Title: From The Schoormans To Clark Part ... or Butter cake for the Schoormans.
Just to let you know, I wrote this in half an hour - how awesome is that? Also, my mother is of Dutch descent and this is a family recipe and I was making this when I got the idea for the Scavenger Hunt Challenge which is why everyone has been giggling over the 500 grams of butter bit. The recipe is at the end. I am glad to say I got everything into the story that I put down on the list but here it is for you to use.
Compulsory Inclusions:
- Lois in an active role (she is the main character)
- 500 grams or the equivalent in pounds/ounces of butter
- something, someone or somewhere foreign
- an airline
- a fantasy novel
Optional Bonus Inclusions:
- mention of one or more characters from the comic book series - Clark, Lana, Lori, Jimmy, Perry, Martha, Lex,
- mention of one or more characters from the TV series (eg: Bobby Bigmouth who wouldn't have been in the comics / Linda King etc)
- penguins
- a children's tv show
Enjoy! The Little Tornado!
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She couldn't quite believe it. She stared at it again and pinched herself lightly.
She, Lois Lane, who knew most of the fire department by first name, had baked a cake. She sighed, mixed emotions of relief and elation running through her as she switched the oven off, the cake now cooling on the countertop.
Then she bit her lip - she felt like crying. She opened the fridge door and grabbed a carton of orange juice. Baking was, quite clearly, hot hard work, she thought to herself as she poured herself a glass. But satisfying somehow some part of her replied as she sat down at the dining table sipping the cold liquid.
She wanted to cry. She had baked a cake - she couldn't be a complete dunce in the kitchen department if she had baked that cake, now could she?
You should be feeling happy, she scolded herself. But she wasn't.
"The fact is, Lane, that no one - and I mean no one - would ever believe that you had baked a cake that was any good!" she muttered to herself. They had teased her for her inability to toss food together to make something edible for years - Perry, Jimmy and, ugh, even Cat. Even Cat could cook.
Cat Grant - the woman who nobody would ever associate anything domestic with - could cook up a storm apparently. What was it that she had said? "Some men need to be fed before I can feed!" Lois had had to roll her eyes at that one - that had obviously not been one of Cat's better days for witty banter.
But the fact was that it was Cat - Cat who could cook and who even claimed her cooking skills got her a few men. Here she was, Lois Lane, three time Kerth winner, and she had neither cooking skills or men. Or at least men who weren't hypochondriacs like M whathisname or lunatics or French like Claude or underworld criminals masquerading as suave business tycoons like Lex.
Lex - she was not going to think about Lex. She wasn't going to think about Lex. She wasn't going to think about Lex.
She drained her glass. She was a woman of the nineties. She was supposed to be able to do all this - the career, the cooking and cleaning, the social life. She legally had the right and the ability and opportunity to do all these things and she couldn't. And so she was letting down her side - well, it seemed that way at least.
She put her chin in her hand, her elbow on the table in front of her as she turned to look at the cake again. She hadn't tasted it yet but she had known as soon as she had taken it out of the oven that it was perfect.As it was meant to be. Heavens be praised, she had not messed anything up. She sighed again.
It had been a bit nerve wracking, a bit frustrating. It had been hard to figure out what the equivalent for 500 grams of butter was in pounds or ounces till she had finally found a converter on the internet. She had almost given up as it being too much trouble when she found that she had to go get half the ingredients from the corner store before she could start as well as a baking pan or tray.
And she had thanked her stars that she had taken up karate classes ages ago because mixing the batter by hand was much tougher than it looked on TV. There was still that pleasant slight sore feeling in her upper arms. And then she had run back to the internet for the second time to find out how to test if an egg was rotten.
She had been amazed to see how the ingredients transformed in the bowl - the creamed butter and sugar looking for all the world like a fancy cosmetic exfoliant, the eggs added making it syrupy and then the flour making it look like a creamy paste. She had panicked then, double checking to make sure she had bought self raising flour instead of plain.
She frowned at the cake - it look liked it had risen so it must have been the right flour. It looked normal - like a normal cake should look so perhaps it was.
She hadn't understood completely why people liked to cook - at least not until now. She had always known of course that it was nice to be able to make good food and feed it to people you cared about but she had not understood the compulsion behind it, the desire to do so. Now she did.
Now she got it. Because even if this was the one and only decent thing she could ever make in the kitchen, she now had something to feed people with.
Perhaps one day she would make traditional Dutch butter cake for her children. She smiled - she could teach them to make it so they could make it for their children. Start a legacy of it even.
She was feeling slightly giddy. A little insane thrill of desire went through her - having children just to feed butter cake to them? She laughed out loud. She would have to call Lucy and thank her.
It had been nagging her at the back of her mind that ever since Luthor's death, it had been hard for her to adjust to the way she had lived her life before. She wasn't satisfied with the bare minimum that she had seemed to be capable of, especially as the stories of what he had been upto had unfolded across the television screen and the column inches in the paper. She had realised how easy it had been for him to build a cage around her. If she had had any interests in something like cooking, he would have found it harder to keep her where he wanted. What if she had loved to cook and he hadn't wanted her to but had wanted her to deal with food via a chef as he had done? As it was, he had found it hard enough to trap her and had had to resort to blowing up the Planet to do so.
She had had to face the fact that she had been extremely stupid. He might have loved her, she might have loved him but to allow a man, any man to put her in that sort of position without compromise or a fight? She had been disgusted with herself and so had decided that she was never going to get into that situation again.
Obviously somewhere along the line she had lost the sense of who she was. She was still a good reporter but she had stopped caring about other things.
Everything new that she had learnt was something to do with the job and while she enjoyed her work, she never got a chance to enjoy herself. As Lucy had told her, she had no hobbies. Save for watching 'rinse and repeat' reruns of the Ivory Tower late at night and feeling sorry for herself. How could she attract any man who would accept all of her as she was, if she wasn't even herself the whole time? It seemed that she was constantly all work Lois - Mad Dog Lane had taken over and until now not given an inch.
She had had no idea where to begin till she had been having dinner at Clark's one night and she had felt rather guilty. He went through a lot of trouble though he clearly enjoyed it just to cook for her and all she offered him when he came over to her place was take out and most of the time he brought it with him. Which reminded her - she had to find out where he got his take out from - no matter what the cuisine, it tasted out of this world each time.
Granted they both worked hard and late and sometimes you were too tired to do anything but write or research or stake out a suspiscious warehouse or two but it would be nice if once in awhile she was able to offer him something. Or if perhaps she could make something she could take to work to surreptiously put next to coffee machine for people to snack on. If she told them she had made it, only Clark would eat it out of his misguided loyalty and politeness and then she'd never know if it was any good or not.
The little daydreams of her potential culinary triumphs ran through her head for days and she had bought a few recipe books and read them but had been wary of trying her hand at anything other than her usual dinner in a can or packet in the microwave. She had deliberated on whether to ask Martha for help but had decided against it. She wanted this to be her own thing. But she had no clue where to start and she didn't really want to go to classes. She wanted to learn at her own pace. And then surprise everyone. Or at least, at first, surprise Clark. And then perhaps he could help her when she had questions. But first she wanted to be good at making one thing, anything by herself so that it didn't taste like the most horrendous thing on the inflight menu from Metro Air. But what?
She hadn't even really wanted to tell Lucy about it but Lucy had been her saving grace right before she was about to give up the whole thing as a silly farce in her head.
"I think it's a great thing, Lois," her sister had giggled over the phone. "But you have to forgive me for thinking that you cooking is a concept equally impropable to anything out of a fantasy novel like The Hobbit happening in real life."
Lois had rolled her eyes. Ever since she had started dating an editor for fiction publishing house, Lucy's conversation had been peppered with references to literature. At least she had read them all.
"Well, if someone like Superman can exist, I am sure my cooking won't turn the world over on it's axis too far, Lucy."
"Fine." Lucy grumbled good naturedly. "I'm not that great a cook but let me see if I can find something."
Minutes later, she had rung back with a recipe for Lois. "It's butter cake."
"Butter cake?" Lois had replied. "Sounds way too rich and fattening."
"Give it a try, Lois. You said Clark was going to eat it if it turned out well and it must be better than all the junk food you say he eats."
"Where did you get it from?"
"This friend of mine called Lori - it's a Dutch recipe a friend once gave her saying it should be passed on."
"A Dutch recipe? Lucy, how will I know if it's good when it's done if I have never eaten it?"
"She says it's foolproof - you mix everything together and toss it into the oven."
"Foolproof?"
"Loisproof even. Do you want it or not?"
"But a cake, Lucy?"
"Lois, she says even the Swedish chef off the Muppets can't mess this one up."
"That's a children's show and he is a puppet, Lucy!"
"Just take the recipe, Lois!"
So she had and it had worked perfectly. But now what?
She had wanted to give to Clark - have him taste it but her original plan had been to make something that she could do for dinner during one of their late night work sessions at her apartment. How could she give him the cake? She could have at least given him the dinner, whatever it might have been and waited till he had asked where she had ordered from, to tell him that she had actually cooked it herself. But the cake? She couldn't even pretend that she had bought it from a bakery because cakes usually required special occasions to be occurring around about the same time as their consumption.
She got up and put the glass in the sink and peered at the calendar stuck to her fridge door. It was nowhere near his birthday or hers and she couldn't really think of anything else to celebrate or at least any excuse to get him to eat it without thinking about who had made it beforehand.
She mentally cursed herself. Why hadn't she thought about this a bit more? After her initial wariness about baking a cake, she had happily wandered off to the shops to find a cake tin that she could put it in once it was baked but it had never occurred to her to think up a way to get Clark to eat it without getting suspicious.
She rummaged in the cupboard and pulled it out now. To tell the truth, she had been hoping for a cake tin, a nice plain one or really anything else to serve as her designated butter cake tin should it come out right. So she had only been very half hearted in her efforts, too caught up in the fear it wouldn't come out right or that she would burn it or otherwise render it inedible somehow. Her self doubt had almost made her miss it but she saw it out of the corner of her eye and turned.
She grinned as she looked down on it now. It was just so - so Clark. It was round, big enough for the cake but was by no means plain. It was clearly something left over from a Christmas production line - it was red with two thin gold bands at the top and bottom edges but right on the lid was what had convinced her to buy it in the first place.
Right on top of the lid in the center were two dancing penguins, one with a top hat and one with what looked like a tutu. She had nearly burst out laughing in the store. The penguins were exact copies of the penguins on one of Clark's ties that Martha had made for him and she had a feeling she knew where Martha had gotten the inspiration from. It had been too much of a coincidence and so she had bought it. She wanted to see the look on his face when he saw it.
Lois looked down at the tin and then at the cake. Gingerly touching the cake, she managed to move it into the tin without damaging it too badly. She had made up her mind.
She was going to go over to Clark's with this, right now. She smiled as she pulled on her jacket, grabbed her keys and her purse and opened the door, the tin clutched in her left hand.
After all the best reason for giving someone butter cake, was simply because you wanted to.
As the door shut behind her, the resulting gust of wind blew across the room and ruffled the edge of a piece of paper sitting on the dining table. It rustled in response and fluttered down onto the floor.
It read:
Butter Cake For The Schoormans
500 grams of butter
500 grams of sugar
500 grams of self raising flour
5 eggs
Cream butter and sugar together.
Beat each egg individually and fold into the mixture.
Eggs are usually 50 - 52 grams each but you only need just slightly under the 450 -500 gram mark worth of eggs.
Everything else must be in equal proportion.
Add flour and fold into mixture till smooth and creamy.
Pour into tin and place in oven at 180 C/350 F for 35-40 minutes. Take out of oven as soon as the top turns golden brown. If it hasn't after 30 minutes, turn temperature up to 200 C/ 375 F for 10 - 20 minutes. Remove, leave to cool, cut into little squares and enjoy.
Once mastered and enjoyed, pass recipe on.
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The Little Tornado.
