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Mira's pencil flew across the pages of her notebook. She had written the quantities in a straight column, drawn six identical arches and underlined completely cooled twice.

'Any questions?' asked Madam Ember

Kvid's hand shot up. 'How much is a small pinch? Is it the same for all fingers? And if your hand is bigger than Bella's, will the crown then...'

Madam Ember grabbed the edge of the board and flipped it around. The recipe vanished with a clap.

Mira's pencil stopped in the middle of a word.

'But,' she said. 'We hadn't finished with the questions.'

'No,' said Madam Ember 'And you haven't finished thinking either. You now know the basic steps. The rest is to be your own interpretation. You may change the shape, filling, flavour and decoration, as long as the result can stand, be sliced and be eaten.'

Mira looked in horror at the blank back of the board. Then she quickly leafed back through her notebook. The quantities were there. The temperature was there. Even the warning about warm cake arches was there.

She breathed out in relief. 'I got most of it.'

Viola leaned over to her. 'But not the interpretation.'

Mira looked from the notebook to the finished crown and back again. 'That part,' she said carefully, 'she could have given instructions on as well.'

Mira had already placed her ruler next to the scales. Viola studied the cake from three different angles. Glimmer leaned forward until her nose almost touched a hazelnut.

'May we use gold?' she asked.

'If it is edible,' said Madam Ember 'And if there is still a cake underneath.'

She took a small tin out of her apron pocket. When the lid slid off, a warm, sweet scent spread through the room.

Kvid's hand shot into the air. 'What is that? Where does it grow? Why don't we have a whole tree of it? Can you...'

'Cinnamon,' said Madam Ember. She looked around and lowered her voice. 'It grows very far from here. I borrowed it from a human house.'

'Borrowed?' repeated Nisvar.

'I left three shiny hazelnuts and a note in its place,' she said. 'But I simply cannot resist the scent. One small pinch in each dough. No more. The rest of Christmas must come from our own apples, our own honey and the nuts of the forest.'

She clapped her hands. 'You have an hour and a half.'

ELEVEN WAYS TO BAKE

Mira weighed the flour twice, measured each cake arch with a piece of string and wrote down the oven time to the second. All six pieces came out the same height, the same width and the same golden colour. She followed the recipe so precisely that not once did she stop to smell, feel or taste her way forward.

Viola mixed juice from lingonberries into one part of the glaze and dried blueberries into another. She cut out leaf shapes, birds and tiny fir trees and built a winter forest instead of a crown.

'Can you eat it?' asked Mira.

'You can go exploring in it,' answered Viola.

Baldur discovered that the copper bowl said ding, the wooden spoon said tjak, tjak and the whisk said frr-frr-frr. Soon he was working in a rhythm that the others followed without meaning to. Only when the cream turned yellowish did he discover that he had whipped it into butter.

Storm cast a quick glance at the other tables. Mira already had six perfectly identical arches lying in a row. He straightened his back and picked up the pace. His crown was not just going to be correct. It was going to be the one Madam Ember remembered. He smoothed every edge, brushed the surface shiny with honey and built the crown a little taller than the model on the teacher's table. When Bella asked if he could help with her dough, he quickly showed her how to hold the bowl, without pausing himself.

Storm was the first to put his finished crown out. It was tall, glossy and impressive. He just had time to smile at the others before one of the still warm cake arches began to slide. Storm caught it at the last moment and held the rest of the crown upright with both hands. 'It stands,' he said, strained. 'You are standing, at any rate,' said Madam Ember. 'The cake might have benefited from a little more time.'

Nijus did not have time to answer. Bella had got apple compote on her elbow, and he hurried over with a cloth. On the way back he noticed that Baldur could not get his whisk free of the cream, and a little later he was helping Kvid find the three bowls Kvid himself had put on the windowsill. When Glimmer's hot caramel began to run toward the edge of the table, Nijus grabbed a wooden spoon too and managed to stop it. Every time he turned to his own table, there was one more person who needed a hand. Meanwhile his dough sat too long, and the cake arches rose unevenly and went soft in the middle. When he finally came back and tried to put them together, the crown sighed and sank in the middle of the dish.

'It doesn't matter,' he said, laying the softest pieces around the filling. 'This way it is easier for everyone to take a piece.'

Nisvar read the whole recipe before he began. He tied up his sleeves, handed out oven mitts and moved Kvid's elbow away from a pot of melted honey. Then he decided that the crown should be completely safe on its feet. He kneaded extra rye flour into the dough, made the arches twice as thick and built little supports between them. It stood so steadily that even Bella could not make it wobble.

Eira tasted the honey, smelled the apples and listened to the cake's quiet crackling in the oven. She used a little dark rye flour, toasted hazelnuts and a drop of spruce shoot syrup. Her arches came out different from one another, but the whole room smelled of forest after rain.

At Glimmer's table something was glittering. She brushed the cake with honey glaze, laid thin flakes of edible gold on every tip and raised a wall of caramelised hazelnuts around the filling.

'It is magnificent,' she said.

'It has stuck to the dish,' said Nisvar.

Bella was busy making the crown look as if it were dancing. She shaped the arches with a slight sway, turned each one a little in its own direction and let Storm show her how to support them while they cooled. One arch did slip down onto the table during assembly, but Bella put it back in place with a dollop of firm whipped cream. The finished crown stood on the dish with lifted tips and a little twist in its body, as if it had stopped in the middle of a dance step.

Lysrik called his cake the Crown of the Winter Night. He made the apple filling dark red with lingonberries and let a little of Madam Ember's cinnamon warm the honey. Along the dark cake arches he placed small stars of dried apple and pale dots of whipped cream that wound up toward the crown's highest point.

'This is Glimtari,' he explained, pointing to a golden hazelnut at the top. 'The cake represents the longest winter night. A little nisse has got lost among the trees, and the darkness is so thick that even the snow has forgotten how to shine.'

He let a finger follow the row of apple stars.

'But Glimtari sees him. First it sends one glimmer down between the branches. Then another. Each light shows the next step, until the nisse finds his way home to the door beneath the Great Oak. There a warm room is waiting, with honey, apples and someone who has kept his place by the fire.'

Lysrik laid the last little star at the foot of the crown. 'That is why the edge should taste of the cold night, the apples of the way home, and the honey and cinnamon of the warmth that was waiting all along.'

Kvid made three tiny trial doughs. In the first he put extra egg, in the second more honey and in the third both grated apple and crushed hazelnuts.

'If all three work, I can mix them!' he said.

'And if none of them work?' asked Madam Ember.

Kvid thought about it. 'Then we know three things not to do.'

THE MOST IMPORTANT TEST

When the time was up, eleven cakes stood on the long table. None looked like Madam Ember's. Some barely looked like crowns.

She began with Mira. The knife glided through the perfect surface, and the cut was so clean that Mira almost applauded. Madam Ember took a bite and chewed for a long time.

'Beautiful,' she said. 'And entirely correct. But it tastes as if you measured it instead of baking it.'

Mira frowned and took a bite herself. Everything was as it should be, and yet the cake tasted flat. The honey, the apples and the cinnamon were there, but none of the flavours were really allowed to step forward. She found her notebook and wrote under the recipe: Remember: sometimes you have to feel, smell and taste your way, not only do as it says. Then she underlined taste twice.

Viola's winter forest was fresh and tart, but so detailed that no one wanted to be the first to cut into it. Storm's crown was smooth, golden and tasty, but it had to be supported with a wooden spoon while being sliced. Nisvar's stood unshakeably, but Madam Ember had to use the bread knife with both hands.

Baldur's butter filling turned out to go surprisingly well with the apple compote. Eira's cake was uneven, but it smelled and tasted of forest floor, toasted nuts and warm honey. Glimmer's was dazzlingly beautiful. At first the knife stuck in the caramel. When they finally got small pieces cut free, they all made a brave attempt to chew their way through them. A whole series of careful cracks and strained munching sounds went around the table. Madam Ember quickly counted everyone's teeth, nodded in relief and declared, 'Good. We shall need those for next week's lesson too.'

Bella's dancing crown wobbled dangerously but stayed standing. It was airy, sweet and a little crooked, exactly as Bella had hoped. In Lysrik's crown, first came the deep flavour of the dark honey cake and the tart lingonberries. Then followed the soft apples, and last the honey and cinnamon spread warmly through the mouth. Madam Ember took another bite. 'That could make even Mr Frostskæg thaw,' she said. Lysrik nodded gravely. 'That is also what light does to the longest night.' Kvid's three trials had run together into a bubbling mound, but the small crisp edges with grated apple were so good that Madam Ember asked him to write down exactly what he had done.

At last she reached Nijus's collapsed cake. He had covered it with a thin layer of cream and laid eleven apple pieces around the edge.

'It didn't turn out as it should,' he said.

Madam Ember took a bite. Then another.

The cake was soft with honey, tart with apples, round with hazelnuts and just exactly warm from the borrowed cinnamon.

'No,' she said. 'It turned out better.'

Nijus looked surprised.

'A cake is not only what the eyes see,' Madam Ember continued. 'Nor is it only what the tongue tastes. It is care, imagination, courage, curiosity, rhythm, safety, strength, joy and the will to share. Each of you forgot something today. But each of you also added something that was not in my recipe.'

Madam Ember set out the last pieces and looked over the many different crowns. 'Now we have tried them one by one,' she said. 'Let us see what they can become together.'

Mira laid a precisely cut piece of her own cake together with a spoonful of Eira's fragrant apple filling. She tasted it and nodded. 'That was the part I couldn't measure my way to.'

Bella laid a crisp edge from Kvid's cake on top of an airy piece of her own and gave it a twist of Baldur's apple butter. 'Look,' she said. 'Now it dances in the mouth too.'

Soon they were building small bites criss cross. Nisvar made his solid crown softer with Baldur's apple butter. Storm laid a piece of Nijus's juicy cake under a glossy flake from his own and admitted that it looked even more finished that way. Viola decorated the collapsed middle of Nijus's cake with a red berry and one of Lysrik's apple stars. Glimmer divided the gold into eleven thin flakes that this time could be chewed without danger. Eira found that her spruce shoot syrup went best with Lysrik's warm cinnamon, while Kvid tried to work out how many different combinations eleven cakes could actually make. Madam Ember tucked the cinnamon tin into her apron pocket before he could suggest an extra trial.

'Next week,' she said, 'we bake your own Christmas favourites.'

Eleven hands shot into the air.

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