February 6th. The morning light seemed clearer and softer than usual.
Seraphilia rose quietly while Robin was still immersed in sweet dreams.
She looked back at the small figure curled up in the warm blanket, breathing steadily. Her ice-blue eyes were filled with tenderness, as well as a hint of nervousness and anticipation—the kind one feels before stepping onto a battlefield—that even she herself hadn't noticed.
Her goal for today was clear and daunting: to bake a birthday cake for Robin.
Here, in this forest clearing far from modern civilization and lacking basic tools.
She walked on tiptoe to a flatter rock near the downstream of the creek, far from the shack—this was the "baking workstation" she had secretly scouted out a few days ago.
From the "Cloud Package," she took out the ingredients she had quietly prepared the night before: a small bag of fine flour, a few eggs, that jar of precious honey she had been reluctant to finish, a small piece of butter wrapped in oil paper, a bit of sugar, and even a small packet of "baking powder" with a blurry label that she had found in the corner of a grocery store in town.
The tools were laughably primitive: a clean, thick stone mortar served as a mixing bowl, a smooth-shaven hardwood stick acted as a whisk, a flat stone slab functioned as a workstation, and there was that versatile little iron pot.
Seraphilia took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and tried hard to salvage vague images and theoretical knowledge about cakes from the dust-covered ocean of her past life's memories.
Sponge cake? Chiffon? No, those required too much in terms of tools.
The simplest one... honey cake?
Or butter pound cake?
She remembered the approximate ratios, but the specific steps, mixing techniques, fermentation times, baking temperatures... her mind was filled with fog.
"Forget it. For Robin, I'll give it a try," she muttered to herself, rolling up her sleeves to reveal her slender arms, which were covered in a thin layer of muscle.
The first step: process the butter.
Lacking the conditions to soften it, she had to chop the butter into pieces, put them in the small iron pot, and slowly heat the edges over the extremely weak heat of the embers, trying to get it to soften.
This process required extreme patience; she had to avoid letting it melt completely into oil while ensuring it reached a state where it could be whipped.
Next were the eggs. She cracked the eggs into the stone mortar, added the sugar and honey, and began to whip them vigorously with the wooden stick.
There was no eggbeater, so it was all up to the strength and endurance of her wrists.
She tried hard to recall the technique of "whipping until the color lightens and the volume expands." Soon, her arms began to ache, her muscles tensed, but her ice-blue eyes didn't blink, staring intently at the changes in the mixture inside the mortar.
Fine beads of sweat gradually seeped from her temples and slid down her cheeks.
After an unknown amount of time, just when she felt her arms were about to break, the mixture finally seemed to thicken slightly, and the color turned a bit whiter.
She carefully mixed the substance that was likely baking powder into the flour, then sifted it into the egg mixture in batches—of course, without a sieve, she could only use her fingers to pinch and sprinkle it, trying to let the flour fall loosely.
She used the wooden stick to mix it in a cross-cutting motion that she thought "might be right," then folded in the barely softened butter pieces.
The final state of the batter... was indescribable.
It wasn't the smooth, flowing consistency she had imagined; it seemed a bit dry and still had small, unmixed lumps.
Seraphilia furrowed her brows, a wave of frustration welling up in her heart.
The exquisite, beautiful cakes in shop windows from her memories formed a sharp contrast with this bowl of rough batter before her.
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