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Link, savior of Hyrule, took stock of his Hateno home’s dining table.
At the legendary swordsman’s disposal were, naturally, consumables and equipment, arrayed on the dining room table under the large skylight Robbie had made and Bolson had installed.
Each consumable the Hero of the Wild needed was in order of use as best he remembered, with some pieces filled in from the castle library. Within arm’s reach, each piece of equipment for the wielder of the sword that sealed the darkness.
Before him was a new challenge, a new crucible, for the last of the Royal Knights of Hyrule.
... At least, that’s what many others called him.
At that moment, he thought of less bombastic names. The ones those closer to him used.
Linky. Mr. Swordsman. Brother. Just Link.
Son. That was one Link hadn’t thought of in a long time. It was the one he chased as he got to work inside the quiet Hateno house he called home. He gave his castle-found, royal-blue apron a good tug, tied as it was around his neck and back. A simple red tunic and grey pants completed his immediate outfit, though he had kept his slippers on through the morning. He gathered his hair back with his hair tie, then added his diamond-checkered red bandana just in case.
The black, Eldin-cast iron oven behind him crackled with life. Yunobo had been so kind to give it to him, though he hadn’t counted on needing to haul and install it too. Thankfully Bolson was all too happy to cover that part.
He picked up the Zora glass bowl he’d bought from Pruce, the East Wind General Store manager. He traced his fingertips along the three wavy blue lines enameled on the exterior, the signature look for Pruce’s new glassware line.
The bowl from the past had been canary yellow, Link thought. He remembered looking through the clear bottom, as she cradled the bowl in one arm and worked at the contents with the other. Swirls and scrapes of batter, meant for one thing or another, obscured her face. She’d traded three apple pies for it, and the difference was immediate. Lighter than Akkala ceramics, with a perfectly smooth surface, she could whisk and blend without damaging her tools. The first pie she made using it went to the trader she’d gotten it from.
It had been winter. He’d come in from a day of bundling wood and picking tree fruit to a heavenly aroma. Each breath he took was a bite of dessert.
Next came the goat butter. He plucked one blue-wrapped and one red-wrapped stub, peeled the coverings free and plopped them into the bowl. The mix of salted and unsalted -- if he recalled right -- meant he wouldn’t need ground rock salt later on. He stood at the dining table as he picked up the bowl in one arm, then grasped the amber-handled pastry knife in the other. A gift from Cara, he silently marveled at how sharp and clean it started to cut the butter, over and over, with far less sticking to it than he remembered.
Hers had been ... iron. Craft-grade Hyrulean iron, less sharp and smooth. With a lovingly worn wooden handle. But it built up her strength, holding that bowl, cutting that butter. Every day. Hours at a time. She wasn’t some adventurer, but with the power in her grip, Link thought she could freescale any wall if she tried.
The pastry knife’s matching whisk was a gift from Isha. Its opal handle radiated color under the sunlight, while its bronze basket glowed with warmth. Link whisked away at the butter for a couple minutes. That felt about right. Not too smooth, not too warm. Just so.
“Always get the butter right,” she’d told him. “Everything starts there.”
The whisk joined the pastry knife on the “used tools” plate. Moving down the equipment row, he took up the main measuring scoop he needed, its measurement engraved at the handle root. The Hylian evergreen wood was so easy to grip, not least because of the Rito craftsmanship present in the shaping. The handle was as long as the Master Sword’s grip, but with two gripping spaces so a Hylian could choke up on it as needed. As Saki had told him, Rito needed long handles to keep their feathers out of the way.
Hers had been old ceramic, probably local. He clearly remembered there were no marks telling her what each scoop’s measurement was; she just knew on sight. She had seemed to know everything that way.
A scoop of cane sugar went into the bowl. The sparkle of it made Link’s eyes dance. Two scoops of sticky sugar, its color earthen and warm, dumped on top. Down went the scoop on the used plate, leftover crystalline contents twinkling.
Link set the bowl down so he could fish the measuring spoons from his apron pocket safely. Another castle find, the spoons were silver, sizes engraved into each handle with the utmost precision. They looked good for being over a hundred, the Royal Hyrulean crests beautifully patinaed.
Hers had a translucent look, so Link reckoned they were Zora glass. She liked to boop his nose with them, even as he grew up. Her smile lit up the house when she did that.
Link popped the castle tin of baking salt and used the middle-sized spoon to get a flat lump. Into the bowl it went atop the other dry ingredients piling up on the butter. He tapped the spoon clean in the tin, pocketed them again and reached for Isha’s whisk. Cradling the bowl again, he patiently blended the dry together with the butter, scraping the bowl as needed.
She had hummed at this point. The songs changed, but he recalled the sound. She had a deeper voice, like Buliara or her captains, but the sound was always like a hug for the ears. What were the songs that she sung? They had a theme, a connection to each other.
Link blinked himself back into the moment. Time for wet ingredients.
Eggs first. Legend was the red eggs were for cooking alone, white eggs were for cooking in dishes and blue eggs for baking. He picked up a blue one and cracked it into the bowl. The shell went on the dirty plate away from his tools. He reached for a red one by accident and stopped to look at it.
“Any egg in a storm,” she’d said, “but know what you’re cracking into.”
Crack! In went the red egg.
Palm fruit extract wasn’t a usual ingredient anymore, at least around most of Hyrule. Fewer people, fewer traders. Pirates that had clamped down on the Lurelin area. More of it was getting out there though, and he knew this was part of the recipe.
She’d held the bottle to his nose to smell. A strong, tropical scent filled his nostrils and seeped into his head, almost cloying. But a spoonful didn’t taste like much of anything; just a strange water that didn’t go down too well. She made it at home, somehow using Hyrule herb to “extract” the stuff from the palm fruit she wanted. He’d have to figure out how to do it sometime.
For now, a little spoonful into the batter. He twirled Isha’s whisk in his hand as he hummed a tune he remembered from back then.
A summer day, brilliant green leaves all around their home, windows open and her at the kitchen counter, making a cake for his birthday.
He was turning eight. Soon he’d be off to the academy.
Link set the bowl down again. It was time for the final primary ingredient, the dry to bring it all back together. Tabantha wheat grew well in the south of Akkala, and even did alright up in the hills. However, the batch he’d ground into flour was from Rito Village. He went for the large measuring scoop and dug into the largest clay pot on the table, which held the tabantha flour.
“One scoop. Then two. Another half and you’re through.”
He hummed as he whisked and folded the flour into the wet mixture. What was the theme? It wasn’t just about the songs, or the baking. There was so much more to her. Her smile, rarely more than a cheeky curl of her lips. Her own bandana-wearing habit. The way she swept the house with whimsy in her movements, never too worried about how clean it was. Always modest, inside and out. He remembered her only jewelry, save for the gold wedding band Father gave her. A sturdy, brown fiber “chain” that held a stamped iron pendant of the Goddess Crest.
Hylia. The songs were hymns about Hylia.
Link put the bowl down and leaned over to grab the small linen sack at the end of the table. Its contents shifted inside, making a sound like wheat husks rubbing together. He undid the bag’s tie at the top and took a sniff.
It was the part of the recipe he was most unsure about. Koyin created monster baking “chips” when she was studying Monster Cake. Link had his doubts, but the smell was exactly as Koyin described it -- indescribable, but also really tempting. He pinched one of the discs, no wider than his finger and no thicker than a lock of hair, and popped it into his mouth. It slowly melted, spreading the taste across his tongue, until it was gone. A mildly sweet and quite savory aftertaste remained. He looked into the bag and saw Koyin was true to her word; the chips all looked the same.
“ ... ” He hmphed to himself. He’d told Koyin about his project. She got it; he just had to trust her.
He dumped the chips in and whisked them into the batter. He had little trouble remembering the next part, as he moved to the other end of the table where a bowl of clean, cold water rested next to a broad, flat, Goron-forged pan. He knew from other baking adventures to grease and dust the pan from the start, so he’d done that as he’d set it out. He put the dough bowl down next to the cold plunge bowl and took a deep breath.
She’d never seemed vexed from the cold. Even as her hands thinned with age, she left them in the water longer than he thought possible. “The cold forces us to be alive,” she said once with her hands in the plunge bowl. The winter wind, sneaking past the window shutters, licked at her brown-red hair. Her pendant caught the lantern light. She turned as the door opened to Father coming back from the night’s hunt --
Link pulled his hands out and dried them on the yellow towel around his neck. He could move his fingers, frigid as they were, so he started taking up small handfuls of dough and rolling them into balls.
“Palms,” he distantly heard her say. He switched to rolling with his palms, which took less time and made more rounded balls. The dough neatly formed up in his hands, meaning the butter was still cold and dense enough to survive the oven. The chips held up too, spreading enough to make each ball worth it. Soon he had 20 neatly spaced on the flat pan. One more dunk of his hands into the now dirty plunge bowl, a quick towel dry, and he was ready. He carefully picked up the pan in one hand, turned and faced the oven.
The thermometer on the side read 180 degrees C -- perfect temperature. He slipped his hand into a light green, quilted oven glove hanging above the oven, another gift from Saki. Insulated with Rito feathers, he could handle anything hot with the glove on, and so pulled the oven open and slipped the pan onto the top rack.
Link couldn’t remember how long the baking took. He’d usually run off by the time they were in the oven, as she would put him to work cleaning if he’d stayed. He closed the door and started counting in his mind. Then fingers. Then by tapping his folded-together arms. Finally his feet. He kept the oven glove on. About 120 “taps,” but it wasn’t precise. He checked the oven; the balls were starting to take shape, but had a long way to go. Tapping was going to drive him nuts. How had she done it? She didn’t use counters, and they were far too simple a family for a Sheikah sundial. He wasn’t big on keeping time himself --
Keeping time. Keeping time. Link groaned at himself. Of course. She measured time how she knew best -- music. The hymns she knew from temple. A wry smile crept onto his face. He tapped and hummed through a Stable Trotters tune he knew, then checked the oven. The balls were more like tall piles, but still slightly wet. He shut the door, then hummed through one of Kass’ old songs that he’d heard often enough to remember how it went. At the end, he checked the oven again.
The piles were brown around the edges, dry and smelled like nothing he could remember smelling before. But it was such a familiar, wintery scent somehow. Link reached in and slipped the pan out, taking care again. The piles moved a little anyway, but Link took that as a good sign that he’d greased and floured the pan enough.
An empty, shiny Zora glass serving plate received the baked goods with ease, giving them a great surface to cool on while Link loaded the pan with the second batch.
The front door clicked open rather suddenly, but Link knew the sound of Purah’s heels and Zelda’s boots. He waved a little as they came in and the door shut behind them, then went on staring at the oven, humming and keeping a beat with hands tapping his biceps.
“What is that?” Purah said as she slipped her heels off at the door. She sniffed the air and made a noise that sounded more like an excited child than a seasoned, scientific adult. “What is that?”
Link kept time. He didn’t want to mess up because he talking too much.
Zelda’s eyes grew with hunger as she too smelled what was baking. She also saw him staring and tapping and humming. “Busy?”
He looked at Zelda just long enough to nod. His eyes swung back to the oven, humming.
“Is he always like this when he cooks?” Purah asked, looking over the table. She picked up the whisk and smelled the drying batter on it. She slowly reached her tongue out for a taste -- for science.
“You know how focused he gets.” Zelda came around the other side of the table to get a view of the baked items. She could smell Monster Cake flavor, rich and savory-sweet, and the warm and happy sticky sugar. But she’d never seen little cake piles before. In fact, they didn’t look like cake at all. More like a pastry. But then, how did the cake flavor get there?
Zelda looked up to see Purah lapping up batter of the whisk. “It tastes as good as it smells, then?”
“Better.” Zelda blinked at Purah’s rather satisfied tone. “Sticky sugar and butter and some little dark brown things that ... what is this?”
Zelda gingerly bent over the baked piles, hands on her hips to keep her loose tunic from draping down. She saw the browned edges, the gentle roundness, the dark brown spots. A little bit of heat touched her chin and nose. “They remind me of something -- ”
Link opened the door to the oven. The two watched as he pulled out the flat pan, came to the glass plate, then gently nudge each baked pile onto it, one by one, until the pan was clear.
“Was trying to remember this thing my mom made,” he said. “I’m surprised I got this much.”
Zelda waited until he took off his oven glove before sharing a brief, loving kiss with him. “Rauru’s technique?”
Link nodded, lips curling into a bashful grin. “‘Let your body do the thinking.’”
“What are they called?”
He rubbed his hand over his covered hair. “The closest recipe that sounded like what she made calls them ‘sweet rounds.’”
“Sweet rounds,” Zelda repeated, leaning in for another kiss. “I recall those from the castle. Not like this, but similar. It’s ... been some time.”
Link picked up a sweet round and presented it to Zelda. “Time to change that.”
He quickly gave one to Purah too while Zelda sunk her teeth into the round. The texture was like crossing hot cereal with a very dense cake. That was pleasant enough, but the flavor. The sticky sugar syrupy taste without the cloying afterward, followed by whatever the dark chip was that ... just brought pure joy and comfort to her taste buds. Zelda was sure she could eat a lot of those chips and never stop wanting more.
Purah too was happily chomping at her round, though her face took on a look of pleasure Zelda felt rude to even glance at.
“Link.” Zelda looked at him through her lashes, leaning forward. “These are perhaps even better than your fruitcake. To come up with most of this on your own from your memory is astounding. I understand Rauru’s technique, but that is just one part. How did you do this?”
Link’s cheeks turned a slight pink. “Suppose some things are just baked in.”