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“WELL, THIS WAS UNEXPECTED,” I said.
“Why would you say that?” she asked cheekily, looking up at her snowman with a shocking amount of pride.
“I don’t know, something about not getting into the spirit of Christmas and all that,” I said. “And now I’m staring at what has to be a ten-foot snowman in your lawn.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she said. “He’s cute. Like, even aside from Christmas time, he’s just cute.”
“And big. Very large.”
“Yes, well, the other option was a twenty-five foot one and I thought that might be a bit much,” she laughed.
“You think?” I joked. “No, I admire your ambition. And your restraint, apparently. It was just unexpected.”
“I am nothing if not a wealth of surprises,” she said.
I pulled her tight to me and pressed a kiss to her lips.
“Yes, you are,” I said. “So, what else are we going to do?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I was thinking some kind of wintery treat. It’s not like they can eat snowballs.”
“Well, not these,” I said. “But we could make snowballs that are edible.”
“What, you mean like those things at the gas station?”
“Yeah,” I said. “The ones with the marshmallow inside. They shouldn’t be too hard to make, and you probably already have the ingredients here.”
“Good, because I have no intention of going to the store again,” she laughed. “I just want to be here.”
“Me too,” I said. “Though I’d go out if you needed me to.”
“No.” She grinned. “I need you here. With me.”
“Deal,” I said, leaning in for another kiss. “Alright, so we make snowball cakes. We just have to rummage through the pantries and see if we have the stuff to make them first. Maybe meringues?”
“Meringues?” she asked. “Do we need to go over my baking reputation again?”
“You did great with the cookies, remember?”
“It’s a far cry to go from making some cookies with help to making batches of meringues—which, by the way, I haven’t the faintest idea how to do—and snowball cakes,” she said.
“Ah, come on,” I said, “you’ll be fine. The cookies went great, and that should tell you, you have it in you. Come on, this will be fun.”
“Alright,” she agreed reluctantly. “Let’s head to the pantry first.”
We dipped inside, going straight to the pantry door and opening it up. It was one of the old-style pantries, where a person could walk in and the shelves went from almost the floor up to nearly the ceiling. There were tons of soups and canned vegetables there, but the collection of baking goods was rather slim. It was clearly a pantry she had stocked before I arrived and had done so with the knowledge and assurance that the oven was going to be primarily for baking lasagnas and pizza.
“Not a whole lot of baking stuff here,” I said. “However, there is this.”
I held up a bag over oversized marshmallows.
“Hey, my s’more kit marshmallows,” she said excitedly. “I had been looking for those.”
“They were behind a family-sized can of tomato soup that I can only guess is intended for a family of twelve,” I said. “Here, take that. Those will be perfect for the snowballs.” I noticed another two bags behind the one I had pulled out. “You have three bags of marshmallows for s’mores?”
“I like s’mores,” she said sheepishly. “So what?”
“Nothing.” I shook my head. “You’re just adorable.”
“Here’s the cocoa powder. And coconut shreds.”
“Awesome,” I said, gathering the rest of the ingredients needed for the cakes. “Now we just need to find some cream of tartar and we are good to go.”
“For the meringues?” she asked.
“Hey, now you’re getting it,” I laughed.
“It isn’t that I don’t understand what goes in the things that I failed to bake correctly,” she said. “I just seem to blank out around the time I put them in the oven.”
Laughing, I gathered the rest of the ingredients needed and brought them over in a giant mixing bowl to the kitchen table. Setting them all out, I made a little station for mixing and set out a couple of mixing bowls and measuring spoons and cups.
“Meringue’s first,” I said. “Can you preheat the oven to two-twenty-five?”
“Sure,” she said, crossing the kitchen and punching the number into the oven.
“I have an idea to make these Christmas-appropriate,” I said. “Where are the rest of those peppermint sticks?”
“The ones I put out for the guests in the living room?”
“The ones that look like little peppermint cigars and are sugary?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“Those, yes.”
“I have a couple other boxes of them in the bottom of the China cabinet,” she said.
She ran off to grab them while I began separating out egg whites. When she returned, she sat six boxes of the peppermints on the table, and I began beating the whites, tartar, and salt into soft peaks.
“Good, now put a few of them into a zip-top bag,” I said. She did as I asked, and as the peaks began to form, she laid the bag on the table. “Now, crush the peppermints.”
“With what?” she asked.
“A pan? A pot? A hammer?”
“Yeah, like I just have hammers lying around,” she said.
“Second drawer from the wall on the right,” I said. “It’s your junk drawer.”
“I was not aware I had a junk drawer,” she said, her lips pursing up on one side.
I shrugged.
“You do now,” I said. “A pan will do, though.”
She grabbed a pan from the dish drainer and sat it over the bag of peppermints and then pressed down in the center, crushing them. When they were all crushed up and I had added sugar until the peaks were stiff, I pulled out the prepared cookie sheets. Putting a clump on the sheets about an inch apart, I then looked over at Holly and motioned to the peppermints.
“Now?” she asked.
I nodded.
Holly sprinkled bits of crushed peppermint over the meringues and then sat back satisfied as I dipped the oven. Closing the door, I set a timer for ninety minutes and turned around to face her.
“Now we wait,” I said. “While we do that, we should make the snowballs.”
As we made the little treats, the meringues cooked, and I turned on some Christmas music to listen to. It was fun, and I could see the apprehension and distance from allowing herself to enjoy the season slipping away from her. She was starting to get into it. Holly was becoming a Christmas person in front of my eyes.
“You know,” I said as we cleaned up the creation station we had made and I cracked open the oven to let the meringues cool in place for a while, “there is one other thing we should have that I am pretty sure you are out of.”
“What’s that?” she asked.
“Whipped cream,” I said.
“Crap. I should have gotten more of it at the store.”
“Well, yes, but, we could always make some fresh whipped cream.”
Slowly, her face softened and became wistful. The corners of her eyes became wet and glossed over as she held back a sudden tear. I walked over to her and held her by the elbows, searching her face.
“Hey, what’s going on?” I asked.
“It’s nothing,” she said. “Just a sudden and very visceral memory of my grandmother.”
“Tell me,” I said, offering a smile.
“When I was little—like really little,” she said, “my favorite thing in the world was to sit on the couch with a big bowl of whipped cream my grandmother would make. She would sprinkle them with chocolate chips and call it Dalmatian cream.”
“That’s so cute,” I said.
“Yeah,” she laughed, wiping away a tear. “Ever since, I will sit down with a big bowl and a can and just go to town sometimes.” She shook her head. “It’s probably not the healthiest dessert, but it’s delicious.”
“Classy,” I said. “It’s a super-classy dessert for a super-classy lady. Just shows off your pedigree.”
She laughed, smacking me playfully on the arm.
“Homemade would be great,” she said.
“Do you know how to make it?” I asked. “I think I do, but we might have to look it up.”
“All I remember is she used to stick a bowl in the freezer first,” she said. “Oh, wait. Cream, powdered sugar, and vanilla!”
“You remember? Have you made it?”
“Not since I was a little kid,” she said.
We stuck a bowl in the freezer and tended to the snowballs, finishing those up while the glass bowl got cold. When we brought it out, she took over, making the whipped cream from memories long dormant in her mind. I watched her, fascinated, and when it was mostly done, I stuck a finger in it to taste.
“Delicious,” I said. “Though technically, this is Chantilly cream.”
She stared at me, one eyebrow raised.
“See, this is why you wouldn’t have known me in high school much. I was a nerd.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head and smiling. “I would have found you fascinating then just like I do now. I wish I had the chance back then.”
“Well, you have the chance now,” I said.
“Yeah,” she said, nodding and smiling wide. “I sure do.”
