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Cherri was not much of a morning person, or the kind to make plans for big events, she preferred to “just go with the flow.”
Yet here she was, darting around the hotel’s kitchen early to cook up something special for the hotel’s upcoming visitation with Heaven.
Over the past several months, tensions between Heaven and Hell had begun to settle down.
With the exterminations forever cancelled, and evidence of redemption, Charlie thought it would be a good idea to allow winners and sinners to visit each other once in a while as a way to strengthen the peace.
The higher ups of Heaven, still weary of sinners wanting revenge, reluctantly agreed to supervised visitations between tenants of the hotel and any friends or family they may have in Heaven.
The first visitation was held by Heaven in one of their many parks. Tables had been set up for a potluck, there was a bandshell for live music, and there had been a variety of games held, including an intense water gun and balloon fight.
That was Cherri’s second favorite part of the whole event. Just behind the linzer cookies Pentious had baked. He had a batch ready for the potluck, but he even made a small batch special just for her.
She had no clue what was in those cookies that made them so damn good. They were the perfect amount of buttery and floury, not too sugary, and the filling was always the perfect amount. It was definitely a generous dollop, but just enough that it wouldn’t spill over too much.
So, for the visit that the hotel would be hosting, Cherri decided to repay her boyfriend, and make something special just for him. She’d just gone out shopping for ingredients the previous day and had asked Charlie to use the hotel’s kitchen.
Was Cherri even remotely good at cooking? Fuck no. Frankly, she’s probably cursed. There have been multiple instances where she’s ended up either starting a fire or giving herself food poisoning.
There was a point in time when everything she ate tasted like metal, which she thought might have been because of the water or dishes she was using, but actually turned out to be a case of scurvy. Like a pirate.
Given this track record of culinary blunders, Angel’s instant panic upon seeing her fidgeting with the buttons on the oven was justified.
“Oh, hey Angie! You’re up early,” Cherri greeted him as he stood in the entryway.
She set a large pot onto the stove before grabbing a cutting board and knife.
“Yep, so are you,” Angel replied, his voice carrying the cadence of a concerned parent, “Whatcha doing?”
“Cooking up some meat pies,” she replied proudly as she chopped up the onion, “Gonna blow them angels’ socks off with these. Penny’s gonna love ‘em!”
She slid the onions into the pot, peering down to her phone to unpause the video tutorial she had on. The next ingredient needed was ground beef.
As she rumaged through the fridge Angel asked, “Are you even allowed to be in here?”
“Charlie said it was okay,” she shot back defensively.
“Okay, okay. Did you tell her about the bacon incident before that or…?”
Cherri rolled her eye as she opened up the freezer, “Oh, lord forbid a girl melt bacon one time.”
She found the package of beef she was looking for, as well as the pre-rolled pastries she’d need later, and brought them over to the pot. The recipe said to wait for the onions to get soft, but she figured that didn’t matter too much, it’ll all get cooked anyways.
She clawed at the frozen plastic, grabbing the knife when the seal refused to break.
Angel asked, “Shouldn’t you like, let that thaw out first?”
Cherri brushed him off as she added the meat to the pot, “It’ll thaw while it’s cooking, it’s fine.”
He shrugged, replying, “Welp, whatever you say.”
Angel decided to just leave her to it. He couldn’t just sit there and watch his friend commit war crimes against food, but he knew there was no use in trying to get her to actually follow the recipe.
She took a wooden spoon to break up the beef and stir it in with the onions. The next few ingredients to add were a tablespoon of cornflour, two tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce, three-fourths of a cup of tomato sauce, three-fourths of a cup of beef stock, and some salt and pepper.
Admittedly though, she was a bit generous with the Worcestershire sauce. And the beef stock. And the tomato sauce. And the pepper.
The next step was to stir it all in and let it simmer on low for about eight minutes or until the mixture thickens.
Frankly, she didn’t see any point in lowering the temperature, plus she was impatient. What’s the harm in leaving it on high for a bit? The beef stiff needed to thaw anyway.
While she let that sit for a minute, she moved on to making the pastries. Puff pastry for the tops and shortcrust for the bottoms, using one of the mini pie tins as a guide to cut them out.
Before she could grease the pie tins, she decided to check up on her filling. Suddenly, she completely understood why she should’ve lowered the heat. She didn’t know that ground beef could move like that.
After turning off the heat she gave it a good stirring, it seemed the meat had finally thawed out, that was good. Still needed to thicken a bit more though.
She greased up the tins, set the shortcrust inside, and whisked up an egg to brush onto the pies later. After one more stir concluded that her filling was ready.
She scooped the filling into the tins, laid the puff pastry cut-outs on top, cut out a vent hole in each pie, and lathered the tops with the whisked up egg.
All that was left to do was let them bake for about twenty to twenty-five minutes, clean up the mess, and she’d be done!
She figured she didn’t have to stay right next to the oven for the whole thirty or so minutes, why not go hang out at the bar with Angel for a bit?
Unfortunately, she forgot to set a timer, and completely forgot about her pies for way longer than thirty minutes until Angel had brought them up again.
“Hey, wait. Cher, didn’t you say you were baking something?”
“...SHIT!”
She bolted to the fortunately not on fire kitchen, opening up the fortunately not on fire oven, and pulled out her unfortunately burnt pies.
Angel had followed her in, giving her the same look he gave her after the bacon incident. His "disappointed but not surprised” face.
“Don’t give me that look.”
“...”
“It’s-it’s not that bad!”
“...”
“It just… needs a bit of tomato sauce is all.”
She grabbed the bottle and squirted a generous amount onto one of the pies, getting two forks for them both to share.
“Oh, hell no. I am not eating that.”
“Oh my god, it’s fine! It’s just a bit burnt is all, it’s not that bad.”
Cherri cut out a piece for herself to taste, her stubborn expression instantly melting into disgust as she realized that even after all this time the meat still hadn’t thawed out completely. She also definitely used way too much Worcestershire sauce.
“You know what, I was prepared for this.” Cherri disposed of the pies, then went to the cupboards to grab a loaf of white bread, some sprinkles, a large plate, and some butter from the fridge.
One by one, she spread butter on each of the slices and set them down on the plate. After the plate was full, she took the sprinkles and shook a generous amount onto each slice.
She presented her dish proudly, “Voila! Fairy bread! A true Australian delicacy.”
“...You know, this is probably, like, the epitome of Heaven food.”
“Okay, and?”
“Doncha think Pen’s probably sick of this kinda stuff by now?”
Cherri groaned, “Look, it’s fine! Penny’s got a sweet tooth anyway, he’ll love this.”
When the time finally arrived, Cherri and Pentious were acting like untrained dogs, immediately running to the other tackling each other to the ground.
When they got to the potluck table, she immediately shoved a slice of fairy bread into his hand, taking a slice for herself and Angel. But after just one bite, it was clear something was very, very off.
“Cherri,” Angel asked, “did you use garlic butter for these?”
“...Motherfucker!”