Hm Well Okay. Here Goes Nothing.The Gaangs Opinion On Aang Starting A Fruit Pie Bakery After The War?

Hm well okay. Here goes nothing. The gaangs opinion on Aang starting a fruit pie bakery after the war?

unlike his terrible sleep schedule during the war, once aang gets a little bit older he gets into the habit of waking up with the sunrise to meditate. it was a practice uncle iroh recommended to help center himself, and it really does soothe him, especially after rough nightmares. after he’s done meditating, he finds that he still has enough time to make some fruit pies before starting the day. thus begins aang’s fruit pie delivery service. wherever and whoever he’s visiting that day gets some complimentary fruit pies, courtesy of the avatar. he doesn’t bake fruit pies every day, but he tries to as often as possible, because not only is it a nice thing to do, it’s specifically something gyatso would do, and it helps aang feel closer to him in this world that is gradually becoming less and less unfamiliar.

katara really loves aang’s fruit pies. she has a huge sweet tooth, so that’s unsurprising. unfortunately, she rarely ever gets to actually bake with aang, because it’s an early morning tradition for him, and katara cannot truly function before noon, but sometimes aang will make exceptions and make another batch in the evening, just so that katara can join him.

sokka thinks aang’s fruit pies taste great, albeit slightly inconsistent. there are definitely days where they taste better than others, and he doesn’t really understand why. he’d never ask aang though, because he doesn’t wanna offend him, so he just enjoys each fruit pie as he receives them. and then one day he helps aang out in the kitchen, and he realizes something world-shattering: when aang bakes, he doesn’t actually measure his ingredients. he just eyeballs it and hopes for the best. sokka tries to explain to aang that baking is a science and you need proper tools, but aang just thinks that’s silly. sokka gives aang a set of measuring cups and aangs just like “awww! a toy for momo to play with!!! how cute!! thanks sokka :D”

toph is banned from helping aang bake because she just eats all the uncooked dough and fruit and cream while aang’s not looking, greatly limiting their supply of pies they can actually cook by the time the process is done. she has no regrets.

zuko wants to help aang bake but he kind of has the same problem baking as he does with making tea (only magnified, because baking takes even longer) which is that baking requires a whole lot of tedious steps and it’s boring and he’s bored. iroh’s like “patience is an important value, zuko. think of it as part of your training” and zuko’s like “okay, yeah. it’s just like meditating, or firebending katas.” but he still doesn’t understand why he has to wait for it to bake. can’t he just heat the pies up really fast with hotter fire and be done with it??? the fact that sokka happened to be watching out of a paranoid suspicion that zuko might accidentally burn down the kitchen is, in fact, the only reason that zuko does not accidentally burn down the kitchen.

suki is aang’s ultimate fruit pie baking buddy. she loves baked goods, she doesn’t care about following strict recipes and all that measuring cup bullshit, she’s very disciplined, and every time she suggests a new ingredient to experiment with it always ends up tasting amazing. she’s the only person aang trusts to actually make fruit pies when he’s not around, which is a huge honor for her because she knows that being given the opportunity to continue an air nomad tradition is not a responsibility to take lightly. but she’s always done a great job of carrying on the avatar’s legacy, and this time is no different.

bonus round!

mai loves helping aang bake, especially when she gets to use knives to cut up fruit really precisely, and also when she gets to eat the fruit pies directly from out of the oven. mai loves baked goods, and she loves hanging out with aang, so it’s really an ideal scenario for her. that said, sokka is deeply upset that mai is also anti-measuring cup. mai thinks measuring cups are boring and make the whole thing less fun and it’s a waste of time, and sokka thinks mai is insane, just like all the rest of them. it’s the biggest fight the two of them ever get in, and yes that includes the time they threw knives at each other in the forest.

ty lee normally doesn’t like eating too much sugar, since it’s basically like baby meth (that’s what her homeopath said), but she’ll make an exception for aang’s famous air nomad fruit tarts on rare occasions, because it makes him happy to see her eating them. and if she secretly thinks that they’re far too sweet, she’ll never admit it to anyone as long as she lives.

aang offers azula a fruit pie one time without even really meaning anything by it. even people who murdered him are deserving of his delicious baked goods! but azula immediately assumes that aang laced it with poison (not lethal poison, obviously, but definitely some sort of laxative that would make her shit for hours) and she rudely declines. aang is deeply wounded, having never been so cruelly rebuffed before, until he learns that azula assumed that aang laced it with laxatives, at which point he’s like “damn that is brilliant! why didn’t i think of that??!” unfortunately for both of them, though, azula just threw a perfectly good fruit pie in the garbage.

please i need to know--how would the shepherds fare in a bakery AU?

Hmm, interesting question!

Blade: don't hire him. he would drive the customers away with his very presence. just imagine some dour black-clothed man looming in your charming bakery amidst the smells of custard buns like

truly disgusting stuff

Trouble: I think this would be manageable at first, but not ideal! he's really game to try any line of work for as long as it can hold his interest, and baking could appeal to him if you pointed out its scientific/chemical qualities! Aesthetically his cakes and desserts would look like this

...but his bread would be the absolute bomb! and he'd have such a friendly and casual attitude when you walked in that I feel like people around the neighborhood would fall in love with him lol. imagine him working a wood-fire oven!

Tallys: she would be an efficient worker who made delicious pastries with homegrown or foraged ingredients--very Great British Bakeoff in essence, where they're always talking about making their own pestos or growing their own tomatoes for things or whatever--but her personality is cool and courteous enough that people would feel slightly intimidated by her, like you can't just go to her and ask for your a Shrek cake for your son's 5th birthday party, she's an artisan and you have to treat her as such! (even if she never says so explicitly herself)

Shery: this is my dream for her. She's thriving, she has her own cozy bakery with all of the pastel sweets and cute little character macarons you could ever ask for, she constantly smells of sugar and vanilla and smiles warmly when you walk inside! she is the most successful in this AU of them all and eventually goes on to go viral once people discover her quaint little bakeshop!

Riel: he's an angel investor. he gave shery seed money to pursue her dream of being a baker. she parcels him up treats and petit fours and cookies and sends them to his house once a week, or he'll stop in on his way home from work (or send his butler to go get it when he gets a craving). but in no universe are you getting him to work in a bakery, lol. and nor would you want to! the man has no instinct for cooking or baking. all of his food ends up looking like this

the best you'll get out of him is that he makes every display in the bakery extremely, painfully symmetrical...

Chase: you're probably better off hiring him as, like, the greeter or sign spinner or flyer-distributor to get people into the bakery. like, he'd be great at charming customers into your store, but I highly doubt you'd want to trust him to do anything else in the bakery. he doesn't have the patience to be cooped up behind the register all day. he'd get distracted by all the fun ingredients in the kitchen if you tried to get him to follow a recipe and bake some cakes. heck, he'd probably be distracted thirty minutes into the whole venture and would just wander out of the shop, never to return! he might accidentally turn out something tasty now and then, but it's not enough to justify having him in your bakery lol

Red: i feel like he could have helped out in a family's friend bakery for a summer as, like, a favor and a seasonal high school job, lol. would he have enjoyed it? probably not, he'd rather be doing other things, but he'd be competent and attentive enough to keep things running at a decent clip! he'd be great at running the register and service end of things, or doing the numbers or deliveries, but only so-so at the baking/kitchen end of things. he'd make great coffee!

Ayla: she'd be fairly decent at this! I think if you put her in the kitchen and gave her detailed instructions on what to do, she'd resist it at first--scowl, scowl, this is dumb, this is boring, why am I cooped up back here like a slave??--but once she got into the rhythm of things, I could see Ayla enjoying slinging dough and cranking out simple things like cookies, biscuits, and bread. No finicky decorating or delicate stuff like frosting cakes--that's how you get cakes being smashed in fits of temper--but "one-and-done" products would be great for her!

Briony: she's brilliant behind the register, cheerily calling out greetings and wrapping up your pastries in their nice little boxes while making chitchat with you. she'd be a sunny presence that made everyone feel happy and welcome in the bakery. she might be able to help out in the kitchen as an assistant now and again, but it's probably not worth the trouble... she's just as likely to trip and knock over an entire shelf of flour, or accidentally squash a cake under her elbow when going to lean on a table, that it's probably just safer to keep her out of the kitchen altogether...

Lavinet: naur... maybe if you want her to be your hot cashieress, but even in an AU, I feel like there are a lot of jobs she'd take over working in a bakery or any kind of food service! flour? in her hair? i don't think so, darling! while she enjoys food and sweets, she has absolutely zero interest in how it's made or selling it, so this would not be a good fit for her at all!

Halek: baking isn't his passion, but he's obviously second-best at this bakery thing after Shery! I think he'd be one of those weird, elusive, sort of temperamental artist-bakers, the ones who are only open from like 4 AM-9 AM, you have to line up outside and stand on the sidewalk for like 20 minutes before you're allowed to buy up to 3 bagels because he only makes exactly 200 every two days, but once you finally get the damn thing, it's the best bagel you've ever had in your life! oh and he only offers plain and veggie cream cheese or an egg and sausage sandwich, no other options!

Pidge and Hunk do a lot of baking together

Headcanon accepted! Pidge likes cinnamon and gingerbread, so Hunk tries to find something similar in space. They like to bake cookies ^^

Reason to Live #8425

 Eating a delicious meal you cooked for yourself that tastes better than you imagined. – Guest Submission

(Please don’t add negative comments to these posts.)

Aside from Halek, who's the best cook out of the ROs? Or what's their level of cooking knowledge/experience in general?

Blade: he can cook, but his cooking almost entirely functional: it doesn't taste bad by any means, but it's quite plain and perfunctory, aimed at sustenance and nutrition rather than decoration or embellishment--he's the type of guy who would meal-prep grilled chicken, rice, and veggies 4 days out of the week if left to his own devices... so he's able to do it, but no one's exactly begging him to make them a meal!

Trouble: he's actually quite a good cook if forced to cook, but he's usually too lazy to bother with it and will prefer to eat out or just grab a meal at the local tavern rather than cook for himself--at least as a current bachelor! I could totally see him doing the cooking or being some sort of house-husband later in life and being quite good at it, but for now, he just doesn't bother!

Tallys: she's an excellent cook and actually currently (at this point in the game) outstrips Halek in outright experience and knowledge, though in the long run he'll do better than her when it comes to sheer potential. Like many Elves, she's spent a lot of time perfecting the art of cooking, so she's a pretty amazing chef, though she rarely exerts herself to cook for the whole group because she finds it more stressful than just cooking at her leisure for one or two people!

Shery: she's a good cook, but moreso an excellent baker, probably the best out of the Shepherds! She's not super interested in cooking meals--having to keep track of everything in real-time rather than going at her own pace is stressful for her, plus she's just not as passionate about normal meals--but she loves baking sweets and confections, and people will physically fight over her treats!

Riel: awful. horrendous. he knows the theories of cooking and what makes food tastes good and the concepts of fine dining, but he's never stepped foot in a kitchen in his life except to make himself butter and bread once when he was a teenager, or to pour himself like a glass of milk... absolute disaster. he would way overcomplicate/overthink it and be like, well to achieve the browning effect, surely one must fry the lasagna in oil before putting it in the oven?... but when would the cheese go on...?

Chase: he's, um, fine at it? he can make himself meals if he has to and could survive off of his cooking, is how I would put it, but honestly, it would just be like sandwiches or something extremely simple all of the time, like heating up pre-made soup or something like that! He just has 0 interest in cooking and has exclusively either eaten out or found food using other methods (ie mooching or stealing or conning...) his whole life, so while he's technically capable of it, you'll likely never see him doing it!

Red: he used to be a pretty bad cook when he was younger (because he kept getting distracted or would start day-dreaming in the middle of stirring a stew and letting it burn, driving his mother and sisters to absolute hysterics), but nowadays he's a pretty competent cook, namely because he figured out that 1) people find it sexy and 2) his sisters threatened to beat the absolute shit out of him if he didn't learn, so now he's pretty good at it and would make a fine cook, though it isn't typically his preference! Once he's a husband/father, though, I could see him getting even better!

Ayla: when she's cooking just for herself, she's more like Blade and tends to be purely practical, fixing herself simple fare like stir-fried veggies and rice, but when cooking for others, she's pretty good and usually makes tasty dishes! She just way overestimates people's spice tolerances... but other than that, she has a good eye for fresh produce and various seasonings and flavors!

Briony: right now, she's absolutely AWFUL at it (like is the type to tearfully serve someone a blackened crisp of nothing and be like, '...is it okay? 🥺' and they have to choke it down and be like 'omg... so good... 🥴'), but given enough time, experimentation, and a lot of patience and encouragement from others, she could ultimately display quite the talent for it! Just give her like... 2-3 more years!

Lavinet: the worst cook of the bunch, even worse than Riel (though not by much). don't let her step foot in a kitchen or you'll all die of food poisoning. has absolutely no common sense when it comes to cooking, has less than 0 interest in learning it, and just hates it in general. complete natural disaster. could put someone into a coma.

I think the current scale would go Tallys -> Halek -> Shery -> Trouble - Ayla (tied) -> Red -> Blade -> Chase -> Briony -> Riel -> Lavinet, with room for people to shift places and rise in the rankings over time!

I think we ALL know that al would end up being an amazing chef