It was the middle of the third month of the year, or as Lucas had begun referring to it, mid-March, and the weather was still a bit chilly in Redwood Town. Despite that, the young boy was currently engaged in another important experiment inside the cold storage room, or freezer as he had begun referring to it, at the Town Lord's Manor.
With a big wooden spatula, Lucas was gently stirring a mixture of milk, cream, honey, eggs, and redberries, attempting to recreate a dessert that featured very prominently in his newfound memories, ice cream.
The reason Lucas was trying to make ice cream was quite simple, Eris' birthday was coming up at the end of the month, the 22nd to be exact, and Lucas wanted to give her something special, something she had never seen before.
After giving it much thought, he eventually decided on ice cream and had even enlisted his Aunt Sasha to help him prepare it.
Being a cooking enthusiast herself, Sasha was intrigued by this novel frozen dessert and had been more than willing to participate in its creation.
Anticipating it might take some trail and error to get it right, Lucas and Sasha began the process in the kitchen 8 days ago.
It was a good thing they started early, as this experiment hadn't exactly gone smoothly.
The biggest problem was that Lucas only had a rough idea of what was involved in making ice cream. He knew there were milk products, sugar, and flavourings, but what ratios of ingredients to use, and how they should be prepared, was a complete blank.
As far as he could tell, the man whose memories he had inherited had liked eating ice cream and had even made it before, but definitely not regularly, so the memories of the process were quite vague.
Still, with a basic idea of how to start, and knowledge of what it was supposed to turn out like, Lucas was confident he could make something close to the original with a can-do attitude and some good-old-fashioned effort.
Gathering the ingredients had been relatively easy, save for one.
Dairy products were readily available in Redwood Town thanks to several farmers raising small herds of Tarnath Cattle. All Lucas had to do was go to one of the farmers, pay them a couple coins, and he would have himself a big bucket of fresh milk with a layer of thick cream on top.
Redberries, which reminded Lucas of raspberries and happened to be Eris' favourite fruit, weren't in season right now, so normally they would be impossible to find. However, thanks to the new cold storage room, which had a separate fridge and freezer section, a few crates of redberries had been preserved from the fall harvest, so they were also easily acquired.
Sugar, on the other hand, was a luxury item that couldn't be found anywhere in Redwood Town; in fact, it was doubtful it could even be bought in the markets of the nearby Harold City which was the biggest settlement in the region.
Fortunately, Sasha was quite knowledgeable in the field of substituting ingredients and easily came up with the idea of using honey instead.
While honey wasn't exactly easy to come by either, it was at least available. Browsing the various shops and peddlers, the issue of having a sweetener for the dessert was soon taken care of.
As for adding eggs and cooking the entire mixture, this suggestion came from Grace, one of the two kitchen aids that helped out at the Manor. When Grace saw Sasha and Lucas stirring together the milk, cream, and honey during one of their earliest experiments, she had asked whether they were making a dish her mother had once cooked for her as a child, one that was thickened by mixing in eggs and then baked to set.
Intrigued, Sasha and Lucas decided to try this method out with a small portion of the mixture and they quickly discovered that the addition of a couple of egg yolks and gently cooking it made the mixture smoother and creamier. This also allowed them to pasteurize the milk and cream, something Lucas insisted on doing in the first place.
It took a couple more attempts to get the consistency just right afterwards.
At first, when the mixed in the mashed redberries, the mixture turned quite runny, which was inconsistent with what Lucas was expected. To solve this issue, Sasha suggested they cook down the mashed redberries to boil off some liquid and also reduced the amount of milk the added.
In their next attempt, the chefs accidentally used too high a heat, leading to the eggs cooking and everything turning lumpy.
Milk, cream, eggs, and redberries weren't too expensive, so although neither Lucas nor Sasha felt good about wasting such ingredients, they weren't too troubled about it either.
Honey, however, was an entirely different story.
There were no bee keepers or apiaries in Redwood Town, so all the honey they had either came from foragers or peddlers, making it quite pricy.
In just a few days, Lucas and Sasha spent nearly 6 Gold Coins on ingredients, over 90% of which went to buying honey. To put that into perspective, that was more than a low-wage labourer in Redwood Town would earn in 6 months of hard work!
It was an absurd amount of money just to make a simple birthday dessert; however, having come this far, the pair refused to just accept the loss and give up.
Fortunately, as the Town Lady, Sasha was not lacking money, and Lucas had also recently made quite a fortune.
After months of experimentation and preparation, Lucas had officially begun selling his soap bars in Redwood Town. The first production run had been a modest 100 bars, with Lucas figuring it was better to make fewer and sell out than make too many and have leftover.
Using small free samples to get people interested, Lucas quickly sold all his soap and made a killing in the process, despite selling them for only 1 Silver a bar, far cheaper than he could have priced them.
Even at 1 Silver a bar, however, Lucas was raking in profit.
After subtracting his expenses and paying a percentage to Sasha, his biggest investor, this initial sale had netted Lucas a little more than 2 Gold in profit.
For a boy not yet 10-years-old, earning 2 Gold for what was essentially a single day's worth of work was a shocking success story. What's more, Lucas already had another 200 bars curing right now that would be ready for sale at the beginning of next month!
Long story short, the two wealthy food enthusiasts didn't mind splurging so much money as long as the end product turned out delicious and could bring a smile to Eris' face.
Being able to eat something delicious themselves was just an added bonus, or so they told themselves.
With the mixture ready, all that was left now was to freeze it.
At least, that's what Lucas thought.
Not knowing what else to do, the boy simply poured the entire mixture into a big bowl and left it in the freezer overnight.
The next day, when he went to check on his experiment, Lucas wasn't met with a soft, creamy, frozen dessert, but rather a hard block of unappetizing ice.
Clearly, something had gone wrong.
Lucas spent the next few days wracking his brain over this problem.
After melting the whole mixture again, Lucas was relieved to find that the consistency hadn't changed, so he figured it was still usable. He then tried numerous methods to obtain the smooth frozen texture he was looking for.
He tried freezing it in smaller batches, he tried adding more cream, he tried freezing it bit by bit, he tried everything he could think of and was growing somewhat nervous as his big sister's birthday drew closer.
In the end, the inspiration for the solution to this problem came from a completely unexpected source, as it often does.
One day, after returning home from teaching the Unarmed Foundations Art at the Town Lord's Manor, Lucas was checking up on how his next batch of soap was drying next to the smithy when he found himself unconsciously staring at his father working with a piece of iron.
As usual, Drake would heat up the metal until it was red hot, folding and hammer it immediately as it cooled before heating it up again.
Having been taught a bit about this process by his dad, Lucas knew that aside from it just being easier to work with the metal when it was softer, Drake was also repeating this heating, hammer, and folding process to improve the iron tool's final properties.
Observing this process, Lucas suddenly had an idea. Perhaps if he could mash up the ice cream as it was freezing, it would change its final properties too!
After shouting his thanks to his very confused father, Lucas threw on his coat and ran back to the Town Lord's Manor.
Upon arriving, Lucas headed straight for the fridge section of the cold storage room, grabbed the whole bucket of liquid ice-cream mix, then brought it into the freezer and placed it atop a big block of ice.
Lucas then ran up to the Manor's kitchen and found the biggest wooden spatula he could before racing back to the freezer.
And so, 2 days before Eris' birthday, Lucas found himself shivering inside the freezer, slowly stirring the bucket of ice-cream mix as it solidified.
To his great delight, after about 30 minutes, the mixture had begun to set, and the small 'sample' he had tasted was both smooth, rich, creamy, and delicious.
Now certain he was on the right track, Lucas did his best to shake off the chill he was feeling and continued stirring the mixture.
It wasn't until another 30 minutes later, when someone else finally came to the freezer to grab something, that the shivering little boy mechanically stirring a big bucket full of mostly solid ice cream was discovered.
"Lucas!" Running over, Sasha grabbed her little nephew's blue hands and checked his forehead, finding him to be freezing cold with his teeth chattering.
"A-A-Aunty S-Sas-sha… l-l-look, it… it w-w-work-k-ked…" Lucas stuttered with a goofy grin on his face.
Seeing Lucas looking so proud of himself while nearly slumping over from the cold, Sasha wasn't sure if she should praise his determination or scold him for being stupid.
Regardless, there was one thing she was certain of, "You've done enough already. Come with me!"
Prying the long wooden spatula out of his hands, Sashas dragged Lucas out of the cold storage room and over to the Manor, where she promptly got him a warm blanket and sat him next to the fireplace. She also had one of the Manor's staff boil a big pot of water so the boy could have a hot bath.
Only after making sure that Lucas was alright did Sasha return to the freezer to check out what he had been doing and clean up.
Arriving in front of the ice cream bucket, Sasha was naturally a bit curious. She had participated in almost every step of this treat's creation, so she was quite familiar with this frozen dessert by now. It was just, up until this point, it had yet to really come together like Lucas had described it to her.
Seeing the final product now, and tasting a small sample, Sasha was shocked by how delicious this ice cream was. She had tasted this dessert while it was still a liquid, and also eaten a small chunk of it from their first attempt to freeze it, but neither of those forms was even close to as appetizing as this smooth, creamy treat.
No wonder Lucas was so enthusiastic about making this! Sasha's eyes lit up as she thought to herself, This is better than any dessert I've ever eaten before, even the ones they served at those big stuffy banquets!
The Unarmed Foundations Art, soap, ice cream; it seemed that there really were many miraculous things inside Lucas' head now, all of them valuable treasures in their own way.
Shaking her head, with great difficulty, Sasha resisted the urge to have another 'sample' of this redberry ice cream, scrapped off the wooden spatula into the bucket, then put a lid on it and stored it away in a corner of the freezer.
Finished packing up, Sasha smiled as she walked back to the kitchen, wondering just what kind of expression her silly daughter would make when they served this at her upcoming birthday party.