Adrien stepped aside so that the knife could cut the cake as instructed. "That's nice", he commented as he surveyed its work. "That's the hardest part, for me...".

"I can imagine", Val said, looking up from his journal.

"You've never tried making this kind of cake?".

"No", Val said. "I have made layered cakes, but never by cutting them. I would bake each layer separately, then put them together".

"But then you end up with so much cake!", Adrien said, wide-eyed.

Val's mouth opened in a wide smile. "And where is the problem with that?".

Adrien burst into laughter. "Well, I suppose that, with the time-slowing enchantment in the pantry, you don't really have to worry about stuff going bad, so you can make a lot of cake and eat it whenever you feel like it, right?".

"Right. That's part of why I started this project in the first place", Val replied. "I must buy groceries from Falderdeen sometimes, or people may grow suspicious... but I became tired of spending several hours each week going up and down the hill to buy ingredients that would rot before I had time to prepare anything with them. So I started by enchanting the pantry... then I thought to retool my thesis about the talking teapot... and here we are".