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“Phew, that should be the last of them.”
Lancelot set down a tray of freshly baked cookies on the kitchen counter. He dragged an arm across his forehead, all warm and damp from having spent the last few hours churning out gingerbread men. The flour dusted knight stepped back to survey his progress thus far.
Baking sheets laden with cookies of various qualities were littered almost every single available surface, ranging from misshapen, undercooked blobs to rock solid, blackened lumps and every shade in between. The best batches were a deep golden brown with clean edges, perfuming the air with a fragrance of molasses and spice.
Lancelot beamed, pleased with himself and the recipe he had selected (er, borrowed) for the occasion. He would have wonderful homemade Christmas presents for his comrades this holiday—just as soon as the gingerbread men were clothed in candies and colored frosting.
By now, his first batch of decent cookies had cooled off and were ready for decoration. Unfortunately for Lancelot, dressing up his creations proved to be more challenging than he had initially thought it would be.
The first thing that went wrong was the smear of red frosting meant to be hair—it was far too viscous to be easily manipulated with a utensil to conform into the desired shape. Lancelot added a few spoonfuls of milk to water the frosting down, but his second attempt resulted in candies sinking into a swamp of icing, dark colors bleeding over into the lighter ones.
Swapping over to a piping bag only made matters worse, for Lancelot had no sense of control or pressure to encourage the frosting to come out steadily. It instead spurted out in either large chunks or in thin ribbons, coating the cookies with an uneven paste.
Lancelot stared down at his gingerbread men and sighed. Those don’t look like Percival or Siegfried at all.
Well, Lancelot had no doubt that Siegfried wouldn’t bat an eye at a cookie’s messy appearance and would happily eat it, but surely Percival would have a word or two to say about his cookies’ lopsided faces and huge heads of hair. Did Lancelot dare try and attempt a Vane cookie?
Between the captain and the vice-captain of the Order of the White Dragons, it had always been clear that Vane was superior in the culinary arts. Every time they gathered, Vane prepared all manner of delicacies to celebrate their time spent together—and Lancelot had hoped to do the same, just this once. He couldn’t present his allies with imperfect cookies, he just couldn’t. They deserved far better.
With his drive reignited, Lancelot picked up a clean butter knife and dipped it into a bowl of yellow frosting. He’d try as many times as he needed to to get this right, even if it meant hogging the kitchen all day. In the back of his mind, Lancelot filed away a reminder to apologize profusely to Gran and the usual kitchen staff if it came to that.
Just as Lancelot swiped sunshine-colored frosting on a new gingerbread man, the door to the kitchen swung open, startling him. He looked up to find a familiar face standing in the doorway, a bag loosely slung over his shoulder.
“Yo, Lancey!” Vane called with a wave as he sauntered over to his friend. A whiff of sugar and spice greeted him like a warm hug. “Whoa, it smells great in here! Is this what’cha been up to this whole time?”
“Hello, Vane. Yes, as you can seen, I’ve been trying my hand at a little baking. I’m nowhere near as good as you are, though.” Lancelot offered a nervous laugh. “I do hope I’m not getting in your way.”
“‘Course you aren’t!” Vane insisted, dismissing Lancelot’s worries. “I was going to bake some Christmas cookies for the crew myself, but it looks like you’re already way ahead of me.”
He glanced at the trays strewn about the room before his eyes landed on the legion of haphazardly iced cookies before Lancelot.
“Oh hey, you’ve even started decorating some of them!”
“Ah, no—don’t look at tho...”
Lancelot fumbled to block Vane’s field of vision—but it was too late, he realized, for Vane had already gotten a good eyeful of his disastrous work.
“Interesting design,” Vane commented, eyebrows hitching up as he gestured to cookies coated in a dark medley of black, navy, and crimson. The colors were so muddied that it was hard to tell exactly what—or who—it was.
“Those are meant to be Siegfried.”
“Oooooh...Oh. Right. Gotcha.” He chose his next words carefully. “Now that you mention it, it does kind of look like Sieg! Yup, I can definitely see his face there, ahahaha…”
Lancelot shot his friend an incredulous look.
“Okay, so maybe it doesn’t look like him after all,” Vane confessed with an awkward chuckle.
He diverted his attention to an army of redheads gingerbread men flecked with golden crumbles, hoping to change the subject. White frosting spiked outward, giving off the appearance of a flustered peacock. The odd facial expression of the cookie suggested that it was either violently yawning or screaming in agony.
“At least these look really cool! Kind of like fire monsters or something!”
“Er...those are supposed to be Percival.” Lancelot corrected, earning a suppressed chortle in response. “I know, it’s not that good. You don’t need to pretend to be impressed by my skills.”
“Pfft, no, no, no! It suits Percy and that scary face of his—always shouting mongrel this and lapdog that!” Vane paused before adding, “he might not feel the same way about it, though.”
“I am well aware.” Lancelot found himself frowning—not at Vane, but at his own futile efforts. It seemed that baking and decorating required a skill set far different than that of a knight—a skill set that he fell short of mastering.
“Aw, don’t let this get you down, Lancey!” Vane cried, patting his captain on the back. “You tried your best—and in the end, that’s all that matters, right?”
“I suppose so, but...” Lancelot shook his head. “These are hardly presentable as gifts.”
He tilted his head to one side in contemplation. “If it is alright with you, Vane, would you advise me on what I do to make these more...visually appealing? I had thought it would be cute to make the gingerbread men look like their recipients, but perhaps it was too ambitious of a plan for an amateur like myself.”
“Hmmm...” Vane rested his chin on a balled fist, leaning on the kitchen counter.
“Well, I think you have a good general idea going on here! It has a lot of heart and soul, just needs some tweaking and less froufrou stuff.”
Lancelot’s eyebrows creased in confusion. “But how—“
“It’s like—that is to say…uh...argh, how do I put this?” he hesitated, unsure of how to word his explanation. After a few moments of grasping around in the dark, he had his answer. “You should keep it simple and take your time. That sort of thing.”
“I see. There appears to be much more strategy involved in this than I had initially thought. How fascinating.”
“I don’t know if I’d call it fascinating, but it’s something, alright.” Vane cradled his chin in concentration. “You’ll need to whip up some new frosting—and if you’re going to use a piping bag, you’ll need a smaller tip too. As for the frosting, let it harden a bit before you add candies so they don’t sink in so much. The same goes for putting on different colored frostings, otherwise the colors run together.”
“So that’s what I’ve been getting wrong this entire time,” Lancelot groaned, bringing a hand to his forehead. “I can’t thank you enough for this help, Vane. Now I can finally get to fixing this mess.”
“Ah, don’t sweat it!” Vane straightened and casually waved a hand, brushing away the cobwebs of doubt. “You know what? It’d be faster if you had an extra set of hands in the kitchen. That fine by you, Lancey?”
“You realize you’d be spoiling your own Christmas present, yes?”
“Well yeah, but giving is the entire point of the holidays. Right?”
“Right. Then, by all means, be my guest.” Lancelot held up two hands in defeat. He jokingly added with a half bow, “I’ll be in your care, master patisserie.”
Vane winked back. “Hehe, just follow my lead and we’ll be golden!”
And so they both rolled up their sleeves and set to work.
The snow outside came down harder than ever before, like a flurry of powdered sugar dusting the skies.