Once Upon A Royal Christmas (Chaennie)

Chapter 15

Chapter 15

"Why didn't that blog say anything about gingerbread cookies taking the whole day to do?" Ella groaned at her stool in the kitchen. "Are they at least cool enough to decorate now?"

After their morning of sledding, Rosie and Ella parted ways briefly to take hot showers to unthaw and change into some dry clothes. Since then, the baking and cooling of the gingerbread cookies took up most of the afternoon. Lisa had been right though, and the chilling of the dough had definitely made the cookies taste much better. Additionally, despite all of her other work around the kitchen and the palace as the chef, Lisa kindly brewed another pot of coffee for Rosie and crafted a crock pot pull of rich hot chocolate for Ella. During their time waiting for the cookies to cool, Rosie discovered the delightful mix of the two with a generous helping of whipped cream and marshmallows to top it off. She prayed that the caffeine this late in the day wouldn't keep her up this evening, but hopefully, the caffeine crash would knock her out until morning.

"I think so," Rosie replied, picking up one of the gingerbread people, noticing that it was roughly room temperature and it should be cool enough for the icing not to melt off.

In addition to all the patience and enabling Lisa had done for them today, she had also let them raid the palace pantry for all sorts of icing and other sorts of candy that could be used for decorations. For Ella being the only child in the palace that Rosie was aware of, a surprising amount of sweets filled the shelves. Apparently, the princess insisted on keeping it well stocked for the palace guards and staff for a treat throughout the day as well as keeping a secret stash of peppermint bark of her own well-hidden in the corner behind the liquorice and circus peanuts.

"Oh sweet," Ella picked one cookie up and inhaled. "They smell amazing. It has to be that molasses."

"If you keep eating them, you're not going to have enough left for your gingerbread family," Rosie laughed.

"I'm short, we'll just say one is sleeping in the house or something like that. Now what kind of candies should we use to decorate?"

"You can use the pretzels as logs on the house," Rosie suggested as she sorted through the piles of candies now strewn across the table in front of them. "Oh, and of course gumdrop buttons are a classic. Maybe marshmallows for snow?"

"Ooh, I can use M&Ms for the eyes," Ella said as she dumped out a mini pack of them on the table. "The brown can go for my mom and me since we have the same eye color, but I'm not super sure about the others. Do you know what color Jennie's eyes are? Brown too, right?"

"Lighter than you and your mom's eyes," Rosie answered automatically.

Ella cocked her head to the side and arched an eyebrow at the blonde. "Oh?"

"I, um, just notice these things sometimes," Rosie mumbled as she reached for her coffee.

"Uh huh," Ella hummed, her fingers drumming against the counter, waiting for more, but Rosie definitely wasn't about to divulge that sort of thing to a teenager.

"So have you picked everyone out yet?" Rosie asked, peaking over her coffee mug at Ella's assortment of cookies and candies.

"Well, this one can be mom," Ella said, holding up a cookie with a wonky head. "I kind of nibbled on it already, but her head's big enough already so it's probably a good thing that I trimed it down a bit for her."

Rosie snorted. "Wow, you're lucky she's not here to hear that."

"Psh," Ella said with a way of her hand as she down the cookie next to her others. "I say it with love. If she's really bothered by it, I'll just cover it up with more icing hair."