He took her advice and immediately headed to the kitchen. Luckily, Mira only just started measuring the ingredients which didn’t even come close to the instructions.
Unlike cooking, baking was science. Put in the wrong amount of one thing, and it will mess up the entire dish. Even the order of operations had to be precisely followed.
Take macarons for example, if you overwhip the egg whites, it’ll form a lumpy shape along with some cracked tops, and if you didn’t sift the flour then the entire texture will be off.
Bottom line: If something goes wrong in baking then there’s no way of simply “fixing” it.
It hasn’t even been a full hour, yet the disastrous duo had already managed to screw everything up. Mira didn’t know the difference between a tablespoon and a teaspoon which messed up the first batter; while Nick mixed in salt instead of sugar which totally baffled Adrian. He already set out all the ingreedients they needed on the counter before they even started.
“Wait—no. Mira, don’t do that!” Nick panicked as she added the eggs way too early.
“What, why?”
Too late, the eggs were already in the dry mixture which effectively ruined their third attempt.
He groaned as he wondered how they managed to screw up the third time.
“Okay, both of you get out!” Adrian scowled at the terrible two. “I’ll do this myself. You guys can clean up or whatever. Just get out.”
“Sorry,” Mira attempted to apologize. “Here, I can—”
“No, no. Just out,” he declined the offer as quickly as possible. So when Nick offered to buy more ingredients, Adrian immediately saw it as an opportunity to get them as far away as possible from the fourth batch.
Besides, they needed more stuff anyways. His stupid best friend thought that sweetened condensed milk was the same as whole milk, which meant they didn’t have the all the key ingredients for the recipe.
Once he managed to get them out, Adrian immediately started to clean out everything, starting from the batter bowl, to the pans, and even the utensils. It was better this way, he didn’t want any cross contamination to happen on his watch.
Once he was done with that task, he immediately started to work on the dry mixture. The idea of adding another pinch of cinnamon to his work was tempting, but he decided against it. He needed to stick to the recipe after three failed attempts.
Once the batter was done, he poured the mixture into the two mental tins where the mixture was barely enough to cover the bottom of the first tin.
“Iron Chef Adrian.” He didn’t have to look up to recognize that voice.
“Absolutely.” He couldn’t suppress the small tinge of pride he felt when he started to prepare the milk mixture.
“I thought you were studying chem?” He glanced at Aria before he returned his focus back on the stove to make sure that the mixture didn’t get too hot.
“We finished about fifteen minutes ago,” Aria explained before she added, “Leila went with the others to the store.”
“You didn’t want to go?”
“I wanted to see if I actually understood everything, so I did the rest of the problem set by myself. Hopefully, I got it right.”
“I believe in you.”
“Well I’m glad one of us does.”
“You’re gonna have her check it, right?” he asked.
“I kinda have to. If I screw up some of the problems then I need some more intensive tutoring.”
“Chem sucks anyway,” Adrian commented.
“Yeah . . . so what are you mixing?”
“Just sugar and milk for now. Once they come back, I’ll add the condensed milk.”
“Hmmm, so you’re just heating it to the point where it becomes homogenous?” She observed.
“That’s a pretty scientific way of putting it.”
“Oh yeah, totally. I’m a woman of science now,” Aria boasted. “That is, until Leila finds out something wrong with the problem set.”
“Gotcha.”
An air of silence fell over the two and Adrian was suddenly very aware of the fact that they were alone together. After he set the milk mixture aside so it wouldn’t burn, he was finally free of any task he had to do, and had no idea what to do next.
Awkward.
That of course, led him to ask the world’s most popular question.
“Are you hungry?”
“Uh, a little.” Aria seemed to be caught off guard with his question. “Are you gonna try something new?”
He looked into the fridge and examined every food item inside.
“Ummm . . .”
“It’s fine if you don’t. I’m not starving or anything,” Aria said lightly.
As if I’d let that happen, he thought to himself as he tried to figure out a decent recipe. The last thing he wanted to do was to give her something inedible.
The fridge wasn’t exactly empty, but it wasn’t exactly the Garden of Eden either. It was one of those times where he had enough food to be picky, but not enough to actually make something so creatively incredible.
“So . . . where are the sus padres?” she asked.
“Date night,” he said and took out a few things from the fridge before he started to look into the pantry.
“Oh, fancy, fancy.”
He gave her a brief glance and suddenly spaced out for some reason. It was as if he couldn’t help but appreciate how nice it was to have her near him. In fact, it felt like all the inner turmoil and angst he felt over the summer was a distant memory. Just having her around boosted his spirits so much that it made him feel like everything would just work out.
“Adrian?”
He blinked when she called out his name.
“Hey, are you okay?” she asked with concern.
“Uh, yeah.” He then turned his face away to hide his blush. He didn’t need to be caught looking like an idiot, especially not in front of
