spot to immediately become red hot.
“Oops…” he muttered under his breath, tenderly closing the shutter, “Should’ve used the matches. Damn my laziness.”
“Gotta be careful. Twilight will go on and on with no end about those safety regulations if it gets warped again.” grumbled Spike and grabbed a large brass kettle, sitting on the sill.
“I wonder…” he mused filling it with water from the bucket and setting atop the hot plate, “what Twi would like to start the day with?”
He looked around the kitchen and noticed a jar of apple jam on a shelve.
“Well, she said she’s gonna study, so better give her some extra sugar.”
Spike's eyes darted to and fro, quickly locating the frying pan, hanging from the hook on the wall. He took it, dusted it a bit with his palm and placed the pan near the kettle, to heat it up as well.
“Let there be toasts!”
He turned to the kitchen table and pulled off the lacy napkin covering the breadbasket. Lying there was the half of a breadloaf.
“Oh, a yesterday’s one, perfect for what we want to do. By the way, that reminds me, I should buy a fresh loaf.” Commented Spike, fetching the bread out and taking a knife. He sliced the bread into four neat rectangular slices.
Returning to the stove he took a bottle of olive oil and poured some onto the pan. Waited a bit, sniffing air, and put the bread slices onto the pan, when he smelled the aroma of heated oil.
Meanwhile the kettle began to simmer, bubbling and spitting scalding hot water out of it’s spout. Spike quickly fetched the teapot, loaded it with a couple of teaspoons of fragrant minced tea leaves and covered it with the simmering water.
Having put the teapot aside, he took a wooden spatula.
“Twi likes them toasted, but not burned…” Spike whispered to himself, turning the bread over.
When the slices became appetizingly golden, he moved them onto the white porcelain plate and went to get the jam.
“Mmmmmmmm… Yummy!” Spike took a long whiff of it while opening the jar, and began to carefully spread the viscous amber mass over the toasts with a knife.
The jam thawed slightly, coming into contact with the hot bread.
Having finished the administration of the delicious apple goodness, the small dragon fearlessly licked the knife all over, not at all worrying about the sharp edge of the blade. His tongue was as good as armored, compared to what most other living things had.
“Applejack's jam is something else!" He smacked his lips together, "No wonder though, since all things apple are her inborn talent.”
Setting the knife aside, he approached the large chest in the corner and opened it. He was greeted with a bright multi-colored sparkling of scarlet rubies, deep-blue sapphires and dark green emeralds. Spike licked his lips. Here now was the treat worthy of dragon! He scooped several handfuls of gems, his intended breakfast share, and loaded a smaller bowl with them.
After that he filled two teacups with tea, sweetened it with some sugar and placed onto the tray along with the plate of toasts and the gems, picked it up and went out the kitchen.
Spike found Twilight already sitting in front of her table, a huge heavy tome opened before her. Her facial muscles were tense, as always when she was focusing on something complex and unfamiliar.
“Here you go, Twi. I’ve brought the breakfast.” Spike said, care evident in his tone, and slowly unloaded the tray.
She didn’t even twitch, engrossed with the book.
“Twilight?”
The unicorn mare gave him a quick glance.
“I’ve brought the breakfast. The toasts, as you like it.” Spike repeated patiently.
“Oh, sure. Thank you very much, Spike.” Twilight answered absentmindedly. Her aura lifted one of the teacups and left it hanging in the air near her muzzle.
Spike sighed. He held up his cup of tea in one hand, took a sip, snatched the biggest sapphire from his bowl and threw it into his mouth. With a distinct sound of crushed rock he began to slowly chew on the gems, savouring the taste while looking thoughtfully at his caretaker. Whom he has been taking care of more often than vice versa.
At moments like that Spike felt himself in a peculiar way. He wouldn’t call that feeling a ‘grievance’ or a ‘dudgeon’, no. He knew better, than to assume that Twilight is being malicious or purposefully neglectful towards him. A literal lifetime (so far) of living with her taught him otherwise. But he surely felt underappreciated sometimes.
The young mare undoubtedly had that unfortunate floutful streak within her. For a daughter of a well-born noble family and a personal student of the country’s ruler that — of course — wasn’t unexpected. But, knowing a lot of Canterlot nobles and their offspring personally, Spike usually held Twilight’s character in a much, much higher regard than theirs.
She, however, had a tendency to become overly engrossed into something that she deemed important or interesting for her and ignored everything and everyone else. Oftentimes only an intervention from her authority figures could snap the enthusiastic unicorn out of it.
Spike hoped that her new friends would somewhat influence her to be more delicate with other’s feelings.
Meanwhile Twilight stared into the book intently, oblivious of his thoughts. Her large violet eyes were quickly moving, scanning lines of text, her magic turning pages from time to time. The cup was still hanging near her face, untouched. Much like the toasts.
Spike smiled. That was just his Twilight being herself.
“Twi, I’ll go shopping for a bit.” He called her.
“Um… Yes, go ahead.” She answered quickly, without looking at him.
Spike slowly got up, approached the front door, fetched a braided sack hanging on the doorknob and went outside.
When he returned home around two o’clock, Twilight was still sitting by the table and completely ignored the jingling of the door bell, that sounded Spike’s return. Window curtains on the first floor were still closed.
Spike put his cargo — some office paraphernalia he got from Quills&Sofas and various groceries from the market — down and walked up to her.
Twilight was captivated by the book as much as before. Her cup of tea was as full as ever, only difference being that now it was standing on the table, beside the plate of untouched toasts.
Spike couldn’t hold a wince.
“Twi, why didn’t you eat anything?”
The flick of her ear was his only answer.
He poked her shoulder with his talon.
“If you won’t eat anything you won’t have any energy to learn, you know?”
Twilight sharply turned to the small dragon, making him recoil slightly.
“Spike, the additive quantum numbers Q and A are assumed to be conserved in strong, electromagnetic and weak interactions. The lepton numbers L, Lμ and Lτ are not involved in strong interactions but are strictly conserved in both electromagnetic and weak interactions. The remainder, S, C, B and T are strictly conserved only in strong and electromagnetic interactions but can undergo a change of one unit in weak interactions.” She blurted in one go, her mane disheveled and eyes sparkling.
If Spike didn’t know better, he would’ve become worried.
“Erm… That’s nice, Twi!” he smiled awkwardly, “Good thing that lepton numbers L, Lμ and Lτ are not involved in strong interactions!”. His tone was full of cautious cheerfulness.
Twilight nodded and returned to her frantic reading.
“It’s OK.” Spike said with a stoic expression on his face, addressing the mare’s back.
Once again he sat alongside her. Looked with regret at the cold toasts covered in jam and took one of them. He bit into the toast inquisitively.
While no longer warm and toasty, it still was satisfactory in the taste department, thanks to the trademark product of Applejack's applemancy. While preferring gems and crystals, Spike nevertheless appreciated pony cuisine. He begin to slowly chew on the toast, sipping the cold tea, looking around the room and thinking.
Owlowliscious, perched on the bookshelf, opened one eye and considered the toasts with a keen interest. Spike wasn't sure, why they didn't get the owl's attention for several hours before. Maybe because he respected Twilight's share. Or maybe because they were unmoving.
He flew over to Spike and landed on his shoulder, grasping it with his sharp talons, which, however, didn’t bother dragon in the slightest.
Twilight’s second best assistant took the toast in his beak and began to eat, holding it with one of his legs, dropping crumbs of bread onto the floor, much to Spike’s dismay.
In silence, they ate two toasts each.
“Alright!” Spike exclaimed at last, bundling his fists together with determination, “I think I know, how to distract her. Wanna go with me, Owl?”
“Hoo!” Owlowliscious rejected his offer and flew back onto the bookshelf.
Spike shrugged and headed back to the kitchen. He had a pretty good idea about what he should prepare next.
Once there, the dragon firstly added some more firewood to the stove burner and kindled the flame. Next he took a large bowl and set it on the table.
“Let’s see if…” Spike approached the magical coldbox, “Yep, we have some buttermilk.”
He took out a jug of buttermilk and poured approximately two cups worth of it into the bowl. Returned the rest back to the cold and exchanged it for a brick of butter, folded into a clean white sheet. Spike scooped two tablespoons of it into the cup and set it near the stove to melt a bit.
“I hope I remember right, how the Palace cook did it.” Said he ,cracking two large white eggs into the bowl. Their bright yellow yolks floated in the pond of buttermilk like two small suns in a miniature white sky.
The proud dragon chef whisked it all together, then sprinkled with a teaspoon of vanilla extract and added the butter.
He filled another bowl with white flour.
“Two cups should suffice.” He said returning the sack under the table.
Next he took a quarter a cup of sugar, made a depression in the center of the mound of flour with his fist and poured the sugar in.
“Now, where the hay is the baking powder…” mused Spike, rummaging through cupboard, “Oh, here it is!”
He added to the mix two and a half spoons of baking powder and a spoon of soda, half a spoon of salt and mixed everything thoroughly.
Then he took the first bowl, where the liquid ingredients were, poured them into the dry mixture and mixed together with a ladle till there wasn’t any lumps left.
The resulting batter was thick and lightly cream-colored.
The dragon took a round baking sheet, covered it with the baking paper, oiled it up and poured a ladle or so of a batter on it. Using a spatula he smoothed the batter a bit and put the sheet into the oven. It took a while till the layer of batter atop the baking sheet became a nice, lightly golden pancake.
Spike took it out of the oven with his bare hands, the other perk of being a dragon. Anypony else, except for a unicorn, would’ve burned their muzzles, hooves, wings or other limbs and would need to use some kind of utensils to take the hot baking sheet.
He checked if the center of a pancake springs back when pushed, meaning that it is ready, and placed it on a clean plate, satisfied with the results. The pancake looked positively delicious.
“Yeah, just like that!” Spike complimented himself. “The Princess always treated us with a bunch of those when Twilight was camping out at the palace library. That must catch her attention.”
Spike took a ladle from the bowl of batter and poured another batch onto the sheet and send it to the oven once again.
He repeated that four times more until the batter ran out.
After all the pancakes were ready, he brushed them with some more butter and decorated the hot tasty mound with mix of berries.
Twilight Sparkle looked away from the book, her nostrils flaring. It was unusual for her to get distracted from the study by something so trivial as the mere smell of—
“Oh! The Royal pancakes!”
Her aura fetched the uppermost pancake, along with berries and stuffed it into her mouth, whole in one go.
“Ahhhh, delightful! Just like they do it at the Palace!” she exclaimed through the stuffed mouth. Then took another pancake and devoured it with the same gusto as the first one, clearly enjoying the food.
“For some reason I’m famished.” She remarked.
“Yeah, I wonder why?” Answered Spike grumpily.
Twilight paused, looked at him, at the book, then at the leftovers of the breakfast she didn’t remember having.
Her face, a moment ago beaming with joy, became somber.
“I’m sorry, Spike,” she uttered, her tone sincerely apologetic, “I did it again, didn’t I?”
“Can’t say you didn’t, Twi.” Spike crossed his arms on his chest.
Twilight lowered her head and nuzzled him. Spike couldn't keep his grumpy facade for long and nuzzled her back.
"Thanks you Spike, you really are my number one assistant!” She said gratefully.
Her magic enveloped him and the small dragon found himself levitating in the air. Twilight put him atop her withers.
“Let’s go for a walk. I think I need a break. We should go to the Quills&Sofas and buy some more ink and quills.”
“I’ve already bought it, Twi” Spike remarked from her back.
“Oh. Well, then…" she pondered a bit, "then let’s go to the market square! I’m sure we need some bread.”
“Twilight, I…”
She turned her head and smiled at him sheepishly.
“Alright then, let us simply go for a walk. Maybe we’ll meet other girls in town. I wonder what they are up to.”
At that Spike perked up.
“I think we definitely should pass by the Carousel Boutique first.” He said with an emphasis.
“Well, we definitely can, If you want,” Twilight giggled. “Let’s go!”
Having said that, she trotted to the door. Spike, riding her, grasped on her mane.
Fire, Brimstones and Iced Lemon Loaf
The pencils were dancing above the huge sheet of paper like laborious bees, like cranes in a spring sky.
Dashing hither and thither, commanded by a light blue aura that held them airborne, they left behind thoroughly calculated lines of color, strokes of shade that had been assembling into an equine silhouette, and then covering it with an image of an elegant new hypothetical garment.
Rarity tossed her head, her luxurious permed mane moving away from her face, and looked at the drawing, squinting critically.
The pencils stood still, hanging in the air, obeying their mistress, waiting patiently to further manifest her will and creative design.
The unicorn mare levitated the sheet of paper up and made it float through her studio towards a ponnequin, standing near a huge mirror.
Humming a melodic tune, Rarity looked to and fro between them, wondering as she superimposed the scheme onto the ponnequin.
“Yes, I think that would be enough complexity for the time being,” she said out loud at last, “wouldn’t it, Opal?”
Opalescence, comfortably nested among the squares of cloth, perked her ears at the sound of her name and glanced towards the unicorn. Seeing no personal benefit going her way, she didn’t bother to answer.
Rarity nodded.
“Sure, I agree.”
She shifted the scheme slightly, looked at it some more and then returned the sheet back to the table.
“This is the hardest thing, Opal — to not go overboard with the details."
“Everypony’s beauty has its own voice. Get overly zealous — and the clothes you have made will turn into a gag, muffling it…”
She paused.
“By the way, that makes me wonder why it’s been so quiet around the house. Has Sweetie Belle gone to meet her friends?”
Opalescence raised her head, much quicker this time, and sniffed the air. She sprung to her feet, alarmed, and leaped onto the floor, dashing for an open window.
A moment later Rarity felt it as well. Her nostrils flared at the faint acrid smell. She turned towards the door in one swift motion, horrified, then broke into a full gallop, rushing towards the kitchen.
Pencils, left without the attention of the will that animated them, dropped to the floor like a bunch of fumigated flies.
A few moments and several dozens loud hoofbeats later, Rarity barged into the kitchen with an urgency highly uncharacteristic of her elegant and refined usual self.
Accompanying her was a huge floating sphere of water, held in her telekinetic grasp.
“Sweetie! Sweetie!!” Rarity bellowed, frantically looking around. “Are you alright?”
The whole kitchen in front of her was covered in a layer of black soot. In the center of this scene of apocalyptic desolation stood Sweetie Belle. Her white coat had turned dark gray, her normally multi-colored mane and tail now monochromatic.
Rarity stopped on her tracks and quickly looked around.
Thankfully, there wasn’t any flame in sight.
The older sister snorted loudly in irritation and stomped her front hoof onto the floor. She opened her mouth, but at that exact moment Sweetie Belle turned around and looked at her.
The filly’s eyes were full of so much sorrow that the words of harsh rebuke froze on Rarity’s lips, her pinned ears slowly relaxed and stood up.
Rarity’s magic opened the kitchen window wide and carefully led the sphere of water out towards a tree growing in the back yard.
The spell collapsed and the water crashed down, exploding into a miniature tide wave as it impacted the ground.
Sweetie sniffed.
“Sweetie Belle, what—” Rarity started to say, but immediately paused to take a deep breath and get ahold of herself, “—what did you want to make this time, dear?” she continued, her tone slightly less annoyed now.
Sweetie shook her head. “Doesn’t matter anymore,” she answered quietly.
Rarity walked up to Sweetie and lowered her head, almost having nuzzling her, but stopped herself in time.
“I think you would benefit from a good bath, darling,” she said in a sympathetic tone, looking with regret at her little sister’s messy appearance.
“Let’s go, I’ll help you.”
Some time later, Rarity again stood in the center of her kitchen. Sweetie Belle, her coat and hair restored to normal, stayed in the hall, peeking in through the open door.
The older unicorn looked around and sighed.
“This is going to be a tough matter...” she whispered to herself.
Rarity focused her gaze on the area immediately in front of her and lit up her horn. For a few moments everything remained unchanged.
But several more seconds later, gradually, the layer of soot on the floor and the wall visibly rippled and began to lift like an ominous dark veil, exposing a relatively clean original surface underneath.
Once up in the air, the cloud of black powder assembled itself, becoming denser and denser and finally turned into a large ball. Rarity directed it to the trash bin and dropped it in.
She stood motionless for a couple of minutes, breathing heavily, her face wet from sweat.
After mustering enough strength she turned to another area of the kitchen, that was still covered in the offending grime, and focused on it.
Sweetie watched her older sister with her mouth agape, without even trying to hide her awe. She was silent though, knowing better than to break the fellow unicorn’s concentration.
Half an hour later, the environs looked mostly clean, almost like it was before Sweetie’s disastrous attempts at cooking.
Rarity staggered out of the kitchen, walked unsteadily to the nearest sofa and slumped onto it.
“Sweetie, be a dear, get me some water, please. I’m parched.” she asked in a hoarse voice.
Sweetie Belle run to check the kettle. She took off the lid and peeked into it, to make sure the water is clean. Then, having found it satisfactory, poured a big glass of water which she promptly brought back to Rarity.
Sweetie wanted to levitate it straight to her sisters mouth, but Rarity intercepted the glass with her own aura.
“Thank you, darling. I will take it from there.”
She greedily drank the water and lowered the glass onto the floor.
Sweetie Belle nuzzled up to her, glad that this time she didn’t receive a reprimand for her destructive activity. The older unicorn answered in kind, slightly brushing her little sister’s face with her upper lip.
“I wish I was as powerful as you, Rarity!” young filly confessed.
“It’s not as much about power as about precision, darling.” Rarity answered, with a tired smile, “Do not worry, as you will get older your psyche will get more mature and developed and you will be able to control your magic as well as that, if not better."
“Still, that was totally awesome, as Scootaloo would have said.” Sweetie giggled.
“Well, I have a decent amount of experience in controlling a multitude of small objects simultaneously.
“Although, that was indeed much harder than what I’m used to doing on a daily basis.” Rarity added, with a tinge of reproach.
“I’m sorry. I really am sorry.” Sweetie dropped her gaze.
“Nevertheless, what were you trying to cook?”
“An Iced Lemon Loaf.”
“Oh, mother’s favorite,” Rarity nodded.
“Yeah. So, me and the girls were talking the other day, and Apple Bloom bragged about their ‘ye olde Earth pony home cooking’.” Sweetie made an irritated grimace. “She was awfully smug about it as well, so I told her we have a few tricks of our own… one thing let to another, and… well, she dared me.”
“So I see…” Rarity’s tone was thoughtful and serious, but her eyes shone with amusement. She raised from the sofa onto her hooves and adjusted her mane.
“Well, Sweetie, I suggest we go out, to have some emergency refreshments. A cafe would do. After that we can bake it together.”
With that Rarity began to walk towards the front door, Sweetie Belle eagerly followed.
When the sisters were exiting the boutique, they noticed Opalescence sitting in a tree, looking at them with an immense condemnation in her slitted eyes.
“Are you alright, my dear Opal? Want me to take you back to the house?” Rarity called.
Opal let out a singular proud ‘mew’ and made a facade of being completely comfortable on the tree branch.
The cooking book gently landed onto the table and opened itself to a page marked with a gilded bookmark.
Opalescence, who had gone down while the two unicorns were on their gastronomical endeavor, pinned her ears and leaped out of the window, heading back to the salvatory tree, when she saw Sweetie Belle step over the kitchen doorstep once again.
“Let us staaaart!” Rarity singsonged enthusiastically, as she always did when hit by inspiration.
She levitated firewood and some kindling into the stove’s burner and ignited it with matches.
“I tried that in the morning,” Sweetie remarked in a sad tone, “it kept going out, so I tried to blow it up and… well, you know the rest.”
“Patience, my dear, is oftentimes the key to the quality.” answered Rarity in a didactic manner.
Her horn was glowing nonstop. Around the kitchen, as if having the will of their own, various cooking utensils and ingredients leaped into the air from their storage locations, ready to implement the beautiful white unicorn’s intent.
A cup, half filled with already thawed butter, flew to a large bowl and emptied itself into it, followed by a cup of sugar.
“Sweetie, can you please beat it together?”
Sweetie Belle, eager to help, caught the whisk soaring in the air near the bowl and begin to work it vigorously, making the mix lighter and fluffier by the moment.
“Now, the eggs,” Rarity threw a glance at the cookbook, “we need three of them. Can you do that, my dear?”
The filly focused on the large basket lined with hay, and three large brownish eggs tentatively came out of it. Their flight towards the table was unsteady and slow.
Sweetie grated her teeth, struggling to keep concentration, but nevertheless managed to lead the three eggs up to the bowl unharmed.
A gentle smile touched Rarity’s lips, while she was looking intently at the filly’s efforts.
“One by one, Sweetie, one by one.” She reminded.
Sweetie Belle smashed the first egg against the rim of the bowl, violently fracturing the egg’s shell, causing its gooey contents to flop into the would be batter.
“Careful,” warned Rarity, taking the splinters of the shell out of the mix, “remember what I have told you about precision versus power.”
Sweetie smiled sheepishly and dealt with the other two eggs with much more care. She send the cracked shells flying into the trash and returned to the whisking the butter-sugar-egg mix.
Rarity, meanwhile, was carefully grating a large lemon against a grater, enough to peel it’s zest off but not to damage the pulp.
Having collected approximately two table spoons worth of zest, Rarity levitated the skinned lemon above a cup. She squinted her eyes at it and a moment later the lemon savagely imploded, pouring its juice into the prepared vessel.
“Why didn’t you use the squeezer?” asked Sweetie.
“It’s funnier that way, dear,” giggled Rarity, while lining a loaf pan with oily cooking paper. “Here, add the lemon.”
Sweetie picked up the lemon zest and dropped it into.
“How much juice?” she asked.
“A tablespoon should be enough, darling.”
Sweetie’s aura dropped the whisk and picked up a tablespoon. She stuck it into the juice, filled it, and levitated it back to the bowl, dispensing the juice over the mix.
“What about the rest, Rarity?”
“We will need it to make the glaze later, my dear.”
Sweetie nodded and returned to whisking the mixture.
A pack of vanilla sugar flew up to Sweetie, guided by Rarity’s aura. A teaspoon dived into it, scooped the fragrant white powder and unloaded it into the bowl two times in a row.
“Almost forgot the vanilla.” remarked the older sister.
Sweetie, meanwhile, looked into the cookbook.
“I think now we need to add flour and everything else.”
“I agree.” Rarity nodded, “If you please, darling?”
Sweetie picked up a cup, made it dive into the pack of flour, filling it to the brim and was about to tip it over into the mix, when Rarity quickly levitated another, empty bowl up to her.
“No, no, my dear. It is better to mix dry ingredients separately.”
Sweetie relocated the cup of flour and dumped it into the offered bowl, before Rarity could stop her. Cloud of flour dust instantly arouse above it. Sweetie Belle yelped and instantly coughed, inhaling the flour. Thankfully, she recoiled from the bowl, so her cough didn’t send the rest of the flour flying up.
“Be careful, please.” Rarity reproached her. “Here, add half a cup more, slowly this time.”
Sweetie complied, pouring the flour much slowly this time. Rarity nodded her approval and added the next batch of ingredients — a quarter of a teaspoon of both soda and baking powder, as well as salt — herself. Sweetie mixed everything carefully with a tablespoon.
“Now, can you add this into the mix, please?” Rarity asked her.
“I’ll try.”
Under Rarity's scrutinizing gaze, Sweetie took the second bowl with her magic and tried to cautiously unload it into her mix, while simultaneously operating the whisk and a tablespoon.
She winced and the bowl took a dangerous dive towards the floor. Rarity intercepted it. Sweetie Belle sighed, looking apologetically at the older unicorn.
“It’s alright, dear,” Rarity smiled reassuringly. “Eventually you will learn multitasking with your mind and will be able to master anything a unicorn can do, be it cooking, construction, decoration, combat or dress making. For the time being, however, it seems we better focus on one thing at a time.”
Having said that, she began to carefully add the dry mix to Sweetie’s bowl. At the same time, a jug of sour cream flew up to them from somewhere and poured some of its load into the batter mix.
“I think one third of a cup would be enough...” Rarity mused.
Sweetie Belle didn’t stop the vigorous whisking for a second and soon the batter was ready.
She carefully filled the loaf pan, prepared beforehoof, with a thick yellowish mixture and shook it down a bit.
Rarity opened the oven, levitated the pan inside and closed the shutter.
“Alright, it ought to be ready in a hour.”
Sweetie Belle nodded and turned over the hourglass, standing on the shelves.
“Should I go fetch Opal from the tree meanwhile?” she asked Rarity.
“I don’t think that would be possible. Poor Opalescence wouldn’t go down until we leave the kitchen alone. Better help me clean some leftovers of your reckless morning actions.”
Sweetie’s expression soured, but she didn’t object.
The next hour went with them tidying the kitchen and cleaning some soot left in the hard to reach places, using more conventional methods like rags and duster this time.
At last, the sand in the hourglass showed that the loaf in the oven should be ready.
Rarity took the pan out and inserted a toothpick into the loaf’s light brown surface. The toothpick came out clean.
“Splendid!” Rarity set the pan aside to let the loaf cool a bit before taking it out. “Now, we should prepare the glaze.”
She took a can of powdered sugar from the shelves and filled half a cup with it, then took the cup with the leftover juice and carefully poured it into the sugar, thoroughly mixing it with a spoon.
“Sweetie, please, take out our final product from the pan.”
Sweetie Belle briefly ran a knife blade along the sides of the pan and gently pulled the baking paper, together with the loaf, out.
She set it onto the large plate.
Rarity approached the table and sniffed the result of her and Sweetie’s creativity, making sure it had cooled enough.
“Should be good.” She remarked and pored the glaze over the loaf, making sure to spread it evenly.
Both unicorns stepped away a bit and admired the newly made confection.
“Charming!” Rarity finally laid out her verdict, “No worse than what mother usually bakes.”
“Agreed.” Sweetie Belle smiled at Rarity. “Well, since we can leave the kitchen alone now, maybe I’ll go bring Opal back?”
“We still have cookware to wash, darling. After that, I’ll tend to Opal myself.”
Sweetie Belle sighed, disappointed her plan to escape the maintenance duties was foiled again.
“Wow, it looks totally awesome!” Exclaimed Scootaloo, her ears perked.
The three Cutie Mark Crusaders were sitting at the table in their tree clubhouse. Before them was a plate loaded with a light golden slices of lemon loaf, dipped with a tender white glaze, that looked like a fresh clean snow.
“Well, that looks mighty fine, I’m not gonna argue,” commented Apple Bloom, “but I bet half a bit Rarity was helping ya with it a good deal.”
Sweetie Belle snorted with a facade of deeply offended dignity and stuck her muzzle up in the air.
“Of course not! I let you know that I made this all by myself!”
“Eh?! Why then Mrs. Cake was saying at the market that she saw a trail of smoke going from yer home?”
“If Rarity would had helped me, there wouldn’t have been any smoke at all, dummy!” Quickly retorted the unicorn filly.
“Oh yeah?! But— but… oh, yeah… ”Apple Bloom blinked, confused and pinned her ears, calculating a retort of her own.
“Aw, c’mon!” whined Scootaloo, “Let’s eat! I don’t care how Sweetie made this, all I care about whether it’s tasty or not!”
She immediately demonstrated her point by chomping a slice from the plate and chewing it.
Sweetie followed her example.
Apple Bloom huffed and took her own slice. The more she has been tasting it, the merrier her expression was getting.
“Oh, shucks! Yummy!” she said. “Good job, Sweetie, no matter how.”
Sweetie Belle smiled triumphantly and took another slice.
