Butterhooves
Pear Butter opened her recipe book, and smiled. As she turned the pages, looking over the recipes in her family cookbook, she glanced over some of the old, mouth-written texts, some being as old as those from her great-grandmare. She took a closer look as she neared the recipe category she wanted - Cakes & Pastries - then went through each of the recipes, trying to find something special for her husband’s birthday. She grinned, thinking of how she’d sent him out with Burnt Oak to get him away from the house, intending to surprise him with a delicious dinner and cake when he returned later. Big Mac was having a sleepover at a friend's house, so it was just her and her husband tonight. She loved to bake, he loved to eat her delicious apple-saffron cake. So what better way to give him a welcoming surprise when he comes back home, she thought, than a delicious meal and a freshly-made, still-warm, delicious home-baked cake.
Finally she found a recipe, “Apple-walnut cake with saffron…” Pear Butter read aloud, then read through the list of ingredients, gathered them, and placed them on the kitchen counter to see if everything was there. They definitely had some uncracked nuts left, and apples of course. They always had apples lying around, a large benefit of growing them themselves.
“Flour, eggs, milk, sugar, baking powder, butter, salt, walnuts, apples, saffron, then powdered sugar and vanilla extract extra for the frosting,” Pear Butter said aloud, looking over her gathered ingredients, then to her equipment. "Spatula, bowl, hoof-mixer." She had everything prepared just like she loved to before baking something, this way nothing could ever go wrong.
“Add one cup of flour, ⅔ cups of butter, 3 eggs, 1 tsp. baking powder, ½ cup of sugar, and one pinch saffron. Then mix into a creamy batter.” she quietly read out loud to herself from the recipe book. Given this was one of the oldest recipes in the book, it was sometimes kind of hard for her to understand what was written. So old, that some of the words were still spelled and written in old ponish, and some were smudged so much as to nearly be illegible.
Pear added all of the named dry ingredients into the bowl, then reached to the power socket to plug in her hoof-mixer. As she did so she gently nudged one of the eggs. Slowly it rolled down to the ground, unnoticed by her as she started the mixer. The mixer made too much noise for her to hear what happened, and so there was a cracked egg on the ground beneath her, a small puddle of its yolk and white now forming next to it.
The mess spread over the floor, until they touched Pear's hind hoof. “EEW! A MOUSE!" she screamed on reflex, and raised the still turned-on hoof mixer in shock, batter flying all over the kitchen, coating the counter, the kitchen table, the fridge, the cupboards…
In her panic, the mixer only turned off because she pulled on the plug when she lept backwards in shock. She jumped up on the kitchen table now, looking down to the ground, eyes darting around as she tried to find the mouse that she thought that brushed against her hindhoof, only to find nothing but a dropped, cracked egg on the floor and, lifting her leg, a tiny, slimy stream of egg white dripping from her hoof.
She sighed. “Buckin’ hay, really?” Pear groused, before looking around at the huge mess splattered everywhere. How could she turn their kitchen into such a mess, she wondered, just because of something as insignificant as a little mouse, which turned out to be an egg instead. She got off the table, and searched for items to clean. Slowly wiping everything, starting with that outraging egg, then the table, the cupboard, the fridge. She was definitely sure she’d forgotten a few spots somewhere, with as much and as forcefully as all the batter flew across the kitchen. There were still some stains left on one of the cupboards' sides, the glass jars on the shelf were still unclean, and the door wasn’t wiped, as it had a similar color to the batter.
“Finally,” Pear said, wiping off some sweat from her forehead, “Now back to the cake! There isn’t much time left.”
‘Crack ½ cup of wallenuts’, Pear Butter read, feeling slightly confused about the spelling. So she went to get the kitchen scale from one of her cupboards. As she did she noticed a stain of batter on it, “Oh, you dang-ol’ egg!” she cursed, but thought that she should hurry a little. All this cleaning had already taken so much time and effort, and the cake needed to be finished as soon as possible…and she still had to make dinner. Thus, she decided to ignore whatever little parts of the mess she caused for then, and clean it later.
Pear Butter started cracking nut after nut, keeping an eye on the scale as she added the meat from each walnut. Sure, it was one of the more tiring tasks in baking, but it needed to be done. ¼ cup…⅓ cup… “Almost” she sighed while working a hard-to-crack nut. She put a lot of effort into this one. Pew, clink! she heard, her ears folding back at the loud crashing sound that followed. A piece of the nut’s shell had flown across the kitchen, hitting one of the jars and causing it to shatter.
“No way!” Pear growled in consternation. It was just one thing after another! As there was no time left to clean up thoroughly, she just took the broom instead and swept the jar and contents onto a small pile on the side where it wouldn’t be in the way.
‘Reserve 4-5 tbsp.of wallenuts for toppin, add rest to batter, mix carefully.’ Pear read, and with annoyed as she felt, her mind still was still on her lover only. This thought of making Bright Mac happy was the only thing helping her to not give up on the matter entirely. Instead, she started carefully mixing the cracked nuts into the batter with a spatula.
“Then add most of the batter, keep some, into the bacin sheat” another of these weirdly written words that made Pear frown initially, then smile at how silly it looked.
‘Peel and slice apples, layer once atop batter, gently push into it, then add rest of batter on top to enclose apples in batter. Preheat oven, 350°F’ Easy enough, Pear thought. She started doing just as the recipe called, slicing the apples, dancing a little as she hummed an old nursery rhyme her mother used to when she was a young filly while she peeled, sliced, then placed the apples onto the soon-to-be cake. In her near trance-like state she was in now, she’d stepped back and forth a little, smiling, as everything seemed to finally go well.
If there hadn't been those few bits of egg white that dropped from her hoof on the floor earlier, which she missed while cleaning, that would have remained so. Instead, she let out a startled ‘WHOOP’ as she lost her balance, falling onto her back on the floor with a thud. In her flailing to attempt to right herself, she kicked the workspace by accident in the act. She watched in horror and helplessness as the baking sheet rocked on the edge of the counter, then fell. The entire thing dropped onto her head, covering her in the entire batch she made, the apples sticking left and right from her mane, and her coat covered in sticky batter. The apple she was peeling before that happened to meanwhile roll in front of the kitchen door, which at just that moment squeaked open, while Pear Butter took off her involuntarily chosen makeshift hat of a ‘bacin sheat’.
“Buttercup! What happened?” Bright Mac, her husband and lover, asked in shock at the scene before him.
Pear was about to cry, sitting on the ground, covered in the mess of her misfortunes. Her facial expression said it all: that she felt like an absolute failure that moment, tears welling in her eyes.
Bright Mac approached his Buttercup, helping to pull her to her hooves, wanting to help calm her down. “Are you alright?” Bright Mac asked, his eyebrows furrowing, as he was truly concerned that she would have hurt herself falling down, what with the disaster zone their kitchen was.
“No, nothing is alright!” his little Buttercup wailed, those welling tears now starting to fall as she buried her muzzle into his shoulder, muffling her next words a bit, “I just wanted to surprise you with a cake for your birthday, one I knew you were gonna love! Then everything went downhill, and…and…now you walk in on this!”
Bright Mac gave a chuckle, plucking one of the apples from her mane, and ate it: “I think it’s delicious!” He then softly licked across Pear’s cheek playfully, trying to lighten the mood.
Pear laughed at the ticklish tongue on her cheek, her sadness completely faded away as she was held by her husband.
“Now honey, mind telling me what exactly happened?” Bright Mac asked his love calmly with a smile.
Buttercup started to explain: “Well…”
~
“...and that’s what happened, silly as it is.” Pear said. She’d explained the past half-hour while Bright Mac, at his insistence, helped her clean up the kitchen.
“Wow, those really are some unfortunate mishaps, ain’t they?” Bright Mac asked, getting a sigh from Pear Butter as she still held him, softly rubbing her back, not caring at all he was getting messy too.
“Mmhm…” Pear said, giving a sigh, before looking down at herself and wincing, “...dang, I’m a right mess, aren’t I?”
“I dunno, ya look beautiful to me, Buttercup, no matter what.” Bright said, getting a little smile and blush from his wife.
“Aw, ya flirt,” Pear said, before breaking the embrace and wincing as she looked down at the mess she was, “Aw…Ah should probably get this stuff off me before it dries anymore.”
After she’d showered, Pear had then gathered a few more ingredients, and, with her love, had created a beautiful apple-saffron cake, lightly glazed and covered in crushed, roasted walnuts. As she looked upon the product of their shared effort, she felt tears coming to her eyes again, but for an entirely different reason this time. She squealed happily as she nearly lunged at Bright Mac, wrapping her forelegs around his crest and pulling him into a loving kiss, which he returned only too eagerly.
“So, I had something else planned for after the cake,” Pear said, fluttering her eyelashes at her husband quite suggestively, “A special present, just for my loving husband.”
“Oh? And what’s that,” Bright asked, leaning in closer and rubbing noses with her.
“Come up to the bedroom in a bit and find out,” Pear said, her tone being quite suggestive.
“I think I will,” Bright responded, letting his mare go to set up whatever surprise she had planned.
~
“An’ that’s where ya came from, Applejack,” Granny said, looking over the pale faces of her grandkids, “now lemme tell ya about th’ night they made Apple Bloo—”
“Granny, Ah asked where th’ apples in th’ kitchen came from, not where we Apples came from!” Applejack yelped, all but shoving her hoof into her grandmare’s muzzle to prevent any more embarrassment, especially not wanting to hear about what led up to her sister's or brother's conception next.
“Well why didn’t ya just say so!” Granny asked in indignation, before waving off her grandkids, “Ah got ‘em from the cellar. Now go on, it’s time for mah nap!”
The trio left their grandmare’s room, mildly disturbed, missing their parents, and having a craving for the apple cake their mom had always made. The cake that, apparently, was the reason why Applejack was here at all. “So, ya wanna make one of those cakes?!” Apple Bloom asked innocently, "Ah got a hankerin' for one now!"
“Not if it leads t’...” Big Mac started, before yelping as Applejack hoofed him in the ribs, “...oh c'mon, Ah was jus’ kiddin’!”
“Yeah Apple Bloom, we can. In honor of our ma and pa.” Applejack said, giving a soft smile as she looked up to the framed recipe in their kitchen that she knew by heart, before going to gather the ingredients. The recipe which had, apparently, led to the start of her life.