“Out! Out!” Rarity yelled as she chased after Sweetie Belle. “I saw you three go into my kitchen. I will not have you repeating last night’s... travesties in my boutique. Go on. Outside!”

Sweetie Belle and the other two Cutie Mark Crusaders ran out the front door of the Carousel Boutique. Scootaloo jumped over her wagon and landed on her scooter. The other two fillies climbed into the wagon just as Scootaloo started to beat her wings. They sped away from the dress shop and didn’t slow down until they were out of sight of the fuming Rarity.

“Well that could have gone better,” Scootaloo said as she steered through town.

The market was unusually crowded today. Some of the ponies that had come in from out of town to watch the previous night’s competition had remained for other business. There were also still remnants of the huge after-party going on in the fields north of Ponyville.

“I told you she would get mad,” Sweetie Belle said.

“At least she didn’t sic her cat on us,” Apple Bloom said. “Winona is guardin’ our kitchen somethin’ fierce.”

“So what now?” Scootaloo asked. “How do we find out if we’re as bad at baking as Rainbow Dash if nopony will let us bake?”

“Well... what about your house?”

“Yeah,” Sweetie Belle said. “Come to think of it. I don’t think we’ve ever hung out at your house.”

Scootaloo cringed and said, “We can’t go to my house. I tried to do some baking last night after I got home.”

“And?” Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle said.

“I’ve been grounded from the kitchen. It’s not so bad. My parents originally wanted to ground me from touching food until they realized that would make it impossible to eat.”

“Golly,” Apple Bloom said as she stared up at the sky. “There must be somewhere we can bake...”

The three fillies’ faces lit up as they spied a building in the distance. “Sugarcube Corner,” they all said then slapped their hooves together, nearly causing Scootaloo to lose control. “Cutie Mark Crusader, worst bakers in Equestria, yay!”

The Cutie Mark Crusaders stealthily moved through the store room of Sugarcube Corner. Mr. and Mrs. Cake weren’t there, and there were no customers around, but one should never pass up a chance to earn a ninja cutie mark. The sound of somepony humming could be heard coming from the kitchen as they approached. The fillies pushed open one of the swinging doors and peaked out their heads around it. Inside was Pinkie Pie with bowls, trays, and sheets of dough all around her.

“Wow,” Scootaloo whispered. “She’s making a bigger mess than some of the competitors did last night.”

Sweetie Belle whispered back, “Yeah, but the difference is the stuff she makes turns out good.”

“Most of the time, at least,” Apple Bloom said.

The Crusaders crept into the kitchen. Pinkie looked up from her stirring. “Hi, girls!” she said with a friendly wave. “Sorry about the mess. I’ve been really busy today.”

“Is there some special order you got goin’ on?” Apple Bloom asked, standing up since their cover had been blown.

“Oh, no. I’m just trying to combine a cupcake with a muffin.”

Apple Bloom tilted her head in confusion as she thought about what Pinkie had just said. “Is that even possible?” she finally asked.

“I dunno. But I had a weird dream about it last night, so I thought I’d give it a try.”

Scootaloo looked around at the many failed experiments strewn about the counter tops. “Wouldn’t that just be a muffin with frosting on top?” she asked.

Pinkie giggled. “You’d think that, but it takes more than just frosting for a cupcake to be a cupcake. The batter for each baked good is very different, and finding a proper combination of ingredients has been proving very difficult.”

“That sounds like somethin’ Twilight would be good at,” Apple Bloom said. She sniffed one of the failed experiments and stuck out her tongue.

“Yep. She already came up with a theory on how to do it, but I want to try to solve it on my own first. It’s more fun this way.” A red light on the oven illuminated and a buzzer sounded. A panicked look came over Pinkie. “Oh no! Experiment twenty-three has gone critical! Everypony hit the deck!”

The Crusaders barely had time to look at Pinkie before she lunged at them and knocked them behind a counter.

From outside Sugarcube Corner, a muffled explosion could be heard. With this having already happened three times today, nopony came to check on it.

The kitchen was completely covered in a thick layer of swirled muffin and cupcake. Four lumps in the floor wobbled as the ponies dug themselves out. Pinkie shook the crumbs from her mane. “Sorry girls. Things like this have been happening all morning,” she said.

The three fillies hopped out of their holes and walked around on the spongy floor. Pinkie leaned down and bit into it. She chewed thoughtfully, swallowed, and then sighed. “Another failure. What was I thinking, using oatmeal as a bonding agent?”

“I think it tastes pretty good,” Sweetie Belle said with her mouth full. Everypony looked at her. “What? I like oatmeal.”

“Was there something I could help you girls with?” Pinkie asked as she began cleaning up her latest failure.

“We’re trying to find out if we can bake bad like Rainbow Dash,” Scootaloo said.

“But everypony in town has heard about what happened last night, and nopony will let us use their ovens,” Apple Bloom continued.

“So we came here hoping we could use yours,” Sweetie Belle finished.

The four ponies looked at Sugarcube Corner’s oven, or rather what was left of it. The Crusaders sighed. Their search would have to begin again.

Pinkie looked at the oven then down at the sad fillies. She tapped her chin with a hoof as she thought. “I think I know of an oven you can use. Yeah! Wait outside. I’ll be right there.”

“So, uh... what exactly am I lookin’ at here?” Apple Bloom said after Pinkie put an object down in front of her.

“This,” Pinkie said, indicating the pink cube-like object, “is an Easy-Cake Oven. It was my first oven I used as a little filly. It’s been in my closet ever since I learned how to use a real oven.”

“But I already know how to use a real oven.”

“I suspect that’s the reason closets all over Equestria are filled with these things.”

“An oven is an oven,” Scootaloo said. “We’re lucky we even get to use this one.”

Sweetie Belle looked at the oven. She tapped it with a hoof, and a little door opened. “How does this thing even work?” she asked as she looked inside.

“Magic!” Pinkie said. “Oh! And a hundred-watt light bulb.”

“It bakes cakes with a light bulb?” Apple Bloom said with more than a touch of skepticism.

“Weeellll... not very well,” Pinkie admitted.

Scootaloo pushed the cube and tilted it into her wagon. “Then it’s perfect! With an oven as bad as this one, we’re sure to make something horrible,” she said, then hopped onto her scooter. “Come on, let get to the clubhouse.”

“Oh, wait,” Pinkie said then placed a brown paper bag into the wagon. “I also packed you some ingredients.”

“Thanks, Pinkie,” the three fillies said together before Scootaloo took off down the road.

Pinkie waved until the fillies were out of sight then looked up and tapped her chin. “Maybe marshmallows would be sticky enough to hold the batters together,” she said to herself. “Although, the temperatures required would be extreme. I wonder if I could rent a blast furnace.”

The Crusaders placed the Easy-Cake Oven in the center of the their clubhouse. The three fillies then stared at it for a while.

Eventually, Sweetie Belle opened its door and pulled out the small metal container that batter was supposed to go into. She looked up at the others. “Does anypony actually know the recipe to make a cake?” she asked.

“That’s easy,” Scootaloo said with a casual wave of her hoof. “You just... combine things together... right? Flour and sugar and eggs and stuff.”

“I’ve seen my sis bake cakes plenty of times. It didn’t look too hard,” Apple Bloom said.

“It looks like Pinkie already measured out all the ingredients for us,” Sweetie Belle said with her head in the paper bag. She began pulling out the ingredients.

Apple Bloom took stock of what was in the bag. “Okay, so we have a bowl, a spoon, some flour, some sugar, little bit a salt, little bit a baking powder, and some buttery type stuff. I think it’s shortenin’. Let’s start combinin’ it and—”

“Hold it!” Scootaloo said. “We’re missing eggs.”

“That’s everything that was in the bag,” Sweetie Belle said as she checked again. “Maybe we aren’t supposed to use them?”

“No way! You saw all the cool things they did with eggs last night. How can you make a cake without eggs? All cakes need eggs. Isn’t that right, Apple Bloom?”

Apple Bloom thought about it. “Well... my sis does always put eggs in her cakes.”

“Then it’s settled. We’ll just go over to your chicken pen and get some eggs. What could possibly go wrong?”

“How did that possibly go wrong?” Scootaloo said after she stuck another bandage on her foreleg.

“I told you not to squeeze ‘em. Chickens lay eggs when they’re good and ready,” Apple Bloom said, then stuck a bandage along Scootaloo’s back.

“Yeah, well... at least we got three eggs before they started attacking.”

The Crusaders looked down at the ingredients before them. It was time to see if they had what it took to bake as bad as the competitors from last night. Apple Bloom picked up an egg in her mouth, rapped it on the side of the bowl, then carefully moved the shell so the raw egg could slide out. She set the shell down and stared into the bowl. “So... how do I make somethin’ bad happen?”

“I don’t know,” Scootaloo admitted. “Nurse Redheart still has Rainbow Dash all tied up in bandages, so she hasn’t been able to teach me anything. Oh! She did show me that pose to use.”

Scootaloo stood before the bowl, stuck out her chest, flared her wings, and held her head high. The other two Crusaders mimicked her pose the best they could without wings. They stood that way for a few minutes.

“Is anything happening?” Scootaloo asked.

“I don’t know. I can’t really look down like this,” Apple Bloom said.

“My neck is getting tired,” Sweetie Belle said.

The three fillies looked down together. The egg hadn’t changed color, turned into a frog, or gotten back inside its shell. They sighed. It was a very disappointing egg.

“Stand back. It’s my turn now,” Scootaloo said. She bent down to pick up the egg then stopped. Instead of using her mouth, she sat down and picked up the egg between her front hooves. She then threw the egg over her head, causing it to splatter on the wall behind her. “Oh no! My bad baking magic caused the egg to fly out of my hooves. What a mess!”

Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle stared at Scootaloo with unimpressed looks on their faces.

Scootaloo sighed. “I’ll clean it up.”

Apple Bloom rolled the last egg to Sweetie Belle. “Go on,” she said. “It’s your turn now.”

Sweetie Belle picked up the egg and dropped it in the bowl. She then raised a hoof and stomped on the egg. She lifted her hoof and watched the egg slide off of it. “Eeewww,” she said.

“Good job, Sweetie Belle! You got egg shells in the bowl,” Apple Bloom said excitedly.

“Huh? She did?” Scootaloo said as she was wiping the wall with a towel. She finished cleaning, walked over to the bowl and dropped the towel for Sweetie Belle to use. “All right. Now we’re getting somewhere. What’s next?”

“Flour,” Apple Bloom said. She picked up the container and dumped the flour into the bowl. The fillies coughed as a cloud of flour rose around them. They looked at each other and grinned.

The rest of the ingredients were thrown into the bowl, and the giggling fillies fought each other for control of the spoon. After a few minutes, and an attempted recreation of Trixie’s spoon/spatula fight, the batter was mixed and mostly still in the bowl. Apple Bloom spooned some of the batter into the metal container, shut the oven and pressed the ‘ON’ button.

The Crusaders watched the oven with excitement for a few minutes, followed by a mild enthusiasm for a few more minutes, then outright boredom. The ‘ON’ button was illuminated, and the sides of the oven felt warm. Beyond that, there was no telling what, if anything, was happening.

“So, how long do we have to wait?” Apple Bloom asked.

“This isn’t one of those quick-bake ovens. It’ll probably take a while,” Sweetie Belle said.

“How do we know when it’s done?”

“Well,” Scootaloo said. “If we’re anything like Rainbow Dash, the oven will explode when it’s finished.”

The fillies looked at the oven then at each other. They took a step back towards the door.

“I-it was a really big explosion,” Sweetie Belle said.

They took another step back.

“Maybe we shouldn’t have done this in the clubhouse?” Apple Bloom said.

The fillies ran out the door and peeked back around its side.

“We should turn it off,” Scootaloo said.

“How? There’s only an ‘ON’ button.”

“Well... press it again!”

“What if that just makes it explode twice?”

The oven dinged.

The Crusaders screamed and ran from their clubhouse. They ran through the field and hid behind some trees. After a few minutes of their clubhouse not being engulfed in a fiery inferno, the Crusaders slowly crept back the way they had come.

Because it was her family’s land, Apple Bloom was outvoted to go and check if things were safe. She nervously climbed the ramp and looked inside. The Easy-Cake Oven sat in the middle of the Crusaders’ clubhouse; both were still intact. They only thing that had changed was that the oven was now open. Apple Bloom waved for her friends to follow.

The three fillies sat around the metal container full of cake they had removed from the oven.

“Do you think we should eat it?” Scootaloo asked.

“I dunno. It don’t look so bad,” Apple Bloom said then sniffed the little cake. “Don’t smell so bad neither.”

“I’ll eat it,” Sweetie Belle said with determination.

Apple Bloom and Scootaloo looked at each other, then nodded. They got up and gathered some supplies for their friend.

“Juice box,” Apple Bloom said after setting down a juice box next to Sweetie Belle.

Scootaloo set a bucket on Sweetie Belle’s other side. “Bucket,” she said.

Sweetie Belle looked at her friends and nodded her thanks. She bent down and took a bite from the cake. She chewed it for a little while then swallowed it. Apple Bloom and Scootaloo stared at her in anticipation.

Sweetie Belle formulated her thoughts and said, “It’s... not good. I think I liked Pinkie’s experiment number twenty-three better. The flavor is kind of bland, and the egg shells don’t help. It doesn’t make me want to cry or throw up, though.”

“So... does that mean we’re bad bakers?” Scootaloo asked hopefully.

“More like mediocre bakers,” Apple Bloom said sadly.

The fillies sighed. They wouldn’t be getting bad baking cutie marks today. “So what should we do now? We could try swimming again,” Sweetie Belle said.

“I hate swimming,” Scootaloo said. “We need something with more action. Something like... like...”

A cracking sound drew the three fillies’ attention downward. The light bulb inside the Easy-Cake Oven had shattered. The fillies slowly smiled at one another.

“You know,” Apple Bloom said. “This was only our first try. We haven’t even gotten Rainbow Dash’s training yet.”

“And there’s still a whole year before the next competition,” Sweetie Belle said.

“I think visiting hours at the hospital are soon!” Scootaloo said. “Let’s clean up and go see Rainbow Dash. She’ll tell us what we did wrong.”

The Crusaders slapped their hooves together and yelled, “Cutie Mark Crusaders, worst bakers in Equestria in training, yay!”