Grace Stirs It Up

by Mary Casanova

  “That works for me,” Ella said with a nod.

  “And we can’t spend all our time deciding what to bake each time,” I added, checking the clock. “So maybe the person who does prep should just pick the recipe.”

  I glanced up at Maddy, who seemed too quiet all of a sudden. She stood straight and bristly as a broomstick. Her lips were clamped tight. What’s she unhappy about now? I wondered. Doesn’t she get it?

  Ella must have noticed, too, because she said brightly, “Maddy, do you want to take prep this time? Then we can try macarons, like you wanted.”

  Maddy exhaled slowly. “Sounds fine,” she said, but not very enthusiastically. “Let’s get started.”

  She began reading off the ingredients we’d need from the recipe. “Sugar.”

  I opened the door of the cupboard where we kept our dry baking goods, and Ella reached for the bag of sugar. “Check,” she said after placing the sugar on the counter.

  Bonbon trotted in from the living room and pawed at my leg, wanting to play. “Not now,” I said.

  “Eggs,” said Maddy.

  I opened the refrigerator door. “Check.”

  “Flour,” Maddy said.

  But just as Ella turned from the cupboard with half a bag of flour, Zulu barked from the yard next door, and Bonbon dashed across the kitchen right in front of Ella.

  Ella tottered and lost her balance. As she went down, the bag of flour slipped from her hands.

  “Ella!” I cried.

  The bag hit the floor with a thud and erupted like a volcano. White flour spewed into the air, settling across the floor and the kitchen cabinets.

  As I rushed toward Ella, I tripped over Bonbon’s water bowl, sending a stream of water across the kitchen floor. Bonbon—terrified by the clatter of the bowl—slipped and slid right across that floury mess as she raced out of the kitchen.

  “Bonbon!” I called. But before I could catch her, Dad’s voice rang out from the living room.

  “What in the world?! Grace! Get your dog!”

  Josh dashed in from the garage. “What’s going on?”

  Bonbon heard the opened door and came tearing back through the kitchen, bolting right past Josh into the garage. I darted after her, but the garage door was wide open to the night. “Bonbon!”

  This time, I knew where to look. I rounded the house and found Bonbon nose to nose with Zulu, who began to lick flour from Bonbon’s fur. “Thanks, Zulu,” I said, “but I’ll give her a real bath.”

  I carried Bonbon back through the garage, where Josh’s latest bike project was dismantled and spread across the floor like dinosaur bones.

  “Good luck with that,” I said, nodding at his project.

  “Yeah, and good luck with that,” he replied, as I stepped into the house with a very dirty dog.

  In some ways, my whole idea of launching a business had become even more messy and overwhelming than Josh’s bike project. There were so many pieces that had to come together to make it all work.

  I wondered if my friends and I would ever get any further than buying a few things at the grocery store and baking a few recipes. Right now, turning baking into a real business seemed nearly hopeless.

  I went directly to the laundry room and plopped Bonbon into the utility sink. “I’m in here if anyone needs me!” I called out to the kitchen.

  “You look like you’ve been dipped in white chocolate,” I told Bonbon as I filled the sink with warm water.

  I scrubbed her with tearless oatmeal dog shampoo until her black spots and black button nose returned to normal. When I wrapped her in a towel, she shook her way right out of it, but I managed to dry her off at least a little bit.

  When we returned to the kitchen, I put Bonbon in her crate and closed her door. “You have to be all the way dry before you’re going anywhere,” I told her.

  Then I turned to my friends, who were on their hands and knees beside a scrub bucket, working flour paste off the floor and the bottoms of the kitchen cabinets. Flour is an amazing baking ingredient, but it’s a real headache to clean up.

  Mom was scrubbing the floor, too, in one of the farthest corners of the kitchen. Had the flour made it all the way over there?

  “Thanks for helping,” I said to her.

  She glanced over her shoulder at me and gave me “the look,” so I immediately added, “You can stop now, Mom. We’ll take care of it.”

  She didn’t hesitate to hand me her sponge.

  My friends and I kept at it, rinsing out the flour-turned-clay bits from our rags and sponges. We rinsed and washed and rinsed again until the kitchen was sparkling clean.

  “There!” I said as we put away the bucket and our supplies. “Good as new. Now we can go back to making macarons!”

  I glanced at the clock. It was already 7:45. I shot Mom a silent question.

  In return, she shook her head. “Grace, I don’t know what to say. I know you girls had big plans, but it’s getting late. Why not start in tomorrow?”

  “But Mom, we didn’t plan to have an accident!” I said, trying not to whine.

  “I know, but accidents happen, and sometimes we have to come up with a new plan,” she said. “How about this? For tonight, instead of tackling a new recipe, why don’t you stick to something quick and easy—maybe something you already know.”

  Maddy, Ella, and I glanced at one another. Then we put our heads together and whispered a few ideas—a baker’s huddle.

  “What can we do?” asked Maddy. “The only two recipes we’ve made so far are yogurt cake and madeleines.”

  “Can we do madeleines with a twist?” suggested Ella. “Is there a way to make them taste different—or maybe look different?”

  Bonbon whined from her crate, as if offering her two cents. “Speaking of looking different,” I said, “you should have seen Bonbon before her bath. She looked like a pup dipped in white chocolate.”

  I laughed with my friends, but then suddenly stopped. “Wait…that’s it!” I said loudly. “What if we dip some of the madeleines we already made in chocolate?”

  “I love it!” Ella said. “I guess good ideas can come from accidents.”

  “You mean disasters,” Maddy added with a grin.

  “I love it, too, Grace,” said Mom, who must have overheard our conversation. “You came up with something easy that shouldn’t take much time. This tired mom appreciates that.”

  Mom’s eyelids did look a bit droopy. She’d put in ten miles that morning, and it was catching up to her. Dad must have noticed, too, because he put a hand on her shoulder.

  “Hey, I can help you girls melt the chocolate,” he said. “And if you need a food critic—I’m your guy. I come with lots of tasting and eating experience.”

  Mom smiled with relief. “Oh good! Then I’m going to get into my pajamas early.”

  With a flashlight at hand, we settled into our sleeping bags in the shadowy tent. A mosquito buzzed and hummed around our heads, until Ella finally slapped it.

  “I can’t believe it’s so late already,” I said. “We spent the whole evening in the kitchen!”

  “Baking takes time,” Ella said. “But the madeleines dipped in chocolate were worth it. They were so delicious!”

  “And Josh and your dad gave us great reviews,” said Maddy, yawning. “I’m keeping a folder full of them for our brochures—I mean, for whenever we finally get around to making them.”

  Was Maddy still upset about not doing the brochures yet? I couldn’t think about that right now—I was too happy. I just stared up at the tent ceiling, smiling. “I’m proud of us,” I finally said.

  “Yeah?” said Maddy.

  “Yeah. We didn’t give up tonight, did we?” I asked my friends.

  “We didn’t,” Ella agreed.

  A perfect, peaceful moment followed. Maybe we were all thinking about how hard we’d been working on our business this week.

  Then I heard Maddy’s heavy breathing from beside me. She must have fallen asleep.

&nb
sp; I had started to nod off too when…

  Scritch. Something brushed against the tent.

  I sat up, my heart picking up speed. Was it a branch? But we’d pitched our tent clear of all the overhanging branches.

  “What was that?” Ella said, rising to her elbow.

  I listened. Crickets sang, high-pitched and comforting.

  Scritch. Scritch. Again, the nylon fabric rustled.

  Maddy woke up. “What was that?”

  For a few moments, we heard nothing. Then the sound returned.

  Scritch. Scritch.

  Then came a weird sound, as if the wind were picking up just outside the door of our tent. But the tent wasn’t moving. The night was still.

  Whoooooooooo! Shoooooooo!

  A tingle of fear tickled my neck.

  And then came a low, spooky, and familiar whisper. “Falling, falling like a blizzard of snow…Flour is falling all around you…It’s up to your knees and still it’s falling, falling…”

  “Josh!”

  I snatched up the flashlight, clicked it on, and shined it out the screen door. The light lit up the grin on my brother’s face.

  “Josh! Quit trying to scare us.”

  “Hey, I just wanted to make sure you weren’t having any nightmares,” he said with fake sincerity. “You know, baking nightmares.”

  “Ha, ha, ha,” I replied.

  “The only nightmare is you,” Maddy said, “trying to scare us half to death.”

  “Brothers,” Ella added. “Grace, at least you have only one. Imagine having three!”

  I snorted. “I can’t imagine that.” I lay back down in my sleeping bag, which suddenly felt cold and lumpy. “Thanks to you, Josh, now I probably won’t sleep at all.”

  “Well, good night then, girls,” Josh said overly nicely. “Sweet dreams.”

  When he was gone, my friends and I stayed awake for a while, replaying what we’d heard and what we’d each thought the sounds might have been.

  “I was pretty sure it was a bear, sniffing out its next meal,” Ella confessed.

  Maddy took it a step further. “I heard a skeleton scratching the tent with its bony finger,” she said in a spooky voice, which sent a shiver down my back.

  “What did you think it was?” asked Ella, scooting a little closer to me.

  “I had no idea,” I said, “but I should have suspected Josh was up to another prank. He’s so not funny.”

  But when I thought about Josh’s words about flour falling like a blizzard, I started giggling—and that set Ella and Maddy off, too. Once we started giggling, we just couldn’t stop.

  Finally I took a ragged breath to calm myself down, and wiped tears from my eyes. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d laughed so hard with my friends. Everything felt like old times again between us.

  I fought back a yawn. I didn’t want this night to end!

  fter the flour blizzard incident, Mom insisted that I crate Bonbon any time my friends and I were in the kitchen. But crating Bonbon was getting harder and harder!

  On Sunday morning when I tried to put her in, she braced her front legs against the crate’s doorframe and pushed back. I finally squeezed her in, shut the door, and said, “Sorry, Bonbon. Just for a little while—I promise.”

  She immediately began to paw at the metal door to get out.

  “You’re okay,” I said. “I’m not keeping you in there forever.”

  But instead of settling in for her usual morning nap, Bonbon put her head on her paws, stared at me, and whined.

  “Poor baby,” said Ella as she tied on her apron.

  We tried to ignore the whining as we wrapped up last night’s batch of chocolate-dipped madeleines. Then I grabbed my tablet and motioned Ella and Maddy to the bay window near the kitchen table.

  “Get comfy,” I said.

  With its red gingham pillows, the window seat was the perfect cozy place to read—or in this case, to watch cooking videos.

  When we were all squeezed onto the seat together, I showed Ella and Maddy a list of online videos I’d discovered.

  “Ooh, let’s watch the macaron video first,” Maddy said. “That was the next thing we were going to make, remember?”

  The video was short, and it made macarons look pretty easy—and beautiful. The colorful little sandwich cookies looked just like the ones I’d seen in the windows of Paris pâtisseries, each one perfectly matching the next.

  Ella and I mixed up a batch of rose-tinted batter while Maddy spread out a sheet of parchment paper and began drawing little circles on it with a pencil.

  “Wait, Maddy!” I said. “The video showed how to trace the circles around the cap of a bottle or jar, remember?”

  Maddy paused, pencil in the air. “What’s the difference?” she said. “I’m a good artist. I’m pretty sure I can draw circles that are about the same size.”

  But when I looked at the circles she had drawn, I could see that they weren’t exactly the same size.

  “Just do it the right way, Maddy, okay?” I persisted. “They won’t turn out like the ones in the video otherwise.”

  “Wow, Grace, who made you the boss?” Maddy snapped. Her words hung in the air like the smell of burned batter.

  Here we go again, I thought as we stared each other down.

  “This might work,” I said, quickly unscrewing the cap from an empty orange juice bottle on the counter. I washed and dried the cap, and then handed it to Maddy.

  She took the cap, but she wouldn’t look at me. I turned my back to her, too, to help Ella pour our batter into a pastry bag.

  When it was time to turn over the parchment paper so that the pencil marks wouldn’t touch the batter, I could clearly see Maddy’s tracings. I tried to ignore the fact that a whole row of circles looked different from the other ones. We took turns ooping out the batter to fill the circles.

  While we waited for the macarons to set, or to harden a little, I tried to lighten the mood. I started singing “Frère Jacques” while we mixed up the filling for the macarons.

  Maddy stayed silent, but Ella joined in, which reminded me of singing rounds with Sylvie in Paris. The memory pinched at my chest. I missed my cousin! Bonbon began whining again. Was she missing Paris, too?

  After a while, I touched the top of one of the macarons. I felt a hard skin, which meant that the macarons were ready to bake. “Perfect!” I announced. “C’est parfait.”

  Maddy groaned. “Grace, we know you went to Paris. Quit showing off.”

  Showing off? “I’m not trying to show off, Maddy,” I said. “I just love the language, and if I don’t ever use it, I’ll forget what I’ve learned.”

  “But ‘Frère Jacques,’ too?” Maddy said. “Aren’t you going a little overboard?”

  A thousand things to say went through my head, but none of them were very nice—or would help our business. So I stepped out of the kitchen and called for my mom to help put the macarons into the oven.

  My friends and I waited in silence for a moment, until Ella—good old Ella—spoke up. “You’re lucky to have a cousin who speaks French,” she said to me. “I hope someday Sylvie can come here so that we can meet her, too.”

  I agreed. “That would be so cool.”

  Maddy, of course, said nothing.

  Before noon, we’d somehow managed to create a batch of macarons mounded beautifully on a purple plate. They weren’t all perfect—some of the circles were larger than others. But I’d tucked some of the mismatched ones on the bottom of the plate when Maddy wasn’t looking.

  I took out my phone and snapped a photo. Click!

  Mom, Dad, and Josh sampled the first macarons while Ella, Maddy, and I hovered, waiting for their reactions.

  Dad used his card-playing face as he sampled the first one. He kept his eyes down, his face stony and impossible to read. “Hmm…”

  Josh did a drumroll with his fingers on the edge of the table.

  “Well?” I asked, the anticipation killing me. “What do you t
hink?”

  My stomach clenched with waiting.

  “Mmmm,” Mom said after her first bite. “I see a growing problem…”

  “What’s that?” I asked, bouncing from foot to foot, hoping we hadn’t made some drastic mistake in the recipe.

  Mom pinched her waist and laughed. “But, wow, girls. These are delicious! Your macarons are a delight to the eyes and to the taste buds.”

  Josh grabbed a second macaron. “I’m not so sure,” he said. “I need another shot at this.” Then he practically swallowed the cookie whole.

  “Mr. Thomas,” Ella asked. “You haven’t said anything yet. Don’t you like them?”

  “Hmm…I can’t tell yet,” he said. “Maybe one more.” He grinned and grabbed another macaron from the plate.

  Josh reached for a third. “For the road,” he said, and then he headed for the door.

  “Wait, Josh—we need your review!” I called out impatiently.

  He paused in the doorway and raised his macaron like he was giving a toast. “I love ’em,” he said before popping the cookie into his mouth.

  I wrote down my mom’s “Delicious! A delight to the eyes and to the taste buds!” and Josh’s “I love ’em!” in our notebook so that we’d have them when we made brochures.

  “Dad?” I said, as he finished his second macaron. “You have to tell us what you think.”

  “One word,” he said. “Divine.”

  With a smile, I glanced at Ella and Maddy. We’d done it! And then I added Dad’s comment to our short but growing list of reviews.

  Then I thought of something. I tore out the page of reviews and handed it to Maddy. “Do you want to start designing the brochure, Maddy?”

  It still seemed a little soon for a brochure. I mean, we had only made a few French treats so far. But I had to do something to try to fix things between Maddy and me.

  Maddy cocked her head suspiciously. “But I thought you said it was too early for that, Grace,” she said hesitantly.

  I shrugged. “It doesn’t hurt to get started, does it? And if you want, I can e-mail you photos of treats, too.”