#yancakes

Rael--at first he was just hopelessly lost in the kitchen. Just could not make anything without getting distracted by overthinking the directions and ruining it somehow. Ruined three sets of Dooku’s pans, including the ones that he would consider his favorites if he got attached to such trivial things. Dooku absolutely refused to give up and they kept experimenting with different methods to try and get Rael a little less lost in the kitchen. After several years, Dooku finally came up with his Padawan-Proof Pancake recipe. There’s a little song involved. The ingredients are forgiving enough that even if you undercook or overcook it a bit it’s still delicious. The song is built to keep you on time in the cooking so you don’t over- or under- cook it, but the ingredients forgive you if you lose track of yourself. Once Rael masters the Yancake, he decides that rebelling against your master is cool, actually, and swiftly becomes the exact opposite of everything that Dooku is, and that includes cooking. Even once he’s knighted he can’t help but intentionally be bad at most of the things that Dooku is good at, and anyway he spends most of his adult life living as an advisor in a palace so it’s not like he really needs to know how to cook.

Qui-Gon--theoretically Qui-Gon can cook, but he’s easily distractible, especially when he’s thinking about prophecies or the Force or Tahl or his padawans or or or...so if someone isn’t keeping a close eye on him, he will. burn. everything. Fortunately for Qui-Gon, the Yancake is easy enough (and Dooku had him make it often enough) that it can practically be done on autopilot, especially if you’re humming the song that goes with it. Kitchen timers don’t work on Qui-Gon because either he tunes them out or he forgets what they were for or he mistakes them for a commlink ringer, leaves the kitchen to go find where he left his commlink, and when he finally finds it the space fire alarm is going off. Once he becomes a Knight and a Master he just kind of stops bothering with cooking. After all, there’s food halls at the Temple, there’s ration packs on the ship, and there’s the generosity of his hosts whenever he’s on a mission. The Force will provide.

Komari--she learned the Yancake easily enough, but any small mistake that she would make in the kitchen would infuriate her. After all, it was so easy for her Master, so it shouldn’t be so difficult for her. After one too many eggs cracked hard enough that they splattered everywhere, she decided that cooking was stupid and she’d become a master duelist to impress her Master instead.

Nim--the Yancake was one of the first things Rael taught Nim about. Unfortunately, he didn’t really have the time to teach her to cook even if he was able to.

Feemor--Feemor’s pretty much the only other person in this lineage who can cook. He’s a pretty down-to-earth guy with a sensible head on his shoulders and since he’s Qui-Gon’s first padawan he definitely got a lot of exposure to Dooku because Qui-Gon was constantly worrying that he was messing up as a first-time Master. Dooku was just glad to have one (1) child that doesn’t burn the house down.

Xanatos--learned to cook the Yancake specifically because it was the creation of Master Dooku. Felt that all other cooking was beneath him.

Obi-Wan--was raised on ration bars and the hospitality of others pretty much. Learned how to cook the Yancake because it’s a lineage thing now and Qui-Gon thought it was important for him to know. Didn’t have Dooku in his life until Dooku was a Separatist leader, and obviously you’re not really going to get cooking lessons from the man who spends most of his time trying to kill you. Kind of learned to cook over a campfire during his time on Mandalore but has trouble remembering what exactly he’s supposed to do unless someone else (Satine) is there helping. Tries to learn to cook once he has a padawan of his own but still isn’t very good at it and once caught Bail Organa’s kitchen on fire. Mostly puts things in the space microwave and calls it cooking.

Anakin--can cook three (3) things: Gourmet Roast Bug, Yancakes, and Yoda’s stew. If Yoda didn’t have such misgivings about Anakin’s future and potential darkness, Anakin would be his favorite exclusively because Anakin actually likes Yoda’s cooking. Gourmet Roast Bug was something his mother taught him to make, and he tried to teach Obi-Wan to make it once while they were camping out on a mission. Obi-Wan ended up catching his robes on fire and alerting the enemy to their position.