Midnight Manor Boarding House Kitchen, Tuesday Afternoon

[pocketpretzels]

Last week, Illyana had asked if Watts would be willing to teach her to make cupcakes, and he was all too happy to oblige.

She'd expressed an interest in chocolate, so Watts had made sure to gather the supplies necessary for chocolate cupcakes- both non-vegan and vegan, as while he was fairly certain she'd go for the former, he felt the need to be prepared. If they didn't end up using the vegan recipe and ingredients, then he'd take them home and just make more cupcakes.

This preparedness also extended to icing for the cupcakes; had both the supplies to make their own, as well as cans of pre-made icing that he'd picked up from the store.

Now all he needed was the young lady in question and they could get started.

[ooc: expecting one but can be open, sure.]

Comments

[pocketpretzels]

"Yes," Watts confirmed. "For our dry ingredients, precision is important, thus-" he measured out a cup of flour, and then held it over the bag of flour, picking up a knife in his other hand. He ran the flat edge of the knife across the cup, knocking the excess back into the bag. "Using a straight edge to make our cup measure level." The flour was thus dumped into the dry ingredients bowl. "If you would go ahead and measure the sugar," he directed.

[gospel_of_oblivion]

Illyana grabbed the measuring cups first, turning them over in her hands as she read all the little numbers, figuring out which one was which.

"Right, sugar," she repeated, reaching for the bag after she had selected the right size.

It was probably pretty clear her instinct was just to grab a scoop and throw it in, but she followed Watt's motions, leveling it off properly first before dumping it in.

"Only one cup? I would think something sweet would have more."

[pocketpretzels]

That instinct was pretty clear, yes, thus the approving nod when she held back and carefully measured the sugar.

"It is somewhat surprising how little sugar is needed in order to make something sweet," Watts agreed, dumping in the rest of the flour. "Cocoa next, and that's one-third of a cup." Since she'd examined the measuring cups already, he figured she could locate the correct one.

[gospel_of_oblivion]

"Is coco powder the same as hot chocolate mix?" she asked, finding the smaller cup and repeating her earlier actions. "Should I just be buying big bins of coco powder, instead of boxes of hot chocolate packets? Have I just been buying into Big Chocolate?"

[pocketpretzels]

“You could,” Watts acknowledged, getting out the teaspoons and tablespoons. “But you’d also want to add sugar, in that case. Cocoa by itself is unsweetened, but the mix comes with the sugar already added in, as I understand it.”

[gospel_of_oblivion]

Well, there was one way to find out, wasn't there?

Yana added the cocoa to the mix, as directed, then grabbed her frosting spoon and dug it into the cocoa powder container before popping it in her mouth.

Beat.

"I've had worse," she said thoughtfully, wrinkling her nose, "--but it's still not pleasant."

[pocketpretzels]

“No, it is not,” Watts agreed.

Had he done similar the first time he’d encountered powdered cocoa? Perhaps.

[gospel_of_oblivion]

"Even dark chocolate is sweeter than that," she commented, but still licked the spoon clean anyway.

Chocolate was chocolate.

"Now...next up..." she said, checking the recipe again. "Baking soda is a dry thing? Weird. I think of anything soda as like the beverage, with the bubbles."

[pocketpretzels]

“Yes, precisely!” Watts pointed his own spoon at her. “It is those selfsame bubbles, once the baking soda is combined with our other ingredients, that will make our cupcakes nice and fluffy.” A beat. “It is critical, however, that one does not mix up teaspoons and tablespoons. That way lies disaster.”

The voice of experience there, Illyana.

[gospel_of_oblivion]

"Ah, so baking is chemistry, not magic," Illyana said, a lightbulb going on inside her brain. "I am more of a physics person, but knowing the how helps."

"...wait, teaspoons and tablespoons are different? Why?"

[pocketpretzels]

“To make things both simpler and more complicated, I suppose,” Watts said.

“These two are the tablespoons,” he said, indicating the tablespoon and half-tablespoon measure. “The larger ones- you’ll see it abbreviated in the recipe with ‘Tbsp’. The others,” he pointed to the remaining four spoons, “are the teaspoon as well as the half, quarter, and eighth. Those are abbreviated with ‘tsp’. The easiest way to tell at a glance is that tablespoon is bigger, and thus uses a capital T.”