The Ultimate Disaster or Leo In The Kitchen
Disclaimer- I do not own TMNT or any of the characters therein. Some VERY rich dude does.
Rating - Mature Audiences ONLY
Story Warnings- Emotional distress due to embarrassment, Swearing, Sibling teasing, Implied tcest (Don't like these topics? Do not read!)
Pairings - Implied OT4, Implied Leo X Mikey. (Do not like? Do not read!)
Universe- 2003
Ages- Leo, Raph, Donnie, and Mikey are all of the equivalent age of 21. (I made them this age to account for time passage in the series storyline.)
Summary- Leo just wanted a cookie.
The Ultimate Disaster or Leo In The Kitchen
The lair was silent, swathed in a blanket of darkness.
Perfect for a covert mission.
Leo silently moved from shadow to shadow down the short hallway to the stairs. Before descending he paused, listening for the telltale sounds of someone awake.
Raph's rumbling snores continued unbroken. The soft, pale glow of a nightlight could be seen from under Mikey's door. The doorway to Don's lab stood open and dark.
All were sound asleep.
Perfect.
And with Master Splinter away at April's for the night. No one had heard his passing.
A smug smile curled the oldest's mouth.
As silent as death, the blue banded ninja descended to the lower level, pausing yet again to extend his senses for any indication his brothers were awake. Sensing nothing, Leo breathed a sigh of relief.
Making his surefooted way through the inky darkness, Leo entered the kitchen. Diverting his eyes against the glare, he flipped on the light over the stove. He paused again, making certain he remained undetected.
As quietly as he possibly could, given the condition of some of the cabinet hinges, Leo began his search.
A scowl quickly crept across the leaf green face. Why couldn't he find it? There were only so many places it could be.
A flash of fear clenched Leo's heart.
What if Mikey had thrown it out!?
Wait! There was one other place he had yet to look!
Leo's relief was palpable when he opened the one cabinet in the kitchen NO ONE was allowed to touch, except his youngest brother, to find the object of his search.
Well, THAT wasn't exactly true. Master Splinter could touch it.
None of the four brothers was idiot enough to deny their father anything. Splinter may be getting on up in years, but that old rat could still whoop all four of their asses at the same time in less than an hour, and never even wrinkle his robes.
And Donnie was allowed into that cabinet. It was where the genius kept his notebooks on herbal remedies, and homeopathic medicine.
Come to think of it, Raph was into that cabinet all the time too. It was where the emerald turtle kept his recipes for protein shakes, and rehydration drinks.
Leo paused in mid reach. The only one really banned from getting inside that cabinet was HIM.
He snorted.
We'll just see about THAT.
With an air of holy reverence, Leo pulled a single, black and yellow book from the shelf.
Here it was.
His mouth began to water as he lovingly stroked the front cover.
The Holy Grail of deliciousness.
Cookies for Dummies.
The one thing that could give the leaf green turtle the greatest gift in all of the known universe. His heart's one true desire!
Snickerdoodles.
In Leo's opinion snickerdoodles were the best cookie in all the world.
Not that he had tasted every variety of cookie in the world, but still.
Leo had held that opinion since he and his brothers were seven years old.
One night, during the holiday season, Splinter had taken the brothers with him on a scavenging run in hopes of finding more than the usual amount of useful items. With the ongoing festivities, and the human tendency for wastefulness, it was highly possible.
What they had found was a break-in at a local bakery.
Splinter had made short work of the would be robbers, and considering the baker would be keeping his hard earned cash, Splinter did not think the man would mind if he and his sons made use of the large amount of baked goods the robbers had dumped on the floor. There was no broken glass to cause harm to his young charges, and dirt could easily be brushed off.
The rat daddy wasn't overly picky, and neither were his sons.
Scavenging completed, and once again back in the safety of their home, Splinter decided to reward his sons with a rare treat. He took four different variety of cookies, cut them into four equal sections, and placed one of each cookie on four separate plates. With his sons happily occupied with their cookies, and a glass of milk, Splinter put away the rest of their supplies in relative peace.
Oh, the cinnamon-y goodness of that tiny bit of crunchy Heaven. Leo could still taste it.
That tiny bit of Heaven was what was keeping the leaf green turtle from blissful slumber, and it was all Mikey's fault.
The family chef had tried a new dessert.
Leo hadn't paid much attention to his brother's culinary creation except to notice it was warm, the perfect temperature of a snickerdoodle fresh from the oven, it was crunchy, well duh, and it had just enough cinnamon to tempt Leo's taste buds.
It was Raph's fault too, the big jerk!
Just as Leo was licking his fork clean, savoring the last delicious, mouth watering taste, that emerald dunderhead had to go and comment on how similar Mikey's new dessert was to snickerdoodles.
And that was that.
The rest of the night Leo couldn't concentrate. He couldn't meditate. He kept losing to his baby brother at video games. He lost to Donnie at Backgammon, twice. He kept slipping up on his katas. Out of frustration he'd tried a kata the brothers had mastered when first learning ninjitsu as children.
He'd even messed that up!
All he could think of was that oh-so-tantalizing taste of a straight-out-of-the-oven snickerdoodle!
Oh, sure, he could have asked Mikey to make him some. And Mikey would have happily agreed. The only problem was, asking for Mikey's help in desperate situations came with far too high a price.
The last time Leo asked Mikey for a favor the leaf green turtle ended up playing which sex toy is the best for five hours.
Leo shuddered at the memory.
Baby brother was a perverted freak, hands down.
Besides, he could do this. Mikey did it all the time. How hard could it be? All he had to do was follow the directions. Piece of ninja cake.
Opening the cookbook to the desired page, Leo read through the list of ingredients, and step-by-step directions. It was pretty straightforward. If he approached it the same way he did a new fighting technique, Leo figured he should have no problems whatsoever.
The blue banded ninja froze. His head whipped around, facing the doorway.
No one was there.
Moving silently, Leo peeked around the doorframe. Still nothing. The lair was as dark and quiet as it was when he entered the kitchen.
Shrugging it off as nerves, Leo returned to the task at hand. He paused once again, listening closely. Still nothing.
Leo could have sworn he heard someone laughing. Very faint, but unmistakably laughing.
If he only knew.
"Okay." Leo rubbed his hands together. "Let's get to work. Step one, preheat oven."
Leo looked at the oven door as if it were some strange yet undiscovered species of animal life.
"I'll do that later." Leo nodded in confidence, having made his decision. "Don't want it to get too hot, and burn my cookies."
It always helped justifying your decisions when doing something you had no clue what you were doing.
Moving on.
"Step two. Mix sugar, butter, shortening, and eggs in large bowl."
Leo blinked. Large bowl? How large a bowl? By whose definition was large, large?
"They need to be more specific."
Leo rummaged through the cabinets. With a grin, he thumped Mikey's stainless steel, thirty quart mixing bowl onto the counter.
"This should do the trick. And a spoon to mix it with."
Leo stopped himself from tossing the wooden utensil in his excitement, instead he placed it quietly into the metal bowl, avoiding the loud clang that would have most likely roused Donnie.
Leo was a light sleeper, anything out of the ordinary woke him instantly. Donnie on the other hand could sleep through a mass Foot invasion, as long as there were no sounds of metal hitting metal. The instant that unmistakable clang rang out, Donatello would not only be up, but wide awake, demanding to know which one of his brothers was messing with his whatever project the genius had going at the time.
Once Leo had dropped his teaspoon onto the top of the stove. Donnie had been in the garage, soldering wires in the Battleshell. Before the leaf green turtle had time to pick the spoon up, his purple banded brother had come tearing into the kitchen, bo at the ready, shouting for Leo to step away from the stove. Donnie had already fixed it once that week.
The fact Donatello had heard that was impressive.
The fact he knew it was Leo, more so.
Hands on hips, Leo silently huffed. He'd show him, and just for that, he wasn't going to let the genius have not even one of his cookies. No matter how much Donnie begged.
Donnie would just have to use something else in his toxicity experiments.
There was that casserole Leo made last week. It was still good. No fur growing on it yet.
Anyway.
Back to business.
Leo checked the recipe. "Two eggs."
Easy enough.
Leo pulled the egg carton out of the refrigerator, setting two eggs into the mixing bowl before putting the carton away. With surprising skill, he cracked both eggs into the bowl, then promptly tossed the shells into the trash.
He wasn't taking any chances of getting egg shell in his cookies. Leo knew from personal experience just how disgusting THAT was.
He still had problems eating pancakes.
"Butter. One-half cup."
Now there was something Mikey had said about butter, Leo tried to remember as he picked up the butter dish. Right! Butter came wrapped with measurements on the paper.
Leo looked at the butter sitting on the dish. The wrapper was gone.
Well, great! Now what was he going to do?!
Wait a minute! Leo's head whipped around to the freezer. Mikey always kept a few sticks of butter in the freezer! They SHOULD still be in the wrapper!
BINGO!
Leo pulled one of the frozen sticks from the carton. One stick equaled one-half cup. Perfect. Measuring the frozen stick against the butter on the dish, it looked to be the same amount, give or take a little.
Raph liked a lot of butter on his toast.
Every morning.
All five slices.
Leo flicked a few toast crumbs from the softened dairy product, and a smear that looked suspiciously like grape jelly.
Didn't want THAT in his cookies.
After scraping the butter from the dish into the mixing bowl, Leo set the dish in the sink to be washed. It was a fair assumption his brothers were going to be shocked to learn the leader had been in the kitchen, let alone by the fact Leo made cookies.
All by himself.
There was no sense in giving Donnie a coronary from NOT cleaning the butter dish before putting a new stick on it.
Leo set the still wrapped, still very frozen new stick of butter on the counter. He could tend to that while his cookies were baking.
See? He could do this cooking stuff.
Easy as pie.
"Next ingredient, shortening." Leo stared at the words printed on the page as if waiting for them to change. "Shortening. Shortening?" What the heck was THAT?
Leo opened the double doors of the cabinet where Mikey kept the cooking supplies.
It obviously wasn't a spice. Nor an herb. Nor a seasoning.
Next shelf up.
Baking soda. He needed that. Salt. That too. Sugar. Flour.
Wow, he'd found the dying place of the snickerdoodle ingredients! Still no shortening.
Feeling the need to make some progress on his cookie preparations, Leo decided to let the shortening go for a few minutes, and add the sugar.
"One and one-half cup sugar."
Cup?
Leo looked around the kitchen.
What type of cup? Teacup? Coffee cup? Dessert cup? Red Solo cup?
"They REALLY need to be more specific."
Leo picked up one of the average sized coffee mugs April and Casey used when visiting, figuring it should work. Master Splinter's tea cups seemed a bit small, and the book couldn't possibly mean for him to use something as big as that gargantuan keg with a handle Donnie drank coffee out of.
He wasn't making cookies for an army, although Raph had been known to pack away the food a time or two.
Leo measured out the required amount of sugar. Kind of. He had to estimate a little on exactly where one-half was on the coffee mug. He then added it to the mixing bowl with the butter and eggs.
Joy. Now he was back to square one, searching for the ever elusive shortening.
He found vegetable oil, olive oil, machine oil.
Machine oil?
What the Hell was THAT doing in here?! He was going to have to have a talk with Mikey about that.
And Donnie.
Maybe Raph too considering how much that grease monkey loved tinkering on anything with a motor. Leo looked at the blender, and scowled.
It had a motor, and Mikey did say something about it working better than before...
Nope! Leo shook his head. No time for that, there were cookies to be made.
And eaten.
There was a can of Crisco.
Leo grinned. Right there on the label was the word 'shortening'.
His grin flipped into a frown as he read over the label. "Why didn't they just say Crisco? Would've saved a LOT of confusion. I should write these people a letter, they could obviously use some helpful suggestions."
He popped off the lid, and armed with spoon and coffee mug, Leo was ready to dig in.
A small whine eeked it's way out from the leaf green turtle. "That's not half a cup's worth." Leo had went as far as to scrape the inside of the can with a butter knife in hopes of maybe the miniscule bits still inside would be enough.
Leo propped himself against the counter, scowling at the Crisco can. He wasn't about to NOT get his cookies just because the Crisco can was empty! He could figure this out. He was the team leader after all. It was his job to solve unexpected problems as they popped up.
This was no different.
Pondering his dilemma, a small white blob on the side of his hand caught Leo's attention.
He swiped it up, smushing it between his finger and thumb. It felt smooth, greasy, a lot like... butter.
Leo's grin returned. If Crisco felt like butter, why couldn't he use butter as a substitute for the missing amount of shorting he needed to make his one-half coffee cup?
Answer, he could, and he would.
That's why he's the team leader! Problem solving!
Problem. The new stick of butter was hard as a rock.
Solution. Microwave.
Two for two!
Leo unwrapped the butter and set it in a bowl. Glass, not plastic, because if HE was going to be the one to clean up from his cookie making, as he should be, Leo had no intentions of fighting a butter greasy plastic bowl.
One minute should be about right. He could gather the rest of his ingredients while he waited.
DING!
That was quick.
Leo set his canister of flour down to retrieve the now softened butter from the microwave.
He pulled the bowl from the microwave and... blinked.
"How'd that happen?"
The butter was melted. Completely, totally, and utterly liquefied.
As Leo pondered the over softened state of his shortening substitute, the leaf green turtle failed to register the faint popping sounds coming from his more than a little warm glass bowl.
It definitely registered when the bowl broke in half.
Luckily the bowl split in two over the sink with the halves going into the metal basin. Which was good.
What wasn't good was a whole stick of melted butter going down the drain.
Leo was pretty sure he was going to get yelled at by someone over that. Probably Donnie when the resident Mr. Fix-it had to clear the drain pipe. He couldn't worry with that right at the moment, there were more pressing problems to deal with.
He still needed more butter.
Just try it again.
This time he ended up with a melted plastic bowl, and liquid butter all over the glass plate in the microwave.
Good thing he had steady hands. Leo dumped the mess into the trash. It would really suck cleaning THAT up off the floor, or worse, from under the stove top.
Cleaning up boiled over potato water was bad enough.
Try number three rendered the leaf green turtle enough soft butter to top off his one-half cup shortening.
The liquid butter, still in Donnie's super size coffee mug, he set in the fridge to congeal enough to put on the butter dish.
Making cookies was a LOT of work!
But well worth it.
Stirring the ingredients in his mixing bowl, Leo read the next step in the recipe. "Flour, got it. Salt, check. Cream of tartar? What's that? Some type of toothpaste?"
The only tartar Leo knew of was the kind Donnie warned them about building up on their teeth as kids.
There was no way Mikey would use toothpaste in cooking. Donnie, maybe, claiming it would save time brushing their teeth, but never Mikey. So, it had to be something else.
Back to the cookie ingredient cabinet.
Cumin, tarragon, paprika, cloves, cinnamon. That he would need.
Leo set the cinnamon on the counter, after opening the lid and inhaling deeply.
Could people get addicted to huffing cinnamon?
Ah! Cream of tartar.
"Add cream of tartar, salt, baking soda, and flour," he read. "Mix well. What? No cinnamon?" Leo was indignant. "Ah," he muttered after reading farther. The cinnamon went on the outside of the cookies.
Digging a clean teaspoon from the flatware tray, Leo carefully measured out two teaspoons of cream of tartar and one teaspoon of baking soda, being very careful to round the tops of each spoonful. The one-fourth teaspoon of salt was a bit trickier, but Leo figured he did a fairly good job of it. He then added three rounded teaspoons of cinnamon to the mix.
You can never have too much cinnamon in a snickerdoodle.
"Two and three-fourths cups of flour."
Leo looked at his shortening smeared coffee cup. He wondered if the cookbook meant he had to use a clean cup, or did the little bit of shortening stuck to the sides matter?
"Did Casey's relatives write this thing?" Leo flipped over the front cover to check. "They leave out a lot of essential information."
Maybe the note under the ingredient listing for flour could clear up the confusion. "All-purpose flour is recommended. If using self-rising flour, omit baking soda, salt, and cream of tartar."
Another problem! Who knew so many issues could pop up just making cookies!? He had less problems taking down the Shredder! And Hun! Combined!
Naturally there would be no labeling on the flour canister Mikey transferred the flour into when they bought a new bag, and since the canister was almost full, there wouldn't be an extra bag anywhere in the kitchen.
That would be WAY to convenient!
Okay, time to think it through. Leo leaned against the counter, eyeridges furrowed in thought.
Mikey used this flour for baking. He also used it for coating meat, and to make gravies. Donnie had even used flour to make a type of glue when they were kids. So... by logical deduction, this had to be all purpose flour!
Problem solved!
Leo was doing everything right!
He pulled a clean coffee cup from the cabinet, slightly smaller than the first one he had been using, and scooped out three well-rounded cups full.
He decided to add a full third cup for two reasons. One, his 'measuring' cup was smaller, and two, Leo wanted LOTS of cookies.
When adding the last cup of flour to the bowl, Leo discovered the reason his overly exuberant little brother was always very careful when measuring out flour.
Flour tended to fog when dumped with too much force.
And apparently letting a full coffee cup's amount of flour fall from twelve inches above a mixing bowl was too much force.
Leo also discovered another interesting fact about cooking. A thirty quart mixing bowl was not big enough to contain the amount of fog generated when dumping a full coffee cup of flour onto two previously emptied coffee cups of flour from twelve inches up.
Everything within a two foot radius of Leo's mixing bowl was covered in a film of white powder, including the leaf green turtle himself.
After adding a few more spoons full of flour to make up for what was lost in the fog, Leo mixed his batter. He was so close to having his cookies he didn't have time to stop for something as minor as a flour dusting.
That was stretching the definition of minor a bit, but no one would know.
Hopefully.
Back to the cookies.
Leo turned on the oven. It would surely have enough time to preheat while he rolled the dough and coated the cookie balls in sugar and cinnamon.
Especially if he doubled the heat.
The only problem was, the temperature dial on the oven didn't go to eight hundred degrees. It only went to five hundred and fifty. The setting after that was 'broil'.
Therefore broil must be a higher temperature than five hundred and fifty degrees.
He'd use that.
While waiting for the oven to heat up, Leo mixed the sugar and cinnamon for coating the cookies, and proceeded to make small, one and one-fourth inch dough balls.
He even used a ruler.
It was important to do things exactly by the instructions for good results.
Leo set the timer. The cookbook suggested baking time to be eight to ten minutes. That sounded good.
With his first batch of cookies in the oven, Leo decided it might be a good idea to start cleaning up.
He really wanted to surprise his family with his culinary efficiency.
Mikey half stumbled out of his room, rubbing sleepily at his eyes.
Man, what a nightmare! He had dreamed he was in a real life version of Cookie Jam with cinnamon sticks and chocolate chips trying to bury him alive.
It had been pretty cool the first few minutes, then his dream self got a massive stomach ache from eating all that junk food.
When he woke up, Mikey realized his stomach pains were from lack of food, not an overabundance of food.
In the morning when Mikey was hungry, it was time to make breakfast.
After a butt slide down the stair railing, Mikey was wide awake when he landed at the bottom.
The sea green turtle couldn't decide what to fix for breakfast. Waffles and bacon? Pancakes and sausage? Omelets? French toast? D, all of the above?
When he hit the kitchen, Mikey realized breakfast was probably going to be a while in coming.
There stood Leo, coated in white all down his plastron and face, wearing a pair of Mikey's oven mitts. One in the shape of a lobster claw, the other resembled a moose. And holding a cookie sheet filled with small black mounds.
Mikey sniffed. There was the faint scent of cinnamon in the air, along with the distinctive smell of burnt... something.
"Dude..."
Leo looked up from his pan of burnt hopes and dreams, looking forlorn and miserable.
"I wanted a snickerdoodle," he said as if that explained everything.
And it did.
With a kind, loving smile, Mikey draped an arm around his oldest brother's shoulders, leaning his head against Leo's. "Would you like for me to make you some?"
Leo nodded, leaning into his baby brother. "Please?"
"Okay, bro," Mikey pressed a light kiss to Leo's temple. "You go shower. I'll clean up here and make you a big batch of snickerdoodles while I make breakfast."
Leo smiled, giving his baby brother a look of gratitude.
"And since it's Saturday," Mikey continued. "And it's our day off, I'll get Raph and Donnie, and we can all three play which sex toy is best."
Leo knew he was screwed, literally and figuratively, when he saw the grin on Mikey's face. Was something as trivial as a cookie worth all THIS?
Damn right it was!
Leo handed over the cookie sheet of charcoal, pulled off the oven mitts, and silently left the kitchen, passing his two middle brothers on his way to the shower.
Raph and Donnie looked at one another questioningly as they entered the kitchen, surprised to find their baby brother grinning like the Cheshire Cat.
"If you give a Leo a cookie," Mikey said.
"He will want a glass of milk," Splinter chuckled, as he entered the kitchen.
Thanks for reading.