A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking

can magic bread, Your Grace. Make dough rise, or keep the muffins from burning, or make sure they come out of the pan clean. Just bread, though. I can’t do anything but bread

basement floors were really the roofs and ceilings of old houses.

it was because there was another city down there, and people just kept on building upwards as the canals rose, so the

“Are they doing the can-can?” asked Harold in disbelief.

“Battle can-can,” said the Duchess wisely. “Very old tactical maneuver. Used to defeat the waltzing berserkers of West Quillmark, as I recall.”

“You just made that up.”

“Well, obviously.”

If she hadn’t been a baker, Aunt Tabitha would probably have been one of those northern warrior women with the big breastplates that sing opera and carry off the souls of the valiant dead.

I hope he hadn’t tried to eat it. They were the enemy and all, but there were limits. I felt like having people eat rat poison cookies went against everything being a baker stood for.

It’s completely ridiculous and I still don’t quite believe it, but somehow he communicated with the other cookies. Don’t get me wrong, dough’s not smart. It’s not like they talked philosophy and spoke a language called Cookiese.

I hadn’t expected a letter from the Golden General in the first place, so it was stupid to feel disappointed that, when one arrived, it didn’t include handy advice like, “By the way, I’ve hidden the magic superweapon in the third broom closet on the left.”

Still, a superweapon would have been nice.

If you have ever prepared for a siege in two days, then you know what the next few days were like. If you haven’t, then you probably don’t. Well…a big formal wedding is about the same (and because we do cakes, I’ve been on the periphery of a few), except that if things go wrong in a siege you’ll all die horribly, and in formal weddings, the stakes are much higher. We had a bride threaten to set the bakery on fire once when her buttercream frosting came out the wrong color.

You expect heroes to survive terrible things. If you give them a medal, then you don’t ever have to ask why the terrible thing happened in the first place. Or try to fix it