Nutella Custard Cream Donuts
Outside the tent it was as noisy as a marketplace floor.
Animal cries, conversations large and small, the clatter of goods knocking together, and somewhere the metallic ring of weapons being swung at each other—Karem clapped his hands over his ears without thinking.
Ugh, so loud.
Unlike the broad plaza of Coldon, the campsite was packed tight, and the racket went beyond mere noise until his ears rang and his head felt foggy.
The one mercy was that his tent—which also served as a makeshift kitchen—stood right beside it.
The moment he stepped inside, the sound cut off.
Even so, it could not shut out the noise completely; a low drone still leaked through.
"Well, this is better than nothing."
Karem shook his head and lit the campfire in the center of the tent, then immediately picked up the jar of Nutella.
"Half... ah. Mary's still under disciplinary leave, isn't she."
He knew about the punishment, yet Mary was simply too convenient for kitchen work to let her go that easily.
But the house elf was currently on disciplinary vacation.
In the end, he would have to make the doughnut dough himself.
Karem reluctantly set the jar aside for the moment, poured milk into a pot, added sugar, and set it briefly over the fire.
"I still don't have the confidence to make it as well as a certain someone."
That someone was, of course, Mary.
He had received lessons from both Mary and Jigmeser whenever he could, though chances to put those lessons to use had been scarce—entirely because of the house elf who was basically a living, all-purpose cooking appliance that absorbed every chef's complaint.
So learn to read the room, will you.
The sweetened milk had warmed enough. Before bubbles could rise he whisked the pot off the heat, stirred in the yeast, and left it to sit.
Into a bowl went eggs, butter, salt, and flour; he poured in the yeasted milk and began to knead.
"No idea if I'm even doing this right."
"If it is doughnut dough, you are doing it correctly."
"Then is it alllll—!?"
"What a shame."
Until a moment ago the tent had been empty of anyone else. Karem barely managed to catch the bowl he nearly spilled and spun around.
Mary stood behind him with her eyes closed.
"Hey—give a signal before you come in."
"I did give a signal when I entered. Are you trying to paint me as some house elf who barges in without manners?"
Mary opened her eyes and lifted her chin.
"Junior Karem simply failed to hear me. I clearly stated that I would be coming inside."
"Well, of course I couldn't—"
He could hardly have heard her. The din from the campsite outside still made the tent walls vibrate.
"I distinctly spoke while lifting the tent flap."
"Then speak louder next time."
"In other words, you admit it?"
Karem ignored her question and focused on the bowl.
The dough had come together completely; he added a little more flour, kneaded it once more until it was smooth, and covered it with a linen cloth.
Soft dough needed time to rise—roughly thirty minutes to an hour by feel.
Of course he could not simply stare at the campfire the whole time.
He still had to make the filling that would be piped into the doughnuts.
Compared with the dough, this side was easy.
"Will you use the Nutella as-is for the filling?"
"Then I couldn't make very many. I'm mixing it with custard cream."
"So it will become Amadeus custard cream."
"It's Nutella made from Amadeus, so... Nutella custard cream doughnuts?"
freer now than when he had been wrestling the dough, he chatted with Mary while sifting flour and sugar into beaten eggs and mixing them evenly. Butter and vanilla extract went in next; he strained the lightly boiled milk into the egg mixture, returned everything to the pot, and set it back over the fire.
He kept the pot moving at the edges, stirring the white liquid slowly with a spatula as it cooked.
The instant it turned into yellow custard he pulled it off the heat.
"Ahem. Right now I feel like spreading this on bread and eating it as is."
Mary cracked her eyes open and looked rapidly back and forth between the pot and Karem, her gaze thick with anticipation and appetite.
"I did wonder whether you would just watch this and let it pass."
"And so?"
"One little piece wouldn't hurt—"
The house elf was fast. Before he had finished speaking she had already sliced a piece of bread from a corner of the kitchen.
Without a word Karem scooped up a dollop of the hot, heavy custard and plopped it on top.
While Mary chewed the inverted custard-on-bread, Karem finally picked up the Nutella jar again.
This was no ordinary Nutella.
It was the very last jar left in the entire procession.
Once, twice, three times.
Each time a fresh spatula-full of Nutella stretched reluctantly and dropped in sticky ribbons into the custard, the level in the pot rose.
For a moment three dark lumps swam through the custard as if refusing to blend, following the motion of the spatula. Then long brown tails began to trail after the long handle.
A little longer and the yellow custard and Nutella loosened into a dark-brown swirl.
The ribbons of dark Nutella thickened, merged into one, and dyed the custard's yellow completely into its own color.
Not chocolate custard—
Nutella custard filling, complete.
Yet plenty of work remained.
Karem stirred the spatula slowly, carefully channeling his divine power.
Saaaaaa—
Beads of water condensed on the outside of the pot; the Nutella custard cooled rapidly.
Crunch-crunch—
"You overdid it."
"Yeah. Looks like it froze a bit too hard."
Karem stirred the custard cream with a spoon for a moment.
Scrape—scrape—
The texture sat right on the razor edge of becoming ice cream.
"It's borderline, but... maybe still usable?"
"More importantly, the speed is agonizingly slow. Had it been me, I would have finished far faster."
This house elf really knew how to get under his skin. The irritating part was that she was not exactly wrong.
Karem scowled and turned only his head to glare at Mary, who was still chewing her inverted custard bread with a sulky expression.
"Someone who's been benched for discipline sure has a lot to say."
"No, Junior Karem. I am being wronged."
Karem paused and tilted his head, ready to hear whatever absurd sophistry she was about to spin.
"If this were not a procession, I could properly prepare meals for the mages residing in the tower, yet at present I am allowed to make less than a quarter of that volume, am I not?"
"So, adjusting for that, the discipline should also end early?"
"Exactly."
Snap! Mary flicked both fingers as though confirming the correct answer and pointed at Karem with her index finger.
"I wondered what nonsense you were going to spout, but you actually have a fairly plausible line of reasoning."
"Then?"
"Except you seem to have left out one crucial point."
"Hm?"
Mary tilted her head, uncomprehending.
"You do realize I'm not the one who decides that, right?"
"Ah."
"It's Lady Catherine."
Mary froze on the spot for a moment, then resumed chewing her bread and turned her face away.
"Anyway—is it finished?"
"The cream? Yes. Now I just need to fry the doughnuts."
Karem set the pot aside and checked the dough bowl.
Fortunately this batch had succeeded.
A sigh of relief escaped him unbidden.
He recalled the time he had botched the water ratio and produced something closer to dough soup, earning a thorough scolding from Jigmeser.
At any rate, this one had worked, so all was well.
Relieved, he dusted a board with flour so nothing would stick, turned the dough out, cut it into fist-sized pieces, and rolled them into rounds.
Mary, on the other hand, could not rejoice.
If the dough had failed, she might have found another opening to needle him.
How tragic that it had to succeed right now.
Bubble-bubble—plop, plop, plop—
"Staring like that won't end the discipline any sooner."
Karem dropped a scrap of dough to test the temperature.
The moment it began to fry he fed the doughnut rounds in one after another.
He did not put them all in at once.
The pot he was using was smaller than the ones at the tower, and dough naturally held air—those countless tiny holes inside bread. Dumping every piece into boiling oil risked the earlier ones bouncing out of the pot entirely.
Karem had no desire to learn that lesson firsthand.
Bubble-bubble-bubble-bubble—!
The white dough frying in the oil turned golden-brown across ever-widening patches and swelled a little.
Karem flipped each one promptly to cook the other side.
He fished out the finished doughnuts with a spider, shook off the oil, and repeated the process with the next batch.
Once the very last doughnut was lifted free, he wasted no time packing the filling into a piping bag and snipping the tip.
With his free hand he picked up a doughnut.
A light touch of divine power left it not hot at all.
He aimed for the pale ring of the doughnut.
Pook—
The tip of the piping bag pierced the target dead-center.
Karem still found baking—anything beyond crêpes and pancakes—difficult to get along with.
Yet work like this was thoroughly enjoyable.
Spreading cream thickly over cake layers, filling tart shells, injecting jam or cream generously into doughnuts—every process in which the steps and the results were clearly visible under his fingertips, even in pastry and baking where one otherwise had to pray to the heavens.
Of course the tip of the bag vanished inside the doughnut, so he could not see the interior.
But the change was unmistakable.
When he squeezed, the top and bottom of the doughnut bulged slightly.
The weight resting on his left palm increased as well.
While he continued piping custard, Karem glanced toward the uninvited guest. Mary's eyes were flickering wildly.
It looks delicious.
I want to eat just one.
Eating is separate from cooking, right?
Her gaze, thick with the tangled greed of appetite, was locked on the freshly fried doughnuts that were swelling ever so slightly with Amadeus custard cream.
Karem pulled the piping bag free.
A bead of the dark-brown cream that had not quite gone in peeked out.
"Would you like one as a taste test?"
"Yes."
"Then wait just a moment."
Expectation, delight, disappointment, and confusion all flashed across her face in the span of a second or two; it was almost painfully funny.
But Karem was not joking.
One truly important step remained.
Tuk, tuk, tuk.
He lined the doughnuts in a neat row on a tray, then sifted powdered sugar over them so that a fine white snowfall settled across the tops.
He flipped them, dusted the other sides, and arranged them again.
Cover with sugar, flip, repeat.
He continued until an entire tray was blanketed in doughnuts wearing coats of pure-white powdered sugar.
"May I ask one question before tasting?"
"What is it?"
"About the powdered sugar you dusted on the doughnuts."
Mary's gaze, fixed on the tray of doughnuts with the same greedy hunger she might show a honey-glazed salmon, held a note of genuine puzzlement.
"Would it not have been simpler to toss them in powdered sugar before injecting the cream?"
"Eat this and keep quiet."
To the owner of those eyes that all but declared I really cannot do without this convenient house elf, Karem wordlessly stuffed a doughnut into her mouth.
The abrupt order to shut up and eat made Mary tilt her head—until the crisp yet chewy, soft texture and the Amadeus custard cream that seemed ready to explode across her tongue made her concede.
Of course her mouth opened again the moment she finished, but Karem, who had been preparing Alrune's Tear, simply pushed another doughnut at her; she closed it without further complaint.
In any case the doughnuts were delicious, so Mary temporarily set her grievances aside.
Attached Material
—Chocolate Custard Doughnuts—
A picture drawn by ChatGPT.