The Crew's Book of Hermitcraft Season Six Oneshots

The Knaves of Tarts

"Tarts."

Scar slammed the block of pastry on the table, looking Cub dead in the eye. Cub opened his mouth to make a cake-based protest, but a dollop of strawberry jam landed in it from across the room, promptly shutting him up. He nodded, savouring the sweet strawberry flavour. Tarts it was, then.

Cub passed Scar a rolling pin, and rolled up his sleeves to wash the tart pans. They could use magic, but neither enjoyed the flavours of magic and strawberries together. It tasted disproportionately bitter. So they were doing everything by hand today.

Soon, every tart pan was filled and then some. Cub was filling the larger tarts while Scar filled the smaller ones. They weren't even halfway done when they needed to open a new jam jar. After wrestling with the thing for a good minute or so, Scar gave up and passed it to Cub.

Cub made short work, and they set back to filling the tarts. Cub was a little bit worried that he'd overfilled his, but dismissed the thought as he put the pans on a tray and stuck them in the oven. Scar subsequently got in a small argument with Jarvis over whether the timer was for 20 or 50 minutes.

When the time came to take the tarts out, Cub's heart sank. The jam had boiled over, sealing the tarts in the pans. Yet he persisted in trying to pop them out, and one of the six even came out cleanly! As for the four smaller ones the tray, they all succeeded, so Scar taste-tested one. He ran out of the room, screaming that his mouth was burning.

He came back in while the second batch was in the oven, to see cub eating one of the large ones out of the tin. Naturally, he made a noise of confusion.

"The only thing wrong with them was that they were stuck in the pan." Cub explained, offering Scar one. Scar shook his head, since his taste buds had been fried.

The second and third batches didn't go as well. By the end of it, the counter was covered in plastic spoons, Cub was at the point of sitting on a chair and staring into space, and only 12 of 18 had made it out in one piece. A whole third had been lost. And Scar had burned his hands trying to get them out.

They tiredly high-fived, shoving the tarts in a yellow shulker box and agreeing that, while that was fun, they would not be baking tarts again any time soon. Cakes were better any day.

Sorry it's late, I was tired from baking tarts. I think I'll stick to mcookies.
Autocorrect, signing off from the past!