title: Christmas Cookies
summary: Aryll has her heart set on making Christmas cookies and dammit she's gonna make them.
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Shutting off her alarm at 4:30 in the morning, Aryll quickly and quietly raced down the stairs to get into the shower. It was December 1st already! Today was the official start of the Christmas spirit! Ho ho ho!
(Any days in between Black Friday and December 1st didn't count. Stupid commercialism.)
And what better way to commence the official start of the holiday season then by baking a plethora of Christmas cookies. Lathering her hair with shampoo, she began to go over the final steps of the recipe in her head; she had already combined the ingredients the previous night and placed two quite large balls of dough in the fridge to cool overnight. The recipe called for at least a half hour but she wanted time to decorate each cookie before racing out the door to Mila's awaiting Beemer. If she wasn't outside after the third text, she had to find another means of transportation - which usually meant begging her brother to come pick her up.
Rinsing out the shampoo and placing the conditioner in, Aryll began mentally searching for everything she'd need. The previous night she lead the rolling pin out on the counter, the cookie cutters were in the middle drawer the last time she saw them, her trays lay in the small compartment underneath the oven. As she reached for her body soap, she ended up dropping the bottle. She forgot what temperature the cookies baked at! 350°? No 400°? She left the recipe on top of the kitchen table in the midst of her destroying the kitchen in a hailstorm of flour, sugar, and baking soda. Hopefully it was still there - along with the mountain of dishes she would eventually have to clean.
Finishing up her shower in a record twelve minutes, she placed on a plain white t-shirt with a pair of leggings. A towel draped over her shoulder to catch any excess water. Time to bake these bad boys. Placing the bowls of dough out to warm up slightly, she began her search for the recipe. It couldn't have gotten that far. She prepped the cookies after her Grandma had retired for the night to her room meaning Aryll would have been the last one to see the print out. Where was that- why is it under the cooling rack? Moving on, she then dashed across the kitchen to rifle through the middle drawer. She pushed aside the cookie cutters in the shapes of boats, seagulls, and spyglasses - her usually favorite set her Grandma bought back when she was seven - in leiu of a more fitting theme of Christmas trees, sleigh bells, and snowmen. Glancing down at the print out, Aryll punched in 350 onto her oven's pre-set. As much as it pains her to say this, when she was eleven she placed in the Christmas cookies for her Grandma without having the oven on. She had no clue why after twenty minutes the cookies were still small discs of dough. Link wouldn't let it go for the whole day when he walked over and turned on the oven. Stupid older brothers.
But this time she would prevail and make the best damned Christmas cookies in all of Hyrule. She'd even make one shaped like a certain hand gesture just for her darling older brother.
(And a Santa hat one because he and his usually hat clad head did deserve a nice cookie as well as a rude one.)
With probably too much flour sprinkled onto her cutting board, Aryll started working out the first ball of dough which she had broken into four different pieces. Pushing the roller forward then backwards, side to side the first spherical lump of dough transitioned into a near flattened disc. Was that too flat? It looked 1/4 of an inch in thickness to her. Rolling the pin across the dough once more, Aryll moved onto flouring the cookie cutters. Armed with a barrage of twelve differently shaped cookie cutters, if the recipe was accurate she should be yielding ten dozen cookies... in hindsight maybe she shouldn't have doubled the recipe into two balls of dough and just gone with the one which yields five dozen but an overzealous girl high on holiday spirit is quite surprisingly ambitious. Spacing out her cookies onto two non- greased sheets, a mess of stockings, mittens, and sleighs stared up at her. Balling up the trimmings, she repeated using the rolling pin to flatten out the dough.
"Never waste dough." Grandma used to say whenever Aryll would watch her bake in awe. Now it was Aryll's turn and waste not. Her phone's timer had been set for six minutes when she would swap trays between the upper and lower oven racks while the timer on the oven was set for twelve minutes. As she waited for several woodwind instruments to perform a bittersweet melody, she sought to work her way through the rest of the dough. Maybe she should have woken up earlier... Any negative thoughts that tossed around in her mind had been banished away with a simple shrug. If she could prep Mila to ace their trigonometry final, she could do anything! Like a well-oiled machine every time the woodwinds would commence, Aryll made quick work of either rearranging the trays or removing the now baked cookie to replace them with the awaiting trays of doughballs. Maybe she should be a baker when she graduates rather than try for that internship at the observatory – even if they housed the greatest telescope in the world. Baking was her true calling.
Shoveling finished cookies onto the cooling rack, Aryll eyed the clock. Letting out a sigh of relief, she continued scooping out blobs of dough, she had time. She had four cookie sheets in at a time – length wise they miraculously fit. Rotating in and out a different pair of cookie sheets every six minutes. Aryll's Sweetshop… no, Outset's Crumbles. She could already picture herself now standing in front of an industrial sized oven, decked out in an apron and covered in flour as she iced a tray of cupcakes. THE ICING!
Racing to the fridge, Aryll tossed aside drink cartons and any bowls of leftovers in search of the four icing tubes she had purchased the previous day. Ah, there they are.
The recipe said the icing would need an hour to set so at 5:30 am, she found herself half covered in red, green, gold, and white icing. While she's may have decorated a majority of her arm (and she may need a second shower), her Christmas lights looked festive in green, her candy canes adorned in their staple red and white pattern, and her reindeer looked a bit too golden. Glancing at the freshly iced cookies, Aryll was tempted to steal one but opted to take a second brisk shower.
Exchanging her slightly floured t-shirt for a warm, oversized sweater Aryll then pulled her damp hair back into a French braid. Several Tupperware containers had been pulled out and lined the kitchen table. Gently, Aryll filled the containers with her creations, separating layers with waxed paper. Her phone trilled, signaling the first of three texts. Shit she hadn't brushed her teeth. Sending a quick response asking for five minutes, Aryll raced about finishing getting ready and grabbing everything needed; her backpack falling off her one shoulder, a bagel hanging from her mouth, a shopping bag filled with several Tubberware containers and her shoes tucked under her arm.
(She had left the largest container on the kitchen table.)
"Get in loser." Mila yelled out the window, Maggie nestled in the passenger's seat engrossed in whatever book she was reading.
Aryll blew a raspberry in her friend's direction as she attempted to lock the door without dropping anything. "You look like a bag lady."
No cookies for her then.
"Happy December 1st!" Aryll cheered, throwing herself onto the back seat. "If you're nice, I'll give you some of these lovely cookies I just baked." Both of her friends turned in their seats, eyebrows peaked in question. "I slaved over the oven this morning making these bad boys."
Passing a snowflake and a star to the pair, Aryll watched as their faces turned from surprised to disgust.
"Hon, please tell me you have something else in that bag beside cookies."
Opening the bag to display what was inside both of her friends shared a look before Maggie sighed in defeat, "You may want to keep them to yourself."
"Why?" She asked, strapping her seatbelt as fast as she could following her friend gunning the engine.
Glancing up to meet her eye on the rear view mirror, Mila responded, "Those are lethal. Please don't quit your day job to become a baker." Well that wasn't very nice.
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This is trash oops.
Any comments you guys have? I wanna know what you liked, what you didn't like.
