“Uhh... Where was the flour, again? Not the white flour—the whole wheat.”
“Over here, Madame!”
“Thanks! Next up, I need, uh...sugar...and eggs...”
“Here you go. Have at it.”
There I was, cooking for you live from the Fisalis manor kitchen! Well, I say “cooking,” but I wasn’t making any real food—just baking cookies. Cartham was the one setting out the ingredients for me on command.
“The recipe calls for candied camellia fruit too...but my mother used to make that herself, so there’s no way we’d have it here.”
Now this was a problem.
Though our kitchen had just about anything you could name, it was nothing but luxury ingredients. Seeing as my family had been deep in the depths of poverty, all our foodstuffs had been commoner-tier, and we’d provided for ourselves however we could. Our candied fruit, for example, had been homemade with the pickings from our garden trees.
“If we don’t have something, there’s not much to be done about it. Why don’t you substitute something we do have?” Cartham suggested, fishing out some dried fruit from the stock. Top-of-the-line dried fruit, naturally.
“That’s not a bad idea, but it might taste different if I do that.”
I wanted to follow the recipe as closely as possible to replicate the taste of my mother’s cooking—and that meant making some things from scratch.
What exactly was I trying to make, you might be wondering?
“Cookies” was the short version, but these weren’t just any cookies; I was specifically attempting to reproduce a treat that my mother used to make back home. The Euphorbia household wasn’t exactly loaded with cash, so whipping up all our meals and snacks herself had been par for the course.
One of her favorite treats to bake for me had been the cookies I just mentioned.
Back when I lived with my parents, I used to watch my mother make them all the time. It had been a while since then, however, so my recollection of the ratios was a little fuzzy. Though I did remember the ingredient list, if nothing else.
“The recipe calls for flour, butter, eggs, sugar, and dried fruit. We’ve got everything set out, but now the question is how much of each to put in.” I stared daggers at the ingredients lined up on the counter, doing my darndest to remember how this went.
“Madame! You’ll get wrinkles on your forehead! Such a waste of beauty!”
“Oh, whoops. Was I frowning that hard? I just can’t seem to remember the proper ratios for everything, that’s all.”
“Then why don’t you try basing it off a similar recipe?” he suggested, letting me have a look at his own version. Ooh, this is valuable information! Thanks a bunch!
Grateful for the help, I was officially pumped to give this thing a try. “All right, it’s time to make a test batch!”
So why did I decide to make these cookies in the first place, you ask? Well, it all goes back to something that adorable daughter of mine said...
✦ ✦ ✦
Rewind to a few days earlier.
Mr. Fisalis was going to be on a business trip for a couple days, so Violet and I went to stay with my parents at the Euphorbia manor.
Violet may have been the star of the Fisalis manor, but that was nothing compared to how much the Euphorbias adored her. My little brother, Thistle; my little sister, Freesia; and even my frequently absent father had all been eagerly awaiting her arrival.
“Grandpa! Granny! Thistle! Freesia! Hi!”
Seeing our little Violet grown-up enough to greet the family brought a smile to everyone’s faces.
My father threw open his arms in welcome, and Violet flung herself right at him.
“Thanks for coming, kiddo! What do you feel like playing today?” Father lifted her up in his arms, totally gaga over her already! He sure did love to spoil that girl rotten.
My contract—ahem! I mean, my marriage had managed to free my family from rock-bottom poverty. The bridewealth alone had been enough to wipe their debts clean, and between that and the aid they’d continued to receive from the Fisalis family afterwards, they were far from destitute. Why, they even had a little money to spare these days!
Father, Thistle, and Freesia played with Violet in the living room. The only ones around to watch over this heartwarming scene were our butler, Orchis, and the same old family maid. Hardly anything had changed since I’d left home to get married.
“Now that you can afford it, you should hire a few more servants,” I said to my mother. “Isn’t it hard for you and the one maid to handle all this work by yourselves?”
“Goodness, no! This is all we need. I have much more fun staying active than I would living the leisurely life of a countess.”
Wow, Mom, that’s the most relatable thing I’ve ever heard.
So there you have it—as usual, it was just my mother and our small handful of servants running the Euphorbia manor.
“Lettie, Thistle, Freesia! It’s snack time!” Mother announced, bringing in a basket from the kitchen. Inside was a small batch of cookies hot from the oven.
“Oh, wow! Hooray!”
“I’ll grab one for you, Lettie.”
“Thank you, Freesia.”
My parents and I got a case of the warm fuzzies as we watched the three kids happily chow down on their treats. These freshly baked, fragrant cookies were my mother’s homemade specialty.
Violet soon came over to me with a cookie in hand, insisting, “Here, Mommy! You have one too!” The moment I took a bite, a nostalgic flavor exploded in my mouth.
“Mmm, this is so good! The taste is as great as ever! Man, the camellia skin gives it such a nice flavor.”
“I made sure to candy plenty of camellia fruits this year. It’s a handy way to preserve them.”
Yep, you heard me—this recipe called for camellia fruit skins.
Cleaning may be the first thing to come to mind at the mention of a camellia fruit, but it’s perfectly edible too! It has a tart but refreshing flavor. Back at the Fisalis manor, we always used the juice in our cooking, then kept the leftover skins for cleaning. Here at the Euphorbias’, however, we would get even further use out of those fruits by zesting them for flavoring or preserving thin slices of the outermost skin in sugar.
The aforementioned candied peels were a key ingredient in these cookies.
“Talking about camellias sure takes me back. I remember how you used to send me out into the garden to pick some so I could peel and candy them.”
“What, you don’t do that anymore?”
“I couldn’t even if I wanted to!”
“Oh, fair point.”
Two days later, Mr. Fisalis came to pick us up on his way home from his business trip, which marked the end of our homecoming. The three of us went back to the Fisalis manor together.
And that brings us to today.
“I want to eat Granny’s cookies,” Violet announced.
“Granny’s not here, sweetie. She can make some the next time we go visit. I’ll be sure to mention it to her.”
“But I want them now!”
“Hmm... What to do...?”
Violet was usually pretty good about listening to what I said, but this was bad timing. With how close it was getting to her naptime, her sleepiness was turning her into a little terror. And if I told her “no” too harshly, it’d just make her burst into tears.
Oh, I know!
“I’ll make you a batch myself! Does that sound good?”
“Yeah!”
“While you’re napping like a good little girl, I’ll be doing my best to make you those cookies.”
“Okay! I’ll have a nappy-nap like a good little girl.”
It looked like I’d succeeded in winning her favor.
“Why don’t you take your nappy-nap with Daddy?” Mr. Fisalis, who had been listening in on our conversation thus far, scooped Violet up in his arms and assumed bedtime duty. “I’ll go put her to sleep, so you just worry about making those cookies, Vi.”
“Please and thank you!”
Leaving my husband and daughter behind in the parlor, I hurried off to the kitchen.
And that brings us back to the beginning of our story.