A Fellowship of Bakers & Magic

Arleta Starstone bakes in Adenashire, a town where nearly everyone has magic and she has none. She compensates the only way she knows how: by working harder, blending apothecary herbs into her pastries, and keeping her ambitions small enough to be safe. When her orc neighbour enters her creations into the Langheim Baking Battle without telling her, that carefully small life stops fitting.

The journey to Langheim brings company she did not expect, including a woodland elf with more patience than she thinks she deserves, and a competition that measures her against bakers whose magic does half the work. What follows is less a contest than a slow argument with herself about whether she is allowed to want things.

The first book in J. Penner's Adenashire series is cozy fantasy in the fullest sense: low stakes, warm friendships, a gentle closed-door romance, found family, and recipes in the back. It reads comfortably as a standalone.