Collection of Heart Warming Hearth's Warmings

by SwordTune

The Great Pudding Bake Off

After defeating the Windigos, the unicorn, pegasi, and earth pony nations prepared the first Hearth's Warming meal together. Chancellor Puddinghead made a pudding so delicious, legends were written about it. This story, for now, and all Hearth's Warmings to come, is the legend of how the first pudding came to pass.

At the base of the Canterlot mountain, the manor of the Chancellor sent letters to every corner of Equestria. When it came time for Puddinghead to make the pudding, he needed the best farmers in the earth pony nation to gather their best ingredients. Spices, sugars, flour, and eggs, from all across the land the Chancellor's manor was filled with foods.

His spruce wood walls were bursting with pumpkins and pears and cornstarch and goat's milk. However, the pudding needed a strong life to its flavour, it needed a youthful vigour that only a child's taste could know. So, of the hundreds that came, only five brought sweets that the Chancellor deemed worthy. For their wild hearts and joyful minds, he made them his apprentices and invited them to eat at the Hearth's Warming feast when the pudding was done.

First, there was Gingerbread, who brought a cart full of the ginger spice his family used in their traditional cookies. Then there was Peppermint, who brought boxes of her family's peppermint canes. The others presented their ingredients in the same way, and their names were Nutmeg, Frosting, and Sugar Plum.

The last filly who greeted Puddinghead was named Merry Deed. Her family farmed simple eggs from the chickens that they tended. But with the eggs, she also offered something more.

"I cook and at home for my family," she said, presenting a tray of sweet-bread pudding. "You have your ingredients, I know you don't need the sugar, but let me bake for you this Hearth's Warming."

Puddinghead tried her dish and gasped. "Your skills are great, as good as mine, but go back home to spend your time. I am the Chancellor. If this glorious pudding is too sweet on the other guests' tongues, I must bear the responsibility."

To get the pudding perfect, the Chancellor had the five children bring their ingredients his kitchen where they discussed the best qualities of each ingredient. For two days and two nights, they cooked small samples and measured each ingredient. If one flavour was too strong, Chancellor Puddinghead used less. If a flavour could not come through, he added more. Even while the children slept, he tested more flavours, more mixtures, more interesting recipes.

On the third day, the apprentices went to Puddinghead to see what recipe he had chosen. The feast was in two days, and they needed to finish the pudding to leave on time. But when they knocked at his room, the plague answered Puddinghead's door. He could not speak, he could barely see, but still, he gestured to the recipe. On his desk, it was written the pudding recipe that he had chosen.

The children worked fast. First, Gingerbread was the leader, for he had been the first colt to bring his farm's produce. But when they finished, the pudding tasted too strongly of ginger. Then Peppermint tried her hoof at baking the recipe, but she was too shy and could not bring herself to put enough peppermint sticks. Nutmeg and Frosting tried together, but they argued over whose ingredient was more important, so Sugar Plum took over. But the final pudding was too soft, sagging from the juices of ill-prepared plums.

"If we cannot bake," Sugar Plum said sadly as they threw away their failed pudding attempts, "then we need to find some pony who is."

All at once they thought about what Puddinghead had said before. There was one pony who could bake as well as he could. So, they asked Puddinghead's assistant, Smart Cookie, if she knew where Merry Deed had come from.

"A small farming town not far from here," she told them. "About a day's ride there and back."

They knew they'd be late to the feast if they tried to get her help. There wouldn't be time to bring her back to the manor and start baking the pudding. There was only one option. With Smart Cookie guiding them, they found a carriage in the Chancellor's stabled and rode straightway for Merry's home.

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Merry pulled a pecan pie out the oven and set it to rest on the counter top. Her home was humble, windows boarded up to stop chill winds from entering. That didn't stop her parents from both catching a cold, leaving her to help her brother tend to their fields.

There wasn't much to tend to in the winter, for pegasi winters were harsh on their sensitive sugar cane, but that only left other chores to do.

"You should be baking this for some pony else," her brother told her.

Merry shook her head. "No, the right gift has the right time. Chancellor Puddinghead didn't need my help."

They thought the wind picked up, but when they listened closer, it was the sound of a carriage bouncing down the rocky road to their farm.

"We need your help!" cried the children hanging out of the door.

Merry recognized the apprentices Puddinghead had chosen. Sweet Cookie rode right up to the door and unhitched, panting and coughing hoarsely. Merry's brother came out and welcomed them in, offering tea to the exhausted mare. In a panic, the children told Merry that the Chancellor was sick. They told her how they tried to make the pudding but couldn't get it right. And they said how they were running out of time.

"We thought there wouldn't be enough time to take you back," said Peppermint.

"So we brought all the ingredients," said Nutmeg, revealing their only option. The back of the carriage was loaded with crates and barrels of food that Frosting had begun unpacking.

"We'll bring it straight to Canterlot once you're done," said Sugar Plum.

Frosting set down a barrel of plums. "So please, help us help Puddinghead and save Equestria's first Hearth's Warming."

Sweet Cookie gave her a copy of the recipe Puddinghead had written down. Merry nodded as she read it; Puddinghead was right, she would have made the same choices as he did if she were making the recipe. With Hearth's Warming at stake, there wasn't any other answer that Merry could think of.

"Okay. Let's bake."

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The Canterlot feast was really a treat, one for the legends, one hard to beat. With delicacies eaten by no other, pony peace was preserved, from mother to mother. Puddinghead said, confirming once and for all, he was wrong all along for his pride was not small. Testing the pudding made by young Merry, there was nothing to add; was hers better? Yes, very.

What Puddinghead did for Hearth's Warning feast, was for boldness, for gewgaw, not one pony's wishes. But Merry Deed did what Puddinghead didn't, and baked for herself, her want for good dishes. By luck or by love, or some other sweet passion, the skills of her baking was beyond modern fashion.

So do want you want, what you wish, what you fancy. Hearth's Warming Eve's here. Do not stay, do not tarry.