Page 38 of Princesses & Pastries
"The yeast is a surprise ingredient to me," I say. "I would never have guessed it was in them from the stroopwafels you sent me a few months ago."
"It was a surprise to me too," he says. "And I asked the pastry chef in Wafeland about it, and he said something about the rise and the taste." Nate grabs a cloth and comes over to wipe the table, but stops when he sees me and lets out a laugh.
"What?" I ask.
"You have flour on your cheek," he says.
"So do you," I reply, even though he doesn't.
"No, I don't."
Feeling playful, I swipe my finger through the pile of flour still on the table and dab it against his nose. "Now you do."
His eyes are full of laughter as he looks at me. "What was that for?"
"You said I have flour on my cheek," I say.
"You do." He reaches out and brushes it away with his thumb, the touch feeling far more affectionate and like it means far more than it does.
I catch my breath. He's just brushing away flour. It doesn't mean anything other than that.
Except that it feels like it does. The air around us feels heavy with something I don't recognise, but want to explore.
Nate clears his throat and pulls back, leaving me with a disappointed feeling within me. He brushes the flour off his nose and wipes down the table.
"We should be about ready to make the stroop," he says, a strange note in his voice.
"Are you all right?" I ask.
"I'm fine," he says. "Do we have everything we need?"
I frown, feeling as if things aren't fine, but not really knowing why. Instead of questioning it, I look over the ingredient list printed in his neat handwriting, and check against the things we've got, including the jar of keukenstroop that arrived with my cousins earlier. It's been a long time since I've tried any. Curiously, I pull it towards me and open the lid.
It's thick and dark, and mostly smells sweet.
"Here," Nate says, holding out a spoon to me.
I take it from him and touch the edge to the syrup to get a little bit to try. My eyes widen as it hits my tongue. "It's not as sweet as I thought."
"No. But it will be when we've added a load of sugar."
"And butter, and cinnamon. That's going to taste good. Are we making a caramel?" I ask.
He shakes his head. "It shouldn't go that far." He measures out the ingredients into a pan and takes it over to the stove. "You should also bring the waffle iron, we'll need to heat it and then brush it with butter."
"Does it need rebrushing between each of the stroopwafels?" I ask, grabbing the iron and bringing it over to the stove.
"No, it should be fine without, they've got enough butter in them."
Nate lights a stove for himself and does one for me too. The whoosh is enough to draw Ember's attention, but she soon settles back down.
"She's probably disappointed that we haven't been out to the ice house and brought her meat back," I muse as I place the waffle iron heat to start warming it.
"I can do that when we're finished. I need to go get the croissant dough to do another turn on it."
"Do you always make croissants this much?"
"It's one of my daily tasks," he says. "I find it gives me a lot of time to think."
