Chapter 4
Kitchen Mix-up

Ten seconds later they heard the lock turn. Calvin, Poppy’s older brother, appeared. He was still wearing his shin guards from after-school soccer practice. His eyes lit up when he saw the tang yuan.

“Yum!” Calvin said. Po Po hugged him even though he looked really sweaty and had bits of grass all over him.

“Aren’t you having any?” Poppy asked Po Po, looking at the two dishes on the round kitchen table.

“I’m not very hungry,” Po Po said. “I had a big lunch.”

After Calvin washed his hands, they sat at the table while Po Po did the dishes and put the ingredients away. Poppy inhaled the steam from the dumplings, but it smelled a little off to her—more like the briny ocean than a sweet dessert.

Calvin scooped one dumpling up in his spoon and slurped it. Then he coughed and spit the tang yuan back into his spoon.

Poppy raised her eyebrows at him, and he just shook his head slightly. She carefully put the spoon to her mouth and bit into the dumpling. It was so salty! But there was no salt in the recipe . . . unless Po Po accidentally used salt instead of sugar for the ginger
syrup!

Po Po hummed as she cleaned, her back toward them, and Calvin gestured for Poppy to give him her bowl. She slid it over, and Calvin took both bowls to the bathroom and got rid of the contents. He returned to the kitchen and put one of the empty bowls back in front of Poppy.

“Thanks so much!” Calvin told Po Po as he washed his bowl in the sink and set it on the drying rack. “I’m going to take a shower.” He gave her a kiss on the cheek.

Poppy slowly walked to the sink and washed her bowl, too. She looked at Po Po out of the corner of her eyes. Po Po was cleaning the counter with a wet towel and seemed totally normal, but Poppy was uneasy.

She had never known Po Po to mess up a dessert before, ever.

“Ready for a recipe?” Mama asked that night after Poppy had finished practicing the piano, brushed her teeth, and climbed into bed.

“Yes!”

Mama picked up a rectangular wooden box from Poppy’s bookshelf. Inside were dozens of Po Po’s recipes, all written in her grandmother’s careful handwriting.

“Anything you want in particular?” Mama asked.

“Can you read Dragon’s Beard candy?” Poppy asked. “I’m going to surprise Po Po by making it for her birthday.”

Mama’s eyebrows raised. “That’s a difficult recipe.”

“I know,” Poppy said. “But it’s one of Po Po’s favorite treats. I want to make her something she really loves.”

“After I married your dad,” Mama said, “Po Po tried to teach me how to make it. It was a disaster, and I ended up covered in strands of sticky sugar. It was in my hair, up my nose, everywhere!”

Poppy giggled, imagining Mama wrapped up in a candy web, unable to escape.

“Po Po was so happy when you liked baking so much,” Mama continued. “Now she has someone to pass her recipes on to.”

Mama found the Dragon’s Beard candy recipe and began reading. There were a lot of steps. First, you had to boil sugar, corn syrup, a tiny bit of vinegar, and water to a certain temperature. Then you had to pour it into doughnut molds. When it was cool enough to handle, you removed it from the molds. Then came the messy part.

To make the delicate strands of candy, you had to pull the molded sugar circle until it was twice its size, twist it into a figure eight, fold it into two sets of circles, and dip it into a cornstarch-and-rice-flour mixture to keep the circles from sticking together. Then you pulled, twisted, folded, and dipped it again and again. If you did it right, the sugar turned into little strands, like cotton candy. Po Po’s recipe said to pull and fold it eight times total, which would make 2,048 strands by the end!

When Mama finished reading, she put the card back into the box. “That sounds like a big project,” she said to Poppy.

Poppy nodded. It was worth going through all the trouble if it meant that Po Po would be surprised. Mama tucked the covers around Poppy so she felt as snug as a hot dog in a bun, and Poppy fell asleep thinking about dragons with fluffy white beards.