Attack on Titan Fanfiction – The Stowaway: Chapter 19

Joy of Baking

Present day Paradis, two years after the war with Marley

“My favorite thing about homemade mince pies is that you can customise the filling to suit your own taste,” Mikasa told Philip. “Your dad loves vine fruit, but I prefer apricots and cranberries. Lily likes figs, while Len likes ginger and nuts. We’ll make a little bit of everything, then you can figure out which ones you like best. The next time we bake we’ll have your favorites all ready for you.”

Philip grinned at her. There were all kinds of fruit on the kitchen table. His mother was teaching him how to make her mince pies that the twins loved. He was helping her to roughly chop up the fruit into raisin-sized pieces. 

Mikasa was by the stove, lightly toasting the nuts until fragrant. Next she placed two large bowls on the table. In one of them she put ginger, sugar, spice, brandy, zest, grated apple and suet. 

“This other bowl is for you children. We’ll use fruit juice instead of booze.”

They each take a bowl and mix the ingredients, adding a little more spice, adjusting to taste. Putting the bowls aside they start on the pastry. Mikasa showed him how to sift the flour into a bowl with a good pinch of fine salt. She grated in the cold butter, then rubbed it into the flour with her fingertips.

“Here, try it,” she handed him the bowl. “Use your fingertips until the mixture looks like damp sand.”

When it was done she stirred in the ground almonds and sugar, while letting Philip whisk the egg yolks with the orange blossom water and tablespoon and a half of cold water.

“Add just enough water to bring the mix together in a firm, but not wet dough,” she instructed. Then she shows him how to shape the pastry into a ball by hand. 

She heats the oven while Philip greases four tartlets tins with butter. Rolling out half the pastry on a lightly floured surface, she lets the child cut out bases a little larger than the tin holes. 

“Line the tin holes like this,” she demonstrated. “Then fill each about three quarters full with mincemeat.”

Philip fills the pastry cups, taking care not to make a mess.

“Now I’ll tell you the secret to yummy mince pies. Put a teaspoon of cream cheese mixed with grated tangerine into each pie. It was what my Aunt Carla did. So good when freshly baked.”

They add the cheese mix to the pies. When they were done, Mikasa next rolled out half the pastry. She showed Philip how to cut out stars and hearts and flowers to cover the tin holes. 

“What other shape would you like?” she asked.

“Can we make a sailboat, especially for dad?” the boy replied. “And an anchor? And a boat wheel?”

Mikasa smiled. He was such a sweetheart, this young son of theirs. He worshipped Jean and was always thinking of ways to surprise and delight him.

Next they think of the tops for Princess Ymir’s pastries. “Lily would like a leaf. And a cat. And a dog,” he states, with touching earnestness. The leaf he was able to cut out successfully, and the cat looked acceptable with its whiskers, but the dog looked like an indistinguishable blob. Philip looked at it with dismay. “Doesn’t look like a dog at all…”

Chuckling, Mikasa told him, “No problem, kiddo. We can always roll it back into the dough.” She lets him do it, before suggesting, “Why not try a bear? Three circles should do it.” 

The bear looked as it should, and Philip was pleased. Next he suggests other shapes for Prince Eren, Jürgen, Queen Historia, Levi, Hange…

They were preparing for a casual dinner at the palace with the royal family, so the Kirschteins decided to potluck with Mikasa’s much-loved mince pies. 

She shows her little helper how to dampen the edge of the lids with milk, and press down lightly on the pies to seal, before brushing the tops with beaten egg and pricking with a fork. Philip gazes longingly into the oven as the pies bake until golden brown. They cool them on a rack and dust with icing sugar. 

“Here, have a taste before anyone else,” Mikasa hands him a just cooled, freshly baked pie. 

The delighted look on his face warmed her heart and broke it at the same time. It was so easy to make him happy. He grew up with nothing and receiving a warm, homemade pie was, for him, like being given a birthday cake. It made Mikasa all the more determined to give him every good thing she’d experienced and loved as a child. 

Because she had been happy once, when she was little. She loved helping out her mother in the kitchen, baking and cooking with her. Shortly after they adopted Mikasa, Carla Jaeger quickly noticed that the young girl enjoyed baking, and let her knead the dough and make shapes for cookies. Baking brought back happy memories of her childhood. She wanted Philip to experience the joy of baking, the satisfaction of making your own bread and pies and cakes. 

With Jean, Philip enjoyed the game of chess, and was already learning the joy of sailing. With her, she hoped he’d take an interest in the culinary arts. She taught Philip, along with the twins and Jürgen, the art of close-quarter combat for self-defense. It was a necessity, given their backgrounds. But in time she hoped Philip would also learn to enjoy the art of baking.

Philip bit into the crumbly, buttery pastry and fruit-packed filling, closing his eyes at the wonder of it. How absolutely delicious! 

“Oh Mum, it’s really, really yummy,” he tells Mikasa, who smiles at him lovingly.

When he was surviving on his own, he always made sure to steal the largest loaf of bread he could reach from the baker’s shelf. It kept him fed for a few days. The small, delicate pastries he ignored as they looked too paltry for his hungry stomach. 

Now, here he was, in his new home with his new parents, eating what he swore was the best mince pie in the whole wide world. The pastry cover was in the shape of a chess piece, the Bishop. 

Someday, he hoped Mikasa would let him bake an entire chess set.

A few weeks later, Philip deeply gladdened his mother’s heart. It was after a family dinner at home. Mikasa was washing the dishes while he dried them. Jean was sweeping the floor. 

“Mum,” he ventured, “next month is Doc Hange’s birthday.”

“Ah, yes, I almost forgot. Where’d you hear?”

“The twins and Jürgen were talking about it…talking about gifts,” he explained. 

Jürgen Schmitz, who spent most of his time in Hange’s lab, was telling his friends about the surprise party they were planning for the scientist. The twins were excited, discussing their secret gifts.

“Jürgen said he’s been making an automated can opener for the Doc,” Philip continued. “Len is planning an elaborate prank. Lily is raising a strange houseplant; says she grafted it herself, so it’s not like any other plant out there. Been growing it for three months now.”

Mikasa smiled to herself. The boy’s vocabulary has been growing by leaps and bounds, thanks to the precocious company he kept. 

“Any ideas on what you’d like to make for Hange?” she asked her son.

“I was thinking…could we bake them a cake?”

“That’s a great idea!” she exclaimed. How lovely, a sweet baking project they can work on as a family. Her heart did a happy dance.

“But it won’t be just any cake. It needs to be a rainbow cake.”

“Rainbow, eh?”

The child went on to explain. One day the four of them were at Hange’s lab, drawing people on a large sheet of paper and coloring their skin according to the hues they felt represented them best. Philip colored himself and his parents a nice blue tint, because they all liked the ocean. Lily colored her family green. Jürgen couldn’t make up his mind on what to color Hange, but just then Levi happened to be passing by. 

“Hey, Uncle Levi,” Prince Eren called out. “Help Jürgen out, won’t you? What color is Doc Hange?”

Levi came over and glanced at their weird-looking, variegated people drawings. He paused thoughtfully for a moment.

“Tough question you’ve got there. Don’t think Hange’s one color,” he answered. “They’re many colors…”

“Like a rainbow?” Jürgen asked.

“Yeah, something like that.”

And so all four of them took turns painstakingly coloring Hange in rainbow hues. 

Back at the Kirschtein home, Philip and his parents sat around the kitchen table, brainstorming cake ideas. Since Jean was the best one at drawing, he sketched out everyone’s suggestions until all three of them could agree to a cake Hange might enjoy. 

Mikasa and Philip made the edible, plant-based food dyes from scratch. Beet juice for red, turmeric for yellow, kale for green, purple cabbage for violet. For orange they simply mixed the red and yellow dyes. The blue dye was the hardest to make. First they made a purple dye out of red cabbage leaves, placing it in a pot and then boiling before cooling completely. When it was thoroughly cooled, Mikasa added the tiniest amount of baking soda and whisked it until fully dissolved. 

Together they made a colorful chiffon base in rainbow layers. When Jean came home from sea duty he did his part by washing the cooking implements and beating egg whites to make royal icing. He also ate the leftover cake pieces, telling his wife and child how great they tasted. Meanwhile, Mikasa made sugar cookie icing. 

Then all three of them worked on decorating the cookies Philip made out of cookie dough, in the shape of Hange’s numerous inventions. The cookies were meant to adorn the cake. It was a milestone birthday for the good scientist and they decided to celebrate Hange’s contributions to human progress.

How happy they were that day, a little family decorating a colorful cake for a wonderful person they all cared for.

During the party, Philip grinned from ear-to-ear as he wheeled out the cake while everyone around him sang happy birthday. He glanced at his smiling parents, who looked on proudly. Hange blew out the candles and gave him a big hug, making sure to express delight over the cake’s carefully layered rainbow tones.

“I can’t eat it, it looks too good,” the resident genius exclaimed. 

“But you must cut it up and eat it, Doc Hange,” Philip insisted. “It’s the inside that looks the nicest. And tastes the best.”

Mikasa overheard the exchange and felt blessed. Yes, indeed, the outside may look nice, but it’s the inside that really counts.

Thank you so much for reading! Please consider sharing a thought or two in the comment section below. If you have a favourite mince pie or rainbow cake recipe feel free to link to it below. Your comments give me life and are a real source of encouragement. xoxo, hana

Reference

The mince pie recipe step-by-step is a slightly modified take on Felicity Cloake’s version as found in the Food section of The Guardian. It is also available in book form: Completely Perfect: 120 Essential Recipes for Every Cook (2018. Westminster, London: Penguin Books).

Next – Chapter 20: How to Dock a Boat

Back – Chapter 18: The Saddest Day