Chapter Text
Today was Jean’s birthday so Klee and Diluc decided to surprise her by making a cake.
“Okay so, Lisa just took Jean out, so that leaves us with about… 3 hours.” Said Diluc as he put on his apron. “I think we should be able to make and decorate a cake in that time. Don’t you think Klee?”
“Mmm… probably- Where did Mama even go?” Klee asked as she put on her mom’s apron. It went all the way down to her feet and was dragging on the floor.
“I actually don’t know. Lisa just said something about ‘having the best birthday outing ever-‘Klee you are going to trip over that apron. “ Diluc reached for the ingredients for the cake as Klee jumped onto the kitchen table to sit on it and adjust her favorite, red mage hat.
Klee pouted as she took a good look at the cake mix they were going to use.
“Aww…vanilla? I wanted to make a chocolate cake..”
“You know your mother likes vanilla though.” Diluc casually responded as he took the cake-mix box and started inspecting the instructions.
“Well.. can we make two cakes then? One vanilla, one chocolate?”
“Klee, it will be a miracle if we even manage to make one cake, let alone two. We aren’t making another cake.” Diluc said sternly.
Klee looked down sadly as she fiddled with her Dodoco. But Diluc didn’t want his daughter to be sad, especially not today.
He sighed. “Okay. How about this? We can make chocolate cupcakes if we have time after making the cake.”
Klee happily looked up at her dad, “Okay! Let’s make the cake quick then!” She jumped off the table to find a large mixing bowl.
—
“Pass me the butter.” Diluc ordered Klee. She passed him a block of butter and he dumped it right into the batter mixture.
“Papa, I’m pretty sure the butter was supposed to be melted.” Klee pointed out.
Diluc once again took the cake-mix box and carefully squinted at the fine print of the instructions.
“oh…” mumbled Diluc. He thought for a second before he reached in and took the butter out of the soupy mixture. He then put the batter-coated butter into a separate bowl. He then chucked the bowl into the microwave.
“I have an amazing idea.” Said Klee, “How about… you make the cake and I make the cupcakes?”
Without looking away from the microwave Diluc replied with a stern no.
—
Once they had finally gotten the batter looking normal enough, Diluc and Klee took turns mixing everything all together. However everytime it was Klee turn to mix the batter, she would dip her finger into the batter to taste it.
Diluc looked at Klee with slight disgust. “Could you at least do that after we’ve poured it into the tray?”
“Okay.” She replied and shrugged as she took a big lick of the wooden spoon before handing it back to her dad. Diluc reluctantly took the spoon from her and continued mixing. He swore he saw her smirking after she purposely licked down the spoon.
Diluc had his back away from Klee as he let her mix again. He decided to start working on the icing. White, with a very faint hint of turquoise, almost like a VERY VERY pale blue colour. As he worked on that, he could hear Klee mixing away and humming her Auntie Barbara’s signature tune. He also heard a PLOP as if something had fallen into the batter bowl, but he didn’t pay much attention to it as he assumed it was just the spoon falling in and that Klee would just take it out again.
~~
Diluc proudly looked at the icing that he had somehow managed to not mess up. It was ever so slightly more blue that he had hoped but he didn’t let that bother him too much. He went back to Klee, who had already gotten bored of mixing and was spinning herself around on the kitchen chair.
“Can we start on the cupcakes now?” Klee whined.
“Patience, Klee. We’ll get to that.” Said Diluc. He poured the batter into the tray and put into the oven. He double checked what he had to pre-heat the oven at least seven times. Once he was sure everything was going to go smoothly, he closed the oven and turned back to Klee.
“Okay. Let’s start on the cupcakes.”
“YES! FINALLY!” Klee exclaimed as she climbed onto the kitchen table once more.
~~
The cupcake batter mixing went MUCH better the the cake mixing, since this time Diluc actually knew what to do. Klee insisted on doing all of the mixing which, in reality, was just her licking majority of the batter before Diluc had to physically take the bowl away from her, stating that “You are supposed to eat the cupcakes. Not the batter.”
A loud DING was heard from the oven, indicating that the cake was done baking. Diluc put on some baking gloves and carefully slid the scalding tray out of the oven and onto the kitchen counter to cool down.
“Ahh.. it smells so nice! Can’t we just take a small slice out of it? I bet Mama isn’t even gonna notice.” Said Klee as she had her face almost pressed up against the warm cake.
Diluc pulled Klee away from the cake. “You won’t be going anywhere near that cake, young lady.” He instead instructed her to set the oven to the correct time for the cupcakes whilst he went off to the bathroom.
When Diluc got back, Klee had confirmed that everything was going smoothly and she had put the cupcakes into the oven. Diluc and Klee then decided to go oven to the living room to work together on a birthday card for Jean.
As Klee was drawing and colouring in an “interesting” portrait of Jean. Diluc frowned as he stopped writing a mini poem for Jean on the card. “Do you smell something odd Klee?” he asked as he continued to try and identify the strange smell in the air.
“Hmm… oh yeah. I smell something weird.” Klee responded as she continued on her masterpiece. “It smells like burnt bread.”
Burnt bread? What could possibly be smelling like burnt-
“Oh shit- The cupcakes!” Diluc quickly got up and rushed into the kitchen. Klee following close behind.
“Ooohh…Papa, you sworeee.” Piped Klee in a sing-song voice as Diluc quickly opened the oven to take out the charred chocolate muffins. Diluc completely ignored his daughter’s comment as he poked a fork at one of the coal coloured muffins. It was nearly rock solid.
Disappointed, Diluc got ready to throw out the failed batch of cupcakes, however, Klee cried as she took one of the muffins from the tray.
“We can’t throw these! We’d be wasting the themm!”
Diluc sighed and responded. “Klee, we can’t feed these to anyone, they are so badly burnt. No amount of icing can drown out the terrible flavour.”
Klee pouted. “Fine. But I’m going to still eat this one.” She then took a crunchy bite out of the burnt muffin and Diluc couldn’t help but grimace.
Next on the agenda was decorating the cake. Diluc was quite confident and excited about this part because you can’t really mess up spreading icing on a cake and pouring sprinkles on it. Klee grabbed her piping bag of icing and so did Diluc.
They took turns piping a ring of icing around the cake. Miraculously, the duo didn’t mess up the covering of the cake. Diluc carefully smoothed out the icing with a spatula. Next, was to add the sprinkles. Diluc carefully placed the edible pearls all around the cake whilst Klee tossed the green sprinkles all over. To finish off the cake, Diluc stuck a sparkler though the middle as a substitute to a candle as he thought “it would look more flashy than a boring candle.” (In reality, they just ran out of candles and Diluc was too lazy to go to the store to buy more).
Somehow, the entire process took them around 2 hours and 30 minutes so they had around 30 minutes to clean up.
As Diluc and Klee were washing the dirty dishes, he got a notification on his phone. It was from Lisa and it read “We r on our way back. We had a blast.” Attached to the message was a selfie of Lisa smiling at the camera. In the background was Jean running towards Pyro Regisvine with her trusty Missplitter Reforged. Diluc couldn’t help but chuckle as he put his phone down again and continued to wash the dishes.