Page 10 of Bragg's Christmas

“I already washed my hands.”

“It’s the first rule of baking. Always wash your hands.” I sound as if I know what I’m talking about. I don’t.

I nudge the stepstool she uses to reach the sink. She sighs and climbs the stool.

“Okay,” I say once we’ve washed and dried our hands. “Time to get started. We’re going to cheat a bit.”

Her eyes widen. “Cheat? How do you cheat?”

I lift up the pie crust. “Usually, you make this from scratch.”

“What’s scratch?”

“It means you use flour to make the crust.”

She claps. “Can we do that?”

“Next time we go to the grocery store, we’ll buy the supplies to bake a crust.”

I cross my fingers behind my back and hope she doesn’t remember my promise since I don’t have the first clue about how to make a pie crust from scratch. Do you even use flour? I think so.

“Yeah!” She throws her arms in the air and nearly falls off her stepstool.

“Careful, little miss. If you fall, you can’t have any pie.”

“Daddy lets me have ice cream when I fall.”

I wink at her. “Because you have your daddy wrapped around your little finger.”

She lifts her pinkie finger. “This one?”

“Yep.” I tap her nose. “Now, are you ready to learn how to make a pumpkin pie?”

A barstool scrapes against the floor as Damon pulls it out. “Aren’t you going back to work?”

“And miss culinary school? No way.”

Culinary school? Not hardly. I’m using the recipe on the label of the pumpkin puree and hoping it works since I’ve never made a pumpkin pie before. Or any other pie for that matter.

“First, we need to gather our ingredients,” I tell Skye.

“What’s ingredients?”

“It’s the stuff we put together to make the pie.”

I read the ingredients off the label. Maybe Damon will believe this is a teaching moment for his daughter and not realize I have no idea what I’m doing. “Sugar, pumpkin pie spice, salt, eggs, pumpkin, and evaporated milk.”

Skye helps me line the ingredients up on the counter.

“Now what?”

“Now we mix all the ingredients in a big mixing bowl.”

I hand the can of pumpkin puree and a can opener to Damon. “Make yourself useful.”

“Three-quarters of a cup of sugar,” I murmur to myself. “How do we measure three-quarters of a cup?”

“Are there any measuring cups in the cupboard?” Damon asks.

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