Work Text:
Hifumi tied his hair into a small ponytail - using clips to capture the stray strands away from his face - before he washed his hands in the sink. He could feel the constant yearning of his taste buds for something sweet… something acidic.
Today, he was going to bake a strawberry pie.
He never baked one before, and so he was anticipating the challenge. Hifumi merely saw a post online, and immediately got inspired.
It was, most specifically, a strawberry lattice pie; it quite simply had the cutesy appearance of a weaved fruit basket! It had its aesthetic qualities but it appeared to be suitable for impatient people and cooldown times. Yes, it was perfect!
He had already gone shopping and put most of the ingredients together in advance, containers and boxes and all other sorts of packaging were strewn across the worktop. Hifumi couldn’t help but clap out of excitement. Opening up the online recipe, he scrolled through until it showed the instructions and, with that, he props the phone against one of the containers for a moment.
Oddly enough, the first thing to do was to create the filling. So then… did the pie crust not need any time to chill? Ah, he can break a few rules, surely? He decided to start with the pie crust first.
Starting from scratch, he put the flour, sugar and a bit of salt together before he was able to add butter. Buttery pie crust… It sounds too good. It was broken up whilst it was still solid, mixing it with the dry ingredients… Oh! Now it definitely looks like dough! It’s all coming together… would buttermilk make it taste completely like butter? Ah, he added it anyway, you can’t refuse to follow an instruction all the time. All he had to do now is to mix it until, he assumes, the buttermilk absorbs. Finally, he kneaded, rolled and pressed down on it repeatedly within the bowl.
Rolling it out flat will come later once it chills for an hour and so he splits the dough into two before wrapping it and letting it rest in the fridge; the two pieces were of different sizes, he wanted to try out the weaving pattern after all!
As he allowed it to chill, he returned to the filling instructions again. He started with the obvious and washed the strawberries first before he placed them on the cutting board. Hifumi sliced off the tops of the strawberries, hulling them, and cast them aside; then, he chopped what remained in half.
Whilst doing so, he hummed and sang along to the song playing in the background - he was immersed with it, giving it his all, it was something he didn’t really do outside of host form. He sang a lot whilst cooking, forming duets out of the blue with his lovely assistant, Doppo, and yet he wasn’t here! But… he hoped he could enjoy this pie later, he’ll be a good taste-tester!
The prepared strawberries were all then transferred to another bowl, in which he added sugar and lemon juice but most importantly cornstarch. He had to mix it all together, all until he saw nothing but the strawberries glazed in something that appeared like syrup.
Well, that was simple enough!
And so, Hifumi waited for the remainder of the hour before he was able to return to the dough. When that hour was up, upon the sound of an alarm, he silenced his phone and washed his hands once again. Firstly, he had to cover the worktop’s surface with flour before he retrieved the portions from the fridge. After that, he unwrapped them both and retrieved the rolling pin. There was difficulty at that stage, the dough seemed to stick and so he had to cover the pin with flour as well. Besides that, he was able to roll it out fully and fit it into the tray.
He removed the stray parts of the dough as soon as he was done, then checked over to make sure it was flat and thick enough to hold together, he really didn’t want to restart the process again. Upon confirming that he didn’t need to retry it, he was happy to scoop the strawberry filling out of the bowl and let it land in the centre, levelling it out and… success!
However, what he was concerned with the most was the other portion of dough. Hifumi had sliced it up into perfect strips, but the weaving process looked extremely complicated… it was like he was a child trying to tie a shoelace again.
He didn’t know where to start, and so he hoped for the best. He placed one of the strips vertically over the pie and then overlapped it with another one placed horizontally. Then, he repeated it until he ran out. Yeah… this wasn’t the exact weaved basket style he was going for, it didn’t even match the image he saw. But, it was a first attempt! He just wanted to eat it, he waited far too long.
With another addition of sugar, this time sprinkled over the pie, Hifumi finally shoved the tray into the oven. He was finally going to reach the light at the end of the tunnel!
As the pie slowly baked, he began to clean the surface of the worktop and the cooking utensils. Just a little longer, he was anticipating the final result! The utensils returned to their original place - their respective cabinets, drawers and blocks - and he checked the oven out of curiosity.
Oh…
…
The pie’s filling spilled over just a bit…
…his cleaning wasn’t done yet…
He should’ve known! He felt like he didn’t know a thing!
…He can groan about it later, at least it was looking good! He just needed to let it go for another few minutes before he could take it out.
And so the waiting game continued, then he had to let it rest and cool down which didn’t take so long, luckily!
Hifumi was going to let Doppo have the first slice but he couldn’t wait for him to get home… he wanted to have it for himself. He cut the first bit and put it on a small plate, forgetting the potential toppings he had in the kitchen as he grabbed a fork.
One bite and…
Yes! It was so worth it!
A delicious strawberry lattice pie!