Lie Ren (bringstheflour) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2018-03-13 17:36:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, lie ren, ruby rose |
Who: Ren and Ruby
What: Baking!
When: 18 February
Where: Xiao-Long-Rose home
Warnings: Low
Status: Log | Complete
Ren was looking forward to making cookies with Ruby, although after his conversation with her father on the Network, he was no longer sure if it was a good idea to be doing the baking at her house. He generally preferred to avoid confrontation, and whatever strange OC event was going on now seemed to have made Ruby’s father strangely hostile toward Ren.
Still, baking at his apartment was likely an even worse idea. It was a little small for two people to be cooking at once, and if Nora was home, the odds were about fifty-fifty that Nora would start eating the cookies before they were even cool.
He’d brought most of the ingredients and the supplies, including the syrup that he had put aside, and held them in a tote bag, which he had nestled in the crook of his arm. Then he rang the doorbell.
Somehow Ruby had managed to talk her dad down - at least from attacking her friends. She wasn’t sure if he was still in ridiculous over protective mode or not, but given the sabotaging of the Cloud, hopefully he’d be distracted. But she had also chosen a time when her dad would be busy elsewhere. So hopefully it would be fine.
Before Ren had shown up, Ruby had made sure that Zwei wasn’t wired or anything just in case, plus making sure that all the baking utensils were clean and out and ready to be used. Trying to keep up with where the others were in terms of Dreams was sometimes complicated but the arrival of the sap at least told her where Ren was.
Hearing the bell, Ruby did one last look before going to answer the door.
“Hi, Ren!” Letting him in, she twisted her hair up into a bun as it was longer than it was in the Dreams so that it wouldn’t get in the way.
“Hello,” Ren said, smiling a little as he entered Ruby’s home. “Thank you for having me over.” He slipped his shoes off in the doorway, glancing around with mild curiosity as they made their way to the kitchen. It was obviously a house that was filled with love, and despite never having been there before, he already felt comfortable in it. He placed his bag of supplies on the kitchen table, and began to unpack some things, including the half-empty jar of red syrup.
“Of course!” Even with her dad being super weird right now, it wasn’t like Ruby wouldn’t have invited Ren over to bake. And even if their family wasn’t quite traditional, they remained a family and the house showed that. But there was no real perfect cut out on what family and home should mean. Either way, Ruby was just happy to be able to bake and relax in the process. Usually she relaxed by tinkering on things but this was a good way to do so as well. And making cookies for people.
As Ren got the ingredients all set, Ruby put the bowls and whisks and everything that was needed in a proper order.
“So where should we start?”
Ren went to the oven to preheat it, and then looked over at the ingredients. “First, we’ll mix together the wet ingredients, and mix together the dry ingredients,” he said. Cookies were generally pretty simple, and he thought that the recipe he had found for some maple cookies would work nicely. “Did you have a preference?”
That made sense. And it would go faster with two of them since one could do the wet ingredients and the other could do the dry. As for if she had a preference?
“Nope. I’m flexible!”
And focused. As for Zwei? He had come to the kitchen and was sitting at the entrance and looking between the two to see what was going on. Otherwise though the corgi was behaving. And decidedly not being a spy for her dad and his Orange County induced weirdness.
Ren gathered the recipe and the ingredients for Ruby to measure and to mix together. “You just have to mix them together until they’re well blended,” he said. He turned to grab the dry ingredients that he would mix together when he noticed Zwei, and he smiled at the dog. He had never had a pet himself. It wasn’t as though he and Nora could have kept an animal while they were living on the streets, and once they finally started renting their first apartment, they’d barely had enough money to feed themselves, let alone another animal. But he’d always been fond of animals. “This must be Zwei,” he said.
Ruby was pretty proficient when it came to baking. She could cook other things as well but baking was something she was pretty good at. Mostly because it was one of the things she remembered about her mom and so had wanted to be able to do in an attempt to be closer to the woman after she had died. So once she was handed the wet ingredients, Ruby went to measuring things just so and blending as she was told.
The comment about Zwei gave Ruby pause as she looked to where the dog was patiently sitting, just watching. “Yep! And I made sure he wasn’t wired before you showed up.”
Ren likewise started the sift the dry ingredients together, though when Ruby mentioned Zwei not being wired he had to turn to look at her, confusion on his face. “Wired? Was that a concern?” he asked.
All Ruby could do was nod sagely as she let out a sigh. It was quite serious, she’d been betrayed by the dog. “Yep. Dad’s on this whole…. Having to document everything as you saw and he got Zwei involved. Camera, wires, he snuck into my backpack and filmed me while I was ice skating!”
Shooting a look to said co-conspirator with her dad (who just decided to look back innocently), Ruby shrugged. “But it’s not a concern now.”
Ren smiled, amused. He had, of course, realized that Ruby’s father was apparently on some kind of photo taking streak, though how he'd managed to managed to make the dog go along with his plans was beyond Ren. He was glad to hear that it wasn't a concern now. There was something disturbing about being filmed by a hidden camera on the dog.
“Is he… always like that?” Ren ventured. He had seen some other people on the network acting strangely, and so he would not have been surprised to hear that it was a relatively recent thing.
“Nope. Not to that extent anyway. I mean, he’s overprotective of Yang and me and likes to be involved, but he isn’t so…… all of that.”
Because the pictures had been awkward enough. But even her dad wouldn’t just post pictures like that and then insist it was fine because the ‘world had to see their cuteness’ and get Zwei involved. While Ruby’s main worry about her dad on the network involved him dreaming and again losing both Yang’s mom and her mom, the weird things that happened was also a concern even though she knew he’d say she didn’t need to worry about him. That it was his job to worry instead.
Ren smiled. He imagined it would have been a little overbearing if Ruby’s father was always so camera happy and made a habit of attacking her friends for both not thinking she was cute enough while also still somehow thinking that they wanted to date her, but if it was just the Orange County making people acting strange, it was almost sweet.
“I should try meeting him again when he’s more normal,” Ren said. “Are you ready for us to mix all of it together?”
“You definitely should.” After all, Taiyang was a good man and she felt that he’d like Ren. You know, when he wasn’t being impacted by the weirdness that was Orange County and being all over the top about everything involving her and Yang. But then there was the question about being ready to mix everything together and she nodded, “Yep!”
Ren nodded and then took the bowl from Ruby so he could mix the two bowls together. It seemed fair, given that Ruby had had the harder of the two initial mixing jobs. When that was done, he placed the bowl down, the dough a rather pretty shade of pink. “Now all that’s left is putting the cookies on the tray,” he said, proud of the work they’d done so far.
While Ruby wouldn’t have minded mixing the two sets of ingredients, she was also content to let Ren do so, instead leaning against the counter to watch. At least until he mentioned the tray at which point she pushed herself off her leaning perch to get the tray and bring it over. “One tray at your service!”
And just in time as the oven went off as it had finished preheating.
Ren didn’t know how much Ruby knew about making cookies, though he had the feeling she must have had at least a bit of experience with them, especially with how smoothly her portion of the mixing had turned out.
“Should we just make them general cookie shape, or would you rather shape them specifically?” Ren asked. He would, of course, set aside a few cookies for his team and even a couple for Caroline, but a stronger motivation had been for the other people of Remnant to be able to enjoy a taste of the Grimm-filled land, since they hadn’t all come for pancakes. Which meant that most of these cookies would be going to Ruby’s team, and so if she wanted to do something else then he was all for it.
Pausing for a moment, Ruby shrugged.
“I have…” digging around in a drawer for a moment, Ruby grinned. “Aha, here it is. Star shaped cookie cutters!” Because of course she did. But it they were easier to pass along than dog shaped cookies given Blake was averse to dogs and who knew how Weiss would react to that. Stars were more generic and well they were fun because there were also different sizes since once you got to excess dough, sometimes the normal sizes didn’t work so well.
Stars did seem like a shape that would please everyone. At the very least, no one could complain. So Ren rolled out the dough, and then stepped back to let Ruby cut out the cookies.
With the dough rolled to an appropriate thickness, Ruby took the spot Ren had been at and began to cut out the shapes and place them on the cookie sheets. And just as she expected, thanks to the different sizes of cookie cutters, there was no excess dough left by the end of the process.
“Okay! They’re ready to go in!”
Ren was impressed with Ruby’s ability to use all of the dough. He was sure if he had tried, there definitely would have been a bit left over, but Ruby had mentioned that she enjoyed puzzles and seeing how things fit together. There was no doubt that she had an eye for this kind of thing.
“Great,” Ren said opening the oven for Ruby. “In no time at all, we’ll have some great Remnant cookies.”