• Published 1st Jan 2013
  • 2,106 Views, 151 Comments

Tastes Like Heresy - Bugsydor



Hearth's Warming never happened: The three tribes went their separate ways instead of uniting. Royal Chef Amber Spice is a mostly model Unicornian citizen, but now she's getting exiled from the land. How'd she manage that?

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Chapter 4: Cooking up a Cutie Mark

You know my special talent is experimenting with and inventing new foods and ways to cook, but I suppose I never did get around to telling the story of how I got this saffron flower on my flank. That's about as important to posterity as the rest of the stuff I'm talking about, so here goes.

It all happened at The Golden Bun, my dad's bakery that adjoins to The Amber Mare. The two places of business are connected via our living quarters on the upper floor. I guess it says something about Golden Brown that he chose his shop's name after Mom chose the one for her shop, but I digress.

I'd always loved to watch my parents work since I was a little filly. Mom didn't let me taste her wares, though, so I spent more time around Dad's bakery. He'd call me his little dough girl. He'd always have a treat ready for when I'd show up after school.

"What's that?" I asked, gesturing at the powder he was pouring into a vat as I nibbled on my salty sweet pastry.

"It's yeast," he replied.

"What's it do?"

My dad saw a prime moment to educate his filly in the ways of baking. "What yeast does, Spicy, is it eats the sugars in something and then spits out bubbles and alcohol. I use those bubbles to make my breads light and fluffy for when I bake them."

"It eats the sugars!? Why can't it just eat the bread like everypony else?"

"Because, my little dough girl, if it didn't eat the sugars it wouldn't blow the bubbles I need to make the dough rise. You do like your bread to be fluffy, don't you? Or are you opposed to eating your fellow fluffballs?"

"I like fluffy brea—"

"Maybe you're not really my daughter at all. Maybe you're really just a roll that jumped out of the oven too early! Only one way to find out: chase you down and gobble you up!"

"Eeeek!" I squeaked as I took off as fast as my stubby legs would carry me. The chase was on.

After a couple of minutes of running around the kitchen, with his growling and laughing and my giggling and squealing, he finally caught me.

"Om nomnomnom nomnom!" He bellowed as he clacked his teeth above my ears. Then he nipped one of them and said quizically, "Wait a minute, you don't taste like a roll. You're too salty. Maybe you're a pretzel?"

"No, Daddy, I'm a pony!" I snortled.

"Are you sure?"

"Yep!"

"And quite a silly pony you are!

"Well, for this honest mistaking of your identity, you're entitled to another question. Go ahead and ask away!"

"I think I've seen mommy use that yeast stuff. Is she trying to make her drinks light and fluffy, too?”

“Kinda,” he chuckled. “Remember how I said the yeast eats the sugars and spits out bubbles and alcohol?”

I nodded vigorously.

“Well,” he said, “ponies want the drinks she brews because of the second thing. It makes them nice and bubbly too, but that's just a bonus.”

“Why do they want to drink stuff with alcohol in it? It makes it smell funny. I've tried asking Mommy, but she always just tells me I'll find out when I'm older, but I'm older now, so can you tell me?”

“Your mother's probably right to keep it from you. Still, I figure it's better that I fill you in just a little before somepony else gives you the wrong ideas,” he sighed. “You know how after a patron's been at the tavern for a while on a night and they start acting funny?”

I nodded slowly.

“They come here and drink our brew so that they can act funny like that. Some ponies drink to lighten up their uptight selves and have a little unrestricted fun. Others drink to peel away their restraints and get things that have been bothering them off their backs. That's your mom's specialty, by the way: lending an understanding ear to ponies' problems. It's why she became a barkeep, really.

“Then there's the ponies who have a big, big problem and drink themselves silly so they don't have to think about it that night. Not a practice I approve of, since it amounts to running away and pretending the problem doesn't exist. That, and the alcohol combined with their unstable emotions means they're liable to do something really stupid that hurts everypony involved. A lot. Please don't ever be like that.”

Now, I wouldn't call Golden Brown an intimidating pony by a long shot (he's just too fluffy!), but his face fell and his eyes looked so sad as he said that last bit that I never wanted to be that last pony he talked about. It was like rainclouds had suddenly flowed over his golden eyes. And before you point this out, I was clearly a type II drinker near the beginning of this story.

“I promise I won't ever be that third pony,” I muttered grimly, eyes downcast.

He reached a hoof over and mussed my frizzy mane. “Now I've gone and made you sad, haven't I? This won't do at all! You sure are a curious little filly, so how's about you come closer and watch me bake? Nah, you watch me bake all the time.

“Oh, I know! How about you actually help me with the baking this time around?”

At this, my face lit up like I'd just won a lifetime supply of salt. “Really?” I gasped. “Really really?”

“Really really. Now let's get started. Go forth, my fluffy minion: raid the pantry of its oat flour, and bring me the spoils!"

"Yes sir!" I saluted and gleefully dashed off to obey, like a good little minion.

"Here!" I called out after I spat out the flour jar.

And so it went for a few minutes: he'd bellow out an ingredient, and I'd scramble off, pick it up, and rush back with it in my mouth. I was such a good minion. Once I'd collected the last of the ingredients, he floated the recipe book in front of me.

"One of the most important parts of baking, and of cooking in general, is to make sure you have all of the ingredients together before you start. If you don't, you can end up with a blackberry pie with no filling, and nopony likes it when that happens. So, Spicy, would you please read off the ingredients so I can check them?"

"Sure!

"Oat flour!"

"Check!"

"Yeast!"

"Checkers!"

"Warm water!"

His horn glowed for several seconds, and steam began to waft from the bowl of water I'd brought in.

"Checkarooney!"

And so on until I reached the end of the list.

“Looks like we've got everything. Good work, minion!” He patted me on the head. I giggled. “Let's get down to the actual baking. Now you see, yeast is alive,” he lectured. “Most of the time it's asleep, and it doesn't do much when it's asleep. That's why we can keep it so long, by the way. Do you know why I warmed up that bowl of water?”

“Um... was it to wake the yeast up?”

“Yuppers! It's so I can wake them up for their breakfast of sweet honey,” he stated as he stirred the yeast into the bowl. "Speaking of which, that's what I'll be adding next." He measured out some honey into a beaker, and then scraped it into the water with a spatula and stirred.

I continued to stare in rapt attention.

“This is where we add in the dry ingredients. Most ponies settle for using pre-metered measuring scoops, but not here at the Golden Bun. I've found that if you want to make the best baked goods in Unicornia, you'd best work to keep all of your ingredients in balance.” He said that as he set a bowl on the balance for measurement.

I could never forgive him for things like that.

Dear Lanthanum how I'll miss him.

“Aaaaauuuurrrgh! That was awful! Whatever I did, I swear I'll be good!”

“Okay, I'll try my best to hold off on the puns." Liar. "Now, try measuring out three fifths of an ounce of salt. I've already got the balance tared to the weight of the bowl. Since this is such a delicate process, I want you to try using your magic to mete it out.”

“Ok-kay...” *Gulp*. I was not very experienced with magic just yet, and this was obviously a task of grave importance I'd just been entrusted with. I would have blamed the hot oven for my sweat at this point, but it hadn't been lit yet. Let's just blame it on my extra fluffy coat and move on.

After a couple of false starts, I managed to get warmed up and levitate a little scoop of salt over to the bowl and start meticulously drizzling it in.

“Aaaand three fifths!” I squeaked with a sigh, then slumped to the floor. Delicate manipulation is hard for a little filly to do.

“Aww, my little dough girl is growing up so fast,” he choked out as he pulled my limp form into a hug. “Before I know it, you'll be competing in the Grand Magus Tournament and needing to beat away all the colts with a levitating stick!”

“But Daddy, colts have cooties!”

“Except your dad, right?”

“Except you.”

“That's an acceptable answer. Now, since you've done so much hard work, I'll let you sit back and watch while I continue to add ingredients,” he continued as he began measuring out the rest of the ingredients and adding them to the main bowl as well.

“It's important when you're doing anything with flour that you only stir it just as much as you need to to get the ingredients distributed more-or-less evenly. If you stir flour too much, anything you make out of it turns really chewy, and not in a good way.” He leaned his head down to my ear for a conspiratorial whisper. “Those are the baked bads I sell to the annoying customers.”

I let out an amused snort.

“Now all we have to add before mixing in the wet ingredients is...” A concerned-looking ear twitch. “Hold your horses...”

I heard galloping, slamming, measured trotting, and then Mom walked through the door.

“Oh, hi Spicy. Goldie, the neighbors across the street are in a bit of a fix. Could you come over there with me to help them out?” She queried, almost calmly.

I've never been quite sure whether he loves it or hates it, but the only pony who gets away with calling him that is Mom. Ponies tend not to mess with the family who controls their access to the best bread and booze in town.

“I'll be right there, honey!” He frantically shifted his gaze back to me. “Spicy, it looks like I'll be busy for a while. How do you feel about finishing this loaf on your own?”

A quick enough astronomer could have picked out new constellations from the stars in my eyes.

“I'll take that as a 'sure thing.'” He opened a drawer and levitated a handled foal's wooden spoon so I could stir the mixture without magic. “Let me know how it turns out!”

“Okay, Daddy!” I exclaimed as they galloped away.

And so I set to work levitating the bowl of rolled oats, conveniently pre-measured out by Golden Brown before he left, that marked the last of the dry ingredients. It was really more of magically flinging the oats in, which is way easier than sustained, precise control of an object. Still a bit tiring, but my parents encouraged me to practice using my magic at every opportunity so it could get stronger.

After I'd rested for a minute from my latest exertion, I grabbed my foal's mixing spoon in my jaw, bounced up a series of stools and chairs and up onto the counter to stir the mixture just enough to break up the layers and clumps. Did I ever mention that baking is dusty work?

Then came the really important part: the honey-yeast-water. It was in a nice sized glass bowl that was big and curved enough to make getting a grip on it with my foal's mouth very difficult. I was a bit exhausted from performing incredible feats of magic beyond any normal pony's comprehension, but I felt that more magic was my only option. It would involve sending the bowl a fair distance across the counter, though.

I thought maybe I could try flinging the bowl of yeast mixture the distance and then stop it over the mixing bowl and carefully flip it to pour. I charged up my little nub of a horn, and then released the energy to launch the yeast bowl.

Apparently, catching a flying object is harder than it sounds.

*Cloungsplulsh*

“Oh, demonwings!” I shouted, glad my mother couldn't hear me and trot off to fetch the soap with me in tow.

“Okay, Amber, we're not going to cry. Crying's for babies and you're not a baby.” I may have sniffled a little. “What would Mom do at a time like this? Well, first she'd tell me to go clean up the mess. Amber Spice, would you please go clean up that mess? Okay, me, I'll go clean it up.”

So I got a cloth and cleaned it up. Still, that left me with a half-finished pile of dry bread ingredients and no convenient way to warm up some water to wake up more yeast. I was not going to let simple impossibilities get in the way of finishing that bread, though. I'd been entrusted with the fate of this baked good by Master Baker Golden Brown himself, and I was not about to disappoint him.

And so I started to think: ‘Now how could I get some woken up yeast, some water, and enough food for the yeast to use to spit out fluff-giving bubbles? Where else was yeast around here... Mom used yeast to make her funny-smelling drinks that made her patrons act all funny. It spit out bubbles there too...which means it must already have been woken up! And it already had all the food it could want!

And, energized with that thought, I rushed to fish out my foal's handled measuring scoop and a foal's bucket and made a bee-line for Mom's brewery.

The brewery is in the back of the complex, spanning two floors behind the storefronts and the house proper. Mom kept several copper vats to make various varieties, including some special seasonal brews, and kept the vats at different parts of the brewing cycle so she'd almost always have something fresh to tap. The vats in question were wide, tall cylinders with conical bases. I could never figure out whether they looked more like abruptly tapering horns or like hooves wearing strange stilettos.

Some had their tops open to the air, while the ones we wanted to make bubbly had domed tops and a special kind of stopper that only let out gas when the pressure differential got too big. You know, like the kind you find on pressure cookers. Amber Draft keeps them enchanted to keep the brews inside chilled so that the yeast doesn't get any funny ideas about making the batch taste bad.

When we got the once-in-a-blue-moon heatwave two thirds of the way up Terra's Horn (I take a cab between my parents' shops/dwellings and my apartment in the palace, in case you were wondering), it was nice to slip into the brewery and hug one of the vats. Just as long as you checked the thermometer first to make sure she hadn't supercharged that vat's chilling enchantment for the conditioning cycle, anyway.

Once I entered the brewery and located an open vat of mead (and checked the thermometer), I realized that I was just too short to reach the brew. This wouldn't stop me, of course. I was a foal determined, and I would not be denied.

So I went and did what any self-respecting filly or colt would do: I cludged together a ziggurat of random things from around the surrounding rooms and climbed up that with the bucket, and then with the freshly cleaned measuring scoop.

Since this batch of mead hadn't been fermenting all that long, it still smelled sweet and had only a little of that "funny" smell I'd later grow to love. I thought back to the recipe and scooped the appropriate amount of liquid into the bucket, then began to trot back to the kitchen with my golden prize in tow. On the way there, though, I got sidetracked as I passed Mom's spice box.

I could still clearly smell the mead in my foal's bucket, but there was another smell there too. A familiar one. The smell of honey became stronger and more metallic. A thread of fresh hay wended its way into my consciousness. I smelled saffron, and I just knew it would make this bread perfect.

When you get inspired and a fey mood besets you, you don't think; you do. And do I did. I didn't care how expensive it would make the bread; I just knew it would be worth it.

I brought the bucket over to the spice box. I opened the box, extracted a single thread of saffron, and plinked it into the mead. Then I continued my trot back to the kitchen and set the bucket on the counter next to the dry ingredients I'd planned to add the mead to. I wracked my brain to remember what I'd been taught about heating spells so I could properly release the saffron's flavor, and I found what I was looking for. Normally, it was considered magic that was a couple of grades above what was expected for little fillies. Didn't matter to me; I was a girl on a mission.

Straining and groaning, I managed to spark my horn and surge the mead's temperature, and the smell of metallic honey and fresh hay surged with it. Then I poured the bucket of saffron-infused mead into the dry ingredients and began kneading the mixture with my forehooves. Then, satisfied I'd mixed everything just enough and with flanks tingling and my inspired fervor fading, I decided to take a nap.

It was a good nap, and sorely needed since I'd just exhausted my magical font. Determination only counts for so much, so I must suffer for my art. The nap must have lasted for a few hours, since the dough had turned into bread by the time I woke up and was emitting an aroma that was just heavenly.

"Wait, bread? Aren't you supposed to be dough?" I bolted upright, sloughing off the blanket I'd failed to notice before. "Blankey? How'd you get here?"

I was a terribly perplexed little filly.

I heard some muffled voices and the soft clip-clopping of approaching hooves, until the door burst open and a jubilant Golden Brown pounced on me.

"This is just so exciting! My little dough girl really is growing up so fast! We'll have to throw a party and everything! Now what color streamers—"

"Whoa whoa whoa, whoa. A... a party? What? Can we start at the beginning? Like where this yummy-smelling bread came from or why I woke up covered in blankey?" I hadn't quite woken up enough to put those together, and having my motormouth father talk my ear off wasn't helping.

"Aww, you're just so adorable when you're all confused and flustered like that!"

I put on my best unamused face.

"And now it's even worse!" He turned his head as Mom walked in. "See what I mean, honey?"

"Yes, she's even more heart-rendingly cute than usual," she replied. "Still, I think she'd appreciate it if you answered her questions before she blows a gasket."

Mother to the rescue!

"Okay, okay. When your mother and I came back about an hour and a half ago, we found you lying fast asleep right there on the counter next to a bowl of interesting-smelling bread dough. I wanted to wake you up right then and there, but your mom thought you looked like you could use the rest.”

“You just looked so peaceful,” she chimed in, “so I convinced him to put the dough in the oven and let you rest while I went to get you a blanket. I did find a few interesting messes on the way to do that, by the way. For instance, a makeshift ziggurat constructed beside one of my fermentation vats. You don't smell like you've actually been drinking from it, thankfully. I just hope that you were careful not to contaminate the batch when you harvested part of it.” She gave me a wry glance.

You couldn't see it through my thick coat, but I was blushing sheepishly.

“That, and from the smell of it,” she continued, “somepony got into my saffron while I was out.”

My sheepish grin widened, and I further shrunk into a ball of fluff.

“Normally I'd be docking that pony's allowance for the price of the spice; but...” Her wry glance softened into a warm gaze. “seeing as this turned out okay...” She gestured at the delicious-smelling bread. “I think I can arrange an indefinite stay of execution. Besides, there's a more pressing and far happier occasion to be concerned with right now.”

My relieved smile plunged into a confused frown.

“Huh?”

“Oh. It seems she hasn't noticed yet. Goldie, would you be a dear and fetch two pairs of earmuffs for this next bit?”

“Sure thing, honey!” he said as he urgently galloped off. He returned a few seconds later wearing one pair of earmuffs and sliding the other onto Amber Draft. “You're the mom, honey, so you get to tell her.”

“Thanks, dear.”

“Tell me? Tell me what?” I queried with raised eyebrow and cocked head.

“You're right, Goldie. She really is adorable when she's confused like that. Spicy, mind telling me what that thing over there is?” She pointed a hoof at my right flank.

I looked back there, and was stunned. There on my flank, plain as the sun in the sky and beautiful to me as Princess Topaz's crown, was a bright purplish blue saffron flower with red stamens and yellow anthers. I gasped.

The ensuing squealing could be heard from Lanthanum's Diamond Throne to the base of the Australis Valley.