Author's Note: So… yeah! So, sorry this has taken so, so, so, so, so, so long to get up, but now that I'm also doing Hearts like Red Apples for the Ficathon (Check out mine and the others! So good!) I'll be updating this alongside it. This chapter is exciting because it marks a significant step that Gerda makes towards her dream – enjoy!

We did indeed make the ginger-orange wafers the next time, and from there, we continued expanding our horizons with various other types of cookies. We made butterscotch cookies and lemon butter cookies, spiced apple bars and raspberry streusel bars, shortbread and rugelach rolls with strawberry jam and melted chocolate chips, and finally: chocolate drizzled mocha biscotti. The weeks went on and on and each time I came to Grandmother's house I began feeling increasingly more confident. The work was precarious, but Grandmother's solid recipes rarely if ever let me down. I grew more and more comfortable with ginger and cinnamon and their place in cookies, as well as dealing with citrus flavors like lemon and orange and how to use them well. I found myself longing to make more practical, savory foods for dinner. The amount of sweets we were making was starting to make me wonder about weight gain, although we always made sure to eat whatever we made in moderation.

After the cookies, Grandmother began teaching me about how to make things like sweetbreads. My first was a lemon bread with melted chocolate chips, but I then moved on to pumpkin bread and a bread of my own invention, caramel apple bread, which might have been excellent if I had practiced with it a bit more. I also made chocolate-peppermint cupcakes, decorated in crushed candy canes, as well as banana cupcakes and lemon cupcakes with a raspberry ganache in them. I loved making things with fruit flavors. Whatever they were in, they always tasted so refreshing and pleasantly mild.

After that, I learned to make a mocha torte and a cheesecake. Various types of breads came after that – three cheese breads, wheat breads, peasant loaf breads, and rye breads. I also learned how to make a couple scones, though no matter what I did, they always seemed too dry for my tastes.

Then came my biggest challenges: cakes and pies.

"Don't knead too much, dear," Grandmother said, and I let up on the piecrust I was working with. "You don't want to mold the butter completely in, because the parts of it that stick out are the parts that will make the piecrust flaky. Here, press on it with your palms like so."

We were making pumpkin pie, and the directions for the pumpkin filling were refreshingly easy: the dough was not. It was a precarious process of blending the ingredients together and just barely adding enough ice cold water so that the mixture was just beginning to stick together. Then, you had to endure the nerve-shattering process of trying to roll the dough out into a round shape with the floured rolling pin, which hardly helped because the dough kept sticking to it repeatedly and threatening to tear off. Which meant you had to smother the dough and the rolling pin with flour and repeat until the dough actually cooperated. Then, I rolled the dough up around the rolling pin, so that it wrapped around, and unrolled it into the pie pan. The result was significantly less than flattering, but I managed to impress a bit of design into it with a fork to disguise its elementary look.

"Now, there are many different types of pie crust edges," the old woman began again. "You can crimp it or braid it or press on it like you did with a fork or make it look wavy or press this little gadget on it that makes it have a design. If you're going to be selling pies – and really, you ought to; they're a great seller – you're going to need to know how to make them look pretty."

I sighed, crestfallen.

"Not that what you did wasn't a good first attempt, but beauty is important, my dear. Customers aren't going to want to buy pies that look like they're falling apart."

I nodded.

She smiled and clapped her hands together. "Now it's time to make the pie filling. Now then, where did I put that canned pumpkin? Verna's canned pumpkins always make sensational pumpkin pies, my heavens."

When the pumpkin pie filling was at last completed – a significantly less arduous process that constituted of the usual egg separating, beating, folding – and Grandmother's special secret addition of maple syrup. I scooped out the ingredients in the piecrust and set it all in the oven.

"Done?" I said expectantly.

Grandmother smiled. "Not quite. We're going to need to make the whipped cream topping to go on it."

I sighed again.

Grandmother Fælyn laughed. "Oh, come on now, it's not too hard to make. And after this is done, then you can take a rest for a good forty-five minutes or so."

"Alright…"

She laughed again. "Trust me, you'll want the whipped cream on it. That's what makes the whole package so wonderfully appealing."

"Okay, if you say so," I assented, despite the fatigue.

"Alright, now let's see here… we're going to need a cup of heavy whipping cream and four teaspoons of powdered sugar." She pulled out the sugar from the cabinet and a small bottle full of what appeared to be creamy milk. "Now, you're just going to beat those ingredients in this small bowl here, and you need to beat at least until you see stiff peaks form. They must be stiff, okay? Now you try it."

I took hold of the beater and spun the handle around and around as fast as I could. Soon enough, the consistency became thicker and creamier, before quickly seizing up into soft, firm peaks. "How did it get so much stiffer, Grandmother?" I asked.

"Well, when you beat it, you are putting air into it, which makes the consistency much, much fluffier, or at least as long as the ingredients are cold."

I nodded.

"Alright," she said. "Let's transfer this mixture into a pastry bag, and then we'll be done with it!" She unsealed the pastry bag, and we scooped out the mixture into the bag and resealed it, before putting it back in the icebox. "There, now it will cool back down before the pie is finished."

We sat down in the chairs and let our muscles relax lazily.

"So, Gerda," Grandmother began again. "How are dear old Veda and her bakery?"

I shrugged. "They're the same as always: busy, punctual, and businesslike. The ale, surprisingly, has made it much more popular than the other bakery, if anything just because if you're a man and your wife is going to go to a bakery and the bakeries are about the same quality, you're going to want her to go to the one with ale. Laurel should be very pleased with the success of her idea."

"And of course, there are your dresses," Grandmother offered.

"That's true," I said. "They probably help keep the ale in check from turning the bakery into too much of a tavern or, as Veda likes to call them, low-class brothels with drinks on the side." I laughed at this.

Grandmother shook her head, knowingly. "I wish it wasn't so, but quite honestly on that one I think she's right. The women I've known who've worked in them receive especially terrible treatment."

I sobered at this.

"But you know, dear, all men don't like ale."

"Oh?" I said.

"No, of course not. Actually, I've known a few women that liked the taste of ale, and I've known many men who told me that they began drinking it just because other men drank it, even when they didn't actually like it at first. Some of them still don't like it."

"Huh," I replied. I hadn't actually thought of men not liking ale. It just seemed like something men did, just… because.

"People are so surprising," Grandmother continued. "You think you understand them and then… and then one minute you realize you don't."

I looked back at her face. Her expression seemed puzzled and almost revelatory. "What is it, Grandmother?"

"Oh, nothing, nothing," she said softly. "Just something I think I've forgotten." Her eyes, nebulous and dreamy, reverted back to me with a strange, dazed smile. "Sorry. Have you told Veda about your lessons?"

"No… I figured it wasn't going to lead to anything worthwhile. Just arguing and biting rebukes from her and 'you need to be doing your part and making those dresses; stop being a burden on the family' and more nonsense like that."

Grandmother Fælyn frowned. "Veda actually tells you you're a burden on the family?"

I blushed. "Well, not exactly like that, but sometimes, it feels like it."

"Oh," she replied. "How are your dresses going? I saw that blue one of yours in the store the other day when I popped in. So lovely. Who bought it?"

"Oh, some middle aged lady and her daughter. I'm not exactly sure why they bothered with it; they were both too big to fit in it. Whoever they're going to for alterations is going to have to add a lot of fabric."

"So you don't alter the dresses yourself?"

"Oh, no." I laughed. "By the time I actually get done making them, I'm so tired of the whole process, I just want to sell them and move on the next one."

"So, what are you working on now?"

I paused to recall what I had decided. "Well, winter is going to be coming to a close and in a few months it'll be spring, so I thought I'd make a white dress with a light green and pink flower design and then add a bigger collar loosely around the shoulders with the long balloon sleeves attached to it again and then perhaps a light green sash around the waist that ties into a short bow at the back."

"Ooo," Grandmother said. "What kind of flowers are you going to pattern it with? Roses?"

"Roses?" I said, frowning in confusion.

"Don't you know what roses are?" Grandmother seemed equally confused.

"No."

"Oh. Well, they're… they're very pretty, and they come in all sorts of colors, though the pink ones are my favorite. And they have this lovely spiral shape… my sister adores them; she's got many different types in her garden."

"How nice," I replied, though I was only minimally interested in the description. What I was really interested in was this sister, she had just mentioned. Why had she never mentioned her before? "So, you have a sister?" I worried that this was being too invasive as usual, but Grandmother had offered it; I assumed that it was safe enough.

"Yes, I do. She lives far down in the south, but she comes up every now and then and we visit each other."

"What is she like?"

"Oh… I don't know; she's much livelier than I am. Or perhaps not livelier, but… more dramatic? She's always screeching about some crisis or another. When we were younger, we never got along. She was older than I was, and she was always so bossy and demanding and controlling. She'd throw fits when I didn't do what she wanted, and she always claimed to have my best interest at heart. We get along much better now, but she can't resist trying to sneak in advice and orders every now and then."

I laughed.

"We still love each other, though. She's a bit eccentric, though. But yes, I do have a sister."

"You never told me that before."

Grandmother shrugged. "Well, as with most of my family, she doesn't make very much of an appearance in my life for long."

She hardly flinched at the comment, but I felt remorseful all the same.

When the pie was at last ready to get out of the oven, I pulled it out as Grandmother fetched the chilled pastry bag. I set in down on a towel to cool off as the old woman gathered me for the final step.

"Now, when the pie is cooled off a bit, you're going to squeeze out the bag and draw a line with it around the edge. You can even draw a little design, if you want, in the center."

When the pie had finally cooled down, I squeezed out the bag as Grandmother directed. The result wasn't wholly unattractive, but it wasn't sensational either. All in all, it was a good first attempt, as Grandmother had made sure to affirm.

After that pie, came a double layer chocolate silk pie with chocolate curls in the whipped cream, and then a mocha cream pie. When I had made these, and was getting the hang of the piecrusts more and topping them, Grandmother decided to take a break from pies to move onto cakes.

My first cake had been simple enough – a basic, albeit slightly bland white cake, with chocolate frosting on it, and making it was hardly a challenge: just combine bowl of dry ingredients, beat in the buttermilk and butter, then the eggs and the vanilla, then separate the mixture evenly into two pans. Then make the frosting – which in this case was a chocolate frosting – with the melted chocolate, beaten butter, powdered sugar, milk, and vanilla. Then frost the top of both cakes, and sit one on top of the other. Then frost the sides.

The frosting was the only real challenge, and even then, I knew that in time, I would get the hang of it. What I didn't realize was that even if the cake ultimately looked fine and tasted fine – cakes were the true artistic feats of the baking world, and that even after you had correctly smothered it in icing, there was still more icing to put on. This icing would then be transformed into little swirly flowers with petals and ornate writing and fancy designs like the ones you would find in books about calligraphy – and they needed to be good. So while pies required temperamental piecrusts and some aesthetics, cakes were all aesthetics and laborious at that. Simple mistakes became glaringly obvious and nearly impossible to cover up – after all, you couldn't simply erase the icing.

The combination of cake batter and icing, however, proved its own entertainment. There was vanilla icing, chocolate icing, cinnamon icing, butterscotch icing, mint icing, and mocha icing. In the summertime there were lemon icing, strawberry icing, raspberry icing, orange icing – practically any fruit icing. Grandmother had me practice making the cake and icing them repeatedly, learning how to maneuver through the pros and cons of each of the flavors and the various combinations, as well as continued practice decorating the cakes with different things. Having never learned how to read or write, I saw little use in trying to memorize the symbols that formed things like "happy birthday" or anything pertaining to holidays.

We took a break from cakes as soon as we got into late spring and there were fresh berries again. With that, Grandmother segued back into making pies, this time fruit pies. We made the strawberry cream pie, the lemon meringue pie, lime pie, blackberry pie, mixed berry pie, and cherry pie. Grandmother had me practice making the more complicated piecrusts, which I managed to get more skilled at, though I despised doing the braided crusts, something that never seemed to get easier with practice. Entwining those two piecrust strands just seemed to amount to endless complications and frustrations with the pieces breaking or sticking or any number of other horrible things they could do. After a couple of successes, Grandmother decided to teach me fruit-tarts before we returned to cakes with the fruit flavors.

When we at last returned to the cakes, I practiced on both small cakes and eventually larger cakes, making quaint, though not artistically brilliant, decorations. Fortunately, I eventually managed to learn some stylish designs that I could do consistently, and enough of them for variation.

Veda had been complaining that I wasn't getting enough done quickly enough. But now was my moment of triumph. I was going to bake a cake all by myself, without any of Grandmother's help. I had decided it was going to be complex: the bottom half would be rich chocolate cake, the top half would be white, and the icing that separated them and covered the whole thing would be strawberry. There would be fresh sliced strawberries on the top, coupled with chocolate curls, with strawberry icing designs in swirls and little spring flowers as well. The cake was set in a case with a glass lid to keep it safe. This was then put into a box.

It would be now or never.

The plan wasn't particularly promising. The first step was going to be to make the huge, gushingly beautiful and delicious cake and then take it from Grandmother's house to the store. That was the easy part. What wasn't going to be easy was convincing Veda who was manning the shop (albeit at a laxer hour) to try someone else's – "Yours?!" – pie at her own bakery, when she had no idea that I had been baking, nor no want for the talent. Then it would be luck, sheer luck that Veda, with her temperamental sense of taste, would even like it, let alone let me start helping out in the bakery.

And that was the big goal: to help out at the bakery. Somehow it seemed so meager, so pathetic that that's what I was going to be doing. All this work had just been for Veda's bakery?

And then I remembered something, something big. These were my baked goods – my pies, my cakes, my tortes and buns and breads and cookies and tarts and cheesecakes. People would be coming from all over town for this piece of me. No more dresses on the side overshadowed by everything else going on. If I made it as a baker in Veda's shop, I would be the one in center stage – not Laurel, not Penta, not anyone else. Me. It was almost too good to be true.

I looked at Grandmother, and she looked right back at me. It was time to show Veda I was not just something for the sidelines. I was not just a one-talent show.