Holiday Baking
By Carrie Rene
Summary: Lois’ attempt at baking during Season’s Greedings. Ever wonder how Lois was going to make everything for dinner? With one little oven, how did she get everything done in time?
Notes: Thank you ksarasara for beta-reading this for me. Once again, you rock! Without your help, it would have just been about the pie!
Part 1/1
“Turkey is in the oven,” Lois said to herself as she closed the oven. Looking around her small kitchen, she realized she still had tons to do. The turkey would take hours. Now she should get started on the pies.
She got all of the ingredients that the recipe called for. Luckily she had been able to find a cookbook at the local bookstore with an easy pie recipe.
“How hard could this be?” she mumbled. She was going all out for this dinner so she decided to attempt a homemade pie crust.
She took the shortening, flour, and salt and mixed them in the bowl with a fork like the recipe called for. Then she slowly poured water into the bowl and used the fork again to mix. She poured dough on the counter after it was all mixed together. She tried to move the dough together, but it kept sticking to the counter. She read the recipe over again and realized she needed to flour the counter. Lois had found a roller in her kitchen in one of the drawers, not sure where it had come from. She floured the roller and the dough, plus the counter again. There was flour all over her kitchen now. As soon as Lois put the dough in the pan, she realized this was going to be harder than she thought.
Lois cleaned out the bowl she had used for the dough and decided she didn’t need more dirty dishes. Now she was onto the actual pumpkin pie, she opened the can of pumpkin pie mix. After pouring it into the bowl, she added the sweetened condensed milk, two eggs, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and salt. Lois used her hand mixer and mixed it all together. Then poured it into the formed dough.
Now that the pie was ready to put in the oven, she couldn’t figure out where to put the pie. It needed to bake for fifteen minutes at 425 degrees. She did the calculations in her head. If the turkey was set at 325 and the pie needed to be at 425, maybe she could put the pie in at 325 and bake it longer. Yup, that is what she would do.
She moved the turkey over in the oven very carefully. Now the pumpkin pie could bake for thirty minutes, and hopefully, she would have a perfect pie. She wasn’t sure who would be here tonight, but they would have really good pie. Lois cleaned up her mess and pulled her ponytail tighter.
It was fifteen minutes later when she smelled something burning. Grabbing a pot holder she opened the oven door to see a burnt pie crust. She had failed at baking even a standard pumpkin pie. Lois opened the refrigerator, pulled out the whipped cream, and took a large spoonful. Then she dug into the pie filling to see if it tasted good. Lois made a sour face since she could taste the spices. So she took another spoonful of whipped cream to get the nasty taste out of her mouth. She dumped the pie in the trash with a sigh.
If there was no pie, at least she could cheer herself up with the whipped cream. Lois had more pressing matters now. The non-cook had the whole rest of an entire Christmas dinner she had to cook. One bad pie wasn’t going to ruin her attempt at having all her friends over to celebrate the holiday season.
Now she had to figure out how to make the yams, stuffing, and cranberries. Was she going to have enough time? She decided to start on the stuffing since it likely takes the longest next to the turkey. She cut up the dried french bread and then put some butter in a medium size pan. Lois let the butter sit on the stove while she cut up the onion. The onion started to make her tear up then she noticed the burning smell. Looking at the stove, her butter had burned, yet figured it was still good enough to use. She tossed in the onion, turned down the heat, and cut up some celery. No pieces were the same size. Lois Lane was good with weapons, but not cutting up fruit or vegetables. The recipe then told her to put the dried bread crumbs into the pan with the remaining ingredients such as poultry seasoning, salt, and pepper. She put all of it in a baking dish and coated it with chicken broth.
Another dish that needed the oven. How did people make these fancy dinners with just one oven? How was she supposed to bake the stuffing? She still didn’t understand why the stuffing didn’t already come in the turkey. Was this all worth it when she didn’t know who was coming to dinner?
With another sigh, she fell onto the couch after fifteen minutes of burning another dish. Lois had tried once again to bake the stuffing in the oven with the turkey. Now she was exhausted after spending all day at the Planet working and had no time to finish this meal. She grabbed the phone book off the table and flipped through the yellow pages. Lois was going to make a spectacular dinner even if it was cooked by someone else. She didn’t have enough time to clean up the kitchen, cook a homemade meal for the guests she didn’t know were coming, and still get dressed.
Finally, she found the phone number for the restaurant she was thinking of. Chapman’s was known to make an amazing Christmas dinner. They delivered and even better, they were still open. Lois was very lucky as she called only five minutes before they were going to stop taking orders. The Christmas feast would be ready in two hours, which gave her enough time to clean up the kitchen, shower, and put on the deep violet dress she had recently purchased. She wasn’t sure if anyone would even come, but she decided she deserved a perfect Christmas dinner, even if she didn’t have anyone to share it with.
