//------------------------------// // Of Making Cookies And Matter That Is (Hopefully) Edible // Story: Christmas With A Cat // by My Little Epona //------------------------------// Of Making Cookies And Matter That Is (Hopefully) Edible I stared at the kitchen counter. It towered miles over me, terrifying and unscaleable as the cliffs of Tartarus. Untouchable as the surface of the sun. Unbeatable as Dark Souls. Okay, okay, maybe I was being a tad dramatic. Surely baking these cookies couldn’t end up too bad. At least…not as bad as last time I tried… …right? I gave a nervous swallow. The counters seemed to get taller. Last time I made the typical Christmas sugar cookies, the Schmooze was born. And I did NOT want to repeat last year. Seriously, I still don’t know what went wrong! I mean, you use a single mutation spell on a cup of oil because you don’t have butter, and the next thing that happens is that your batter eats the measuring cup! ...yeah. Maybe I should have payed more attention to the expiration date on the oil to. I reread the recipe for the ninth time. I checked the ingredients for the fifth time. There could be no debate. I, truly and surely, was ready. With a sudden energy, I grabbed a plastic measuring cup, plunging it into the bag of flour. A thick, choking cloud arose, but that didn’t stop me! I spun around to deliver the cup of flour into the metal bowl, and with a dramatic flair— Clonk. I immediately moved from a fire-driven beast ready to bake to a whimpering puppy, curled up on the floor. “Okay, who put that cabinet there?” I mumbled, rubbing the rising lump on my head. After a second I got to my hooves again, wincing carefully and watching where I was moving this time. The spice cabinet hung wide open, and my earth-shaking collision with it’s door had caused something inside to tip over, falling into a handy receptacle right beneath it…the bowl that I was going to use to make cookies. I lit my horn, picking up the small plastic container of spice. Wait….what even was this? “Creole????” I said, raising an eyebrow. “Oh well. Now spicy sugar cookies are a thing. It’s just, uh…outlining the nature of our unique holiday experience! Yeah, that’s it. We have every right to use whatever we want in our cookies! This is a free country!” I screwed the cap back onto the creole, putting it back into the spice cabinet. I ignored the heap of red in the bowl, picking up the measuring cup of spilled flour and dumping it on top of the creole. Hmm. This was only half a cup. I need 2 3\4 cups. I peeked into the top of the bag, trying to see how much was left. Huh...I mean, there wasn’t a lot here. I could probably just use the rest of the bag! Save the effort of having to measure.That would take too much time. I levitated the bag into the air, tipping it upside down above the bowl. The result was a thick cloud that probably polluted the surrounding area and helped advance global warming. I hacked up my lungs, waving my hooves around to try and ward off the cloud of flour. It….didn’t really work. But thankfully, after a bit the cloud settled on it’s own. I peered into the bowl again. Hmmm. Now this looked like more than was needed. Ah well, I could just double the amount of other ingredients! I tossed aside the bag of flour, which made it halfway into the trash can, or at least far enough to satisfy me. I brushed flour of the recipe, squinting at the tiny black scribbles of hoofwriting. Stir together flour, baking soda— Wait wait wait—didn’t we use baking soda to clean? Why in Equestria were we putting it in cookies? Maybe I’d skip that one. No one wanted cleaning fluid in cookies, so why put in baking soda? So weird. Okay, next was baking powder! I knew we used this for cooking. Okay…..1\2 teaspoon. I slid open the drawer in which we kept our measuring spoons. Hmm….which one was a teaspoon? I squinted at the tiny plastic print. Who designed these things? Why are the labels so freaking tiny? I chose the one I hoped was a teaspoon. Okay, half of this…..how did I get just half? Usually when you pour from a container, you get a whole thing, not half of a thing. Well, I’d just have to try! I tipped the baking powder container upside down, dumping it into the teaspoon. Um…..I got a little more than a full one…..eh, it’s fine. I set the container aside, then dumped what was in the teaspoon on top of what had overflowed inside the bowl. Well…..this was going great so far! I felt really good about these cookies. Oh—! I’d forgotten to set the oven to warm up. Um...375 degrees? Wow—that sounds like a lot of degrees! I frowned, trying to figure out the oven’s overcomplicated interface. Oh, what the heck. I’ll wing it. I set the white knob labeled “temperature” to the highest setting. That had to be near 375. Okay, back to my lovely cookie dough. So far, it was just a giant pile of powders. Flour, baking powder, creole….all essential to create the perfect cookie! But according to the recipe, I needed to mix it. And I knew exactly how. I’ve never been a big fan of the traditional way of baking. Why use a knife when you could use a blender? Why hoof-wash dishes when you could use a hose? And...why use a regular wooden spoon when you could an electric whisk? I levitated the pieces of the whisk down from the highest shelf in one of our cabinets. We affectionately called the whisk the “magic wand”, because it could be a whisk or a mini blender-type thingy makjiggy. I assembled it as best I could for someone who doesn’t know how to follow directions, and then plugged it into the wall. All right…the time of your reckoning has come, flour! I turned the electric whisk’s speed to “15”, and then added “turbo”. This flour looked hard to mix. The whisk was inserted into the mix….and then…honestly I don’t even know what happened. Looking back, I can come to the conclusion that the bowl exploded. A choking mix of flour and everything else filled the air, causing me to cough. Even worse, it stung, because of the ridiculous amount of creole in it. Hmmm. Maybe keeping that spice in wasn’t the best idea. I dropped the whisk on the floor, grabbing a towel from where it hung in front of the stove. A cloud of this magnitude required the big guns. The towel was quickly soaked in water from the sink, and I flapped it about through the air, beating back the flour. “BACK!!!!” I yelled. “BOW TO YOUR MASTER!!!! WHO HAPPENS TO BE ME!!! I AM BAKING QUEEN!!!” At this point, I was really glad the rest of my family wasn’t home. I was already questioning my own sanity—I didn’t need anyone else pointing hooves. After time (too much time), the cloud settled again. “Well.” I commented. “That certainly looks mixed.” Next on the recipe was wet ingredients. Apparently you were supposed to mix these in a different bowl…? Naw, it was a waste of space. It would just make another bowl unnecessarily dirty, adding to the already massive amount of cleanup I would have to do. I’d just toss it in with the dry stuff. I hummed a carol, spinning around to grab the egg carton. Clonk. “DARN YOU YOU CABINET DOOR!!!!” I yelled, clutching my head again. “IF I WIELDED THE ELEMENTS OF HARMONY YOU’D BE ON THE MOON BY NOW!!!!” Plop. Greeeeat. Had something else fallen in? I stood up again, kicking up flour from the liberal layer that coated the floor. Yup, something had fallen in all right. What now? ….was that dill weed? What sort of weirdo uses dill weed to cook? “These are some unique cookies.” I commented, pulling the glass container of seasoning out of the bowl and putting it back in the cabinet. It was too much work to try and pick out all the tiny little green leaves. I’d just leave them in. Anyway. Where was I? Oh right. Eggs. I continued whistling my happy carol, picking up two of the smooth white ovals and tossing them in the bowl. Immediately after doing that, I stopped and frowned. Something felt wrong. I checked the recipe again. “Oooh!” I said. “You’re supposed to crack the eggs! That makes sense!” I glanced at the bowl, where the eggs had cracked by themselves. I had a feeling the shells weren’t supposed to be there. Oh well. If I put it in a blender, it would be fine, right? Now I needed to add butter and sugar. More specifically, I needed to “cream” it. What on earth did “cream” mean? Eh. I’d just melt the butter, then mix it in. And the sugar would be easy! “Okay...one cup butter.” I muttered. “Easy….how many sticks are in one cup?” My instincts reared their derpy-looking heads, telling me that it was two sticks in a cup. But I learned not to trust my instincts—especially not when they had that expression. So I went with five, because that seemed like the reasonable thing to do. Five sticks of butter, all wrapped up in their cute little papers, went flying into a glass measuring cup. Hmm. Microwaving all this would take too long. This time…I’d just use magic. It wasn’t a mutation spell! It would be fine… I ignited a tiny spark of magic on my horn, and sky blue flames erupted around the measuringcup. “ACK!” I yelled, leaping backwards. “TOO MUCH!!! TOO MUCH!!! WAY WAY TOO MUCH!!!!!” I dropped the flaming cup onto the counter, grabbing the wet towel I’d used on the flour. I smacked desperately at it, smothering the fire beneath the piece of fabric. The paper on the butter had incinerated into black ashes, and the butter itself had turned dark brown. Very, very….very dark brown. Hmm….I’d read somewhere that browned butter was actually used in recipes. I don’t know what it was supposed to add, but hey, the flavor was unique enough already! What was one more strange thing? “Nutty, spicy, dill weed-flavored cookies, here I come!” I said. I may have just been hallucinating from all the flour I inhaled, but this was actually starting to sound…good. …let’s be honest I was probably hallucinating. I dumped the liquified butter into the bowl, chipping some weird black crusty bits off the bottom of the measuring cup with a chisel. I guessed the crusty bits were supposed to go in too? Maybe they gave the cookies texture or something. “Okay….sugar!” I said. This part would be easy. After all, you could never have too much sugar! Pinkie Pie was a living example of that. I levitated the huge bag of sugar into the air above the bowl, panting from the exertion. It was extremely heavy...this was hard. How much was I supposed to add? Oh yeah….1 1\2 cups. That probably wouldn’t be too hard…. I picked up the plastic cup to measure out the sugar, but then my magic gave out. I guess it decided it wasn’t going to carry this darn heavy bag anymore. The many-pound bad of sugar crashed into the bowl, sending up a cloud for...the third time? The fourth? I was losing count by this point. Mm….I liked this cloud, though. I was sweet. After it settled, covering the floor in a new grainy coat, I examined the bowl again. I think….I may have added three times as much sugar as was needed. But I mean, you can never have too much sugar! ….right? “Crap!” I realized, smacking my head with a hoof. “I forgot to double everything else!” One more egg—this time, the shell was pre-cracked—went flying into the mix. An unmeasured hoof full of baking powder followed it. I figured the butter would probably be okay. Okay….now for vanilla! I levitated the tiny bottle down from the cabinet. Wait….I was supposed to add only a single teaspoon? What? This was the main flavor of my cookies. Well...that is….it was supposed to be. I figured the flavors of creole and dill weed might kinda fight against the vanilla. But I couldn’t add only a single teaspoon! THESE COOKIES NEEDED FLAVOR, PONIES!GOOD FLAVOR! I humphed, tossing the recipe aside. The cap was unscrewed, the whole contents of the tiny bottle dumped straight into by dough. Mm mm. These were looking good. Time for more mixing! I grabbed the whisk from where it was lying on the floor and cranked the speed up. After all, it would be a lot harder to mix this wet stuff than it was to mix the dry stuff. So, I turned it up to “35”, and set it on “ultra max turbo”. ….why did this even have a setting like that? I took a deep breath, then pressed the button to turn it on. The likes of the spectacle that occurred immediately after would probably startle even the most battle-hardened of Princess Celestia’s army. I mean, who knew a whisk could drill through wood? Any time I want something quickly or efficiently* decimated, and that thing is made of wood, I’ll just use a whisk! ….okay, maybe it’s not THAT efficient. The cabinets in front of me were immediately destroyed, the shredded remains of their doors hurtled through the air at high velocity. I tried plunging the whisk into the batter, but it didn’t really want to move down, so….I let go. …..perhaps not my best idea. The whisk went crazy, leaping through the air in a demented attempt at freedom. The rapidly spinning tines drilled straight through the tile floor of the kitchen, vanishing into the dark depths of the basement beneath. As I stood by, watching helplessly, the cord snapped straight out of the electrical socket, diving after it’s main body…until the tool was lost. Hmm. I’d probably have to get my mom a new one of those… But in the meantime, there was a hole in the floor, wood chips covered the counters, and the cabinets...oogh. The cabinets had seen better days. Besides, my cookie dough still wasn’t mixed! I sighed. I could hoof-mix it. The other things….I wasn’t sure what to do just yet. I trotted back over to the disaster scene of a bowl, sticking my hooves into the gloppy mess. Egg shells crunched beneath them as I strained to stir it, yanking my forelegs left and right. However, I overshot on one part, jerking too hard and stumbling sideways. Clonk. “OH, COME ON!!!!” I yelled. Adding injury to…well, even more injury, the still-open spice cabinet spat another plastic container at me, and it clonked against my head before falling into the batter. “What is it this time?” I groaned, resisting the urge to rub the bruise on my head. If I tried, my hooves would probably get glued to my mane. “Cardamom? Cilantro?” I levitated the container into the air, squinting to read the dough-splattered label on the front. …cat nip? CAT NIP?? CAT NIP????? “WHAT KIND OF FAMILY KEEPS CAT NIP IN THEIR SPICE CABINET???” I yelled, panicking. I had no idea how ponies would even react if they ate this! Was it safe??? I dug frantically through the batter, trying to pick out the tiny dried leaves. Globs of the gummy substance splattered into the sink and on the floor as I tossed the foliage I found in that general direction. I had to get this all out. “Well...think I got most of it…” I bit my lip, resting my hooves on the counter. The speckled, freaky, weirdly-colored batter was ready to be baked. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t scared, but I was also kind of fascinated….in a grossed-out kind of way. “Okay…..roll rounded teaspoonfuls of dough into balls, and place onto ungreased cookie sheets. Doesn’t sound too hard.” But why on earth should I bother measuring it into teaspoons? Pffft. Oh wait! I couldn’t set it out just yet. I still needed to blend it to grind up all the eggshells... Though some of the dough had oozed over the edge of the counter and glued the lower cabinets closed, I managed to yank one open. The door may have come off in the process, but at least I could get inside now! I pulled the blender out from the cabinet. Hmm...there was no free counter space for me to set it down. I could either use the floor, or levitate it in the air… Eh. I would just levitate it. It couldn’t be that hard. Using a spatula, I painstakingly scraped every last drop of the unknown substance into the main body of the blender, tossing the spatula aside. It splattered against a wall, sticking immediately. All right…here goes. I tapped the “on” button. The blender began lurching violently back and forth through the air. I immediately abandoned the idea of holding it with magic, shoving it to the floor and throwing myself against it. Dough splattered up the sides of the blender, threatening to shove the cover off and overflow. I hooked one foreleg around the main body, using the other hoof to cram down on the lid. My body shook violently, and I braced myself against the corners of the cabinet, trying to hold steady. After a while, I slammed the “off” button, causing it to come to a screeching halt. There…it should be nice and mixed up now. But even if it wasn’t, there was no way I was doing it again. I scraped the matter back into the mixing bowl, simultaneously grabbing a spoon from the silverware drawer. Now it was time to scoop it onto a tray. I dug up a spoonful of the dough, then dropped it onto the cookie sheet. The dough splattered, forming a flat-ish shape. Great! Cookies were supposed to be flat, right? Time to finish up and get these in the oven! --------------------------------------------------------------- While my culinary masterpiece was baking, I decided to make a valiant effort to clean up the kitchen. Not much I could do about the hole in the floor, but with some boards, nails, and a hammer, I did what I could. Nopony would notice… …unless they tripped on it… …or walked through the kitchen at all…. Hmm. Maybe I could convince everypony to wear blindfolds every time they entered the kitchen. All the dirty utensils I used instantly went in the sink, and after blasting them with about a lake’s worth of hot water, all the leftover batter was safely washed down the drain. I didn’t want anypony to see the uncooked version….cause it looked scary. I hoped the cooked version would look better. The flour coating every available surface was a little trickier to clean. After some...er...trial and error, I decided to use a vacuum, which sort of worked. It may be a tad….overloaded….but surely we can buy a new one. …..right? I was just disconnecting the smoke alarm when the oven timer finally went off, and I leapt down from the stool I was using in excitement. My cookies were finally done! And just in time. My family was due to get home from shopping any minute now. I wafted away the smoke that filled the kitchen, searching for oven mitts. Gosh, where did I put those darn things? I sighed. I could just levitate it….but there was something extra special about taking a baking pan out of the oven with your own hooves. It was a sense of pride… Oh well. The special feeling definitely wasn’t worth burning my fur off. I opened the door, coughing in the choking cloud of smog that billowed from it. Squinting tearfully through the haze, I caught hold of what looked like it had once been my cookie tray, carefully sliding it out of the oven and into the air. Wait, why was it glowing? BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP “Ack!” I yelled. I’d forgotten to disconnect the smoke alarm upstairs. I dropped the tray on top of the stove, ignoring the worrying sizzling noise, and raced upstairs as fast as I could. BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP Oh...right. I was too short to reach it. I desperately jumped for the darn plastic circle embedded in the ceiling, trying to hit the tiny button that would stop this awful noise. “I’M JUST BAKING!!!!!” I yelled, flailing my arms in the air. At this point, I was kind of worried the neighbors would see the smoke leaking from the windows and decide to call 911. It wasn’t a big deal! I was just baking cookies! At least there was no Schmooze hanging about the kitchen…. At least this year, we wouldn’t have to pay a fine for creating a new life form! Below, I heard the door slam open, making the house shake. “SWEET CELESTIA WHAT IS HAPPENING IN HERE????” That would be Song Bird. Where was mom? “NOTHING!” I said. “IT’S JUST FINE!! COULD YOU KEEP SHOPPING TILL I CAN GET THIS TO STOP???” The door slammed closed again, knocking a picture off the wall. I assumed she took my advice. “Curse you, tiny piece of plastic!!!!” I growled, finally giving up on reaching it. A beam of magic shot from my horn, blasting into the fire alarm. It exploded, leaving a burnt hole in the ceiling, and tiny pieces of plastic rained down on me. But hey, at least it stopped! I sighed, trotting back downstairs to check on my cookies. “…what are those?” I said, wrinkling my nose. Red flag number A—the baking sheet was glowing a reddish gold and dripping over the stove, giving off curls of steam. Red flag number B—the cookies were gone. I didn’t even know how to describe what was left. So….imagine a turtle fell into cement, wandered onto the highway, and got flattened by a truck. Then a seagull ate that turtle before throwing it up again...into an active volcano. Yeah, that seemed about right. “What happened?” I demanded, flinging my hooves into the air. “What more do you need of me? I follow the recipe!” Of course, the fire alarm in the basement stairway chose that time to go off. It was a very bad time to be an active fire alarm, because I was pretty mad at how my cookies turned out. Of course…I didn’t know exactly what I was expecting…given my track record with baked goods… “WILL YOU BE QUIET?!?” I shouted at the alarm. Of course, it didn’t give me an answer, because it was an inanimate object and if it did answer back, I probably would’ve run screaming from the house. I grabbed a heavy object off the counter, trotting over to the basement stairs. The door was flung open, and I hurled the object at the fire alarm. It took it right off the ceiling, crashing down the stairs and leaving large dents in the wood. “…oh.” I realized. “That was our only rolling pin.” Oh well. At least it stopped the beeping. All right. Next. ...at this point, I wasn’t sure if I actually wanted to waste frosting on these cookies. If dad was grilling our Hearth’s Warming dinner, than these would have come in handy, but otherwise I could think of no other use for them. We certainly weren’t eating them, that was for sure. Ooh! Maybe I could punch holes in them and hang them on the tree! …nah. Black decorations—or whatever this color was—weren’t usually the most festive. Besides, I wasn’t sure if I could actually penetrate these things. Um…..we could use them for frisbies…? No, they weren’t large enough. If I glued several together then maybe, but there was no guarantee the glue would hold. Besides, we didn’t play frisby very often. And if somepony didn’t catch it in time, it would probably be able to induce a concussion. The front door creaked open again, this time much slower and cautious. “What in Equestria happened here?” Song Bird asked. I heard her coughing on the trace amounts of smoke still lingering in the air. “I was baking cookies.” I said, wiping smudges of flour off my face. “Ah.” My sister trotted into the kitchen. “No other explanation needed.” “Meanie.” I pouted. “Have they showed signs of intelligence yet?” Song asked, eyeing the charred...things…carefully. “Nope. I don’t think these ones are sentient.” I informed her. “Want to try one?” She gave me a look. “Never mind.” I sighed.