Baking Day

The kitchen at Bag End was warm and cozy and smelled of the peppermint candles flickering on the windowsill. An array of bowls and baking pans littered the table where Pippin sat covered in flour from the top of his curls to the tips of his furry toes and watching with wide eyes as Bilbo carefully cut the dough into fanciful shapes. There were stars and crescent moons, trees and ponies, and even little hobbit lads and lasses. "How do you do it, Cousin Bilbo?" he asked in an awed voice.

Bilbo smiled at Pippin's unchecked amazement. He had given the lad a bit of dough to play with, which Pippin had rolled and stretched until it resembled a long and slithering garden snake. But now it lay forgotten in a bed of flour, still waiting for Pippin to decorate it as the child watched Bilbo work instead.

"Oh, it is quite simple," he replied. "I just cut the dough here, and there..." With a knife he drew a shape in the dough, forming a star, which he placed on the baking pan for Pippin to decorate.

"Will I be able to do that when I'm older?" Pippin asked eagerly. He was still too young to use knives and scissors.

"Certainly," Bilbo said kindly. "Though I do hope you will still help me decorate the biscuits."

Pippin grinned up at him. "I will, Cousin Bilbo. I promise!"

Bilbo smiled in return. He very much enjoyed Pippin's help – and his company – while they baked. Frodo and Merry had approached Bilbo the evening before, asking him to keep Pippin occupied for a short while. Normally they did not mind it when their younger cousin tagged along, but now they needed some time to wrap and hide Pippin's Yule gifts without worrying that he would happen upon them and ruin the surprise. And so, when Frodo and Merry had disappeared after second breakfast, Bilbo had quickly distracted Pippin by asking him to help with the baking.

Armed with finely chopped nuts and sweets of various sizes and colors, Pippin decorated some of the biscuits as Bilbo cut them into shape; the rest they left untouched, for those they would paint with icing after they were baked. Soon Frodo and Merry would join them, as it had become something of a tradition for the cousins to spend a day baking together in preparation of Yule. But for now Bilbo and Pippin worked together, and their voices at times lifting up in song and filling the room with Yuletide cheer.