Soli Deo gloria
DISCLAIMER: I do NOT own Despicable Me. I can't help myself; my sisters watch this movie over and over and now I really don't like Vector but we were decorating cookies and BAM. This came out of it. :)
Margo to her sisters from her viewing seat on the sofa. "Edith, Agnes, quick, come over here!"
Edith and Agnes, sitting on the living room floor with a blanket, unicorn, and tea set, looked up from clinking their cups, and Edith asked, "What?"
"Look! It's snowing!" Margo said.
Edith rushed to the window while Agnes grabbed her unicorn, Mr. Fluffy. "Real snow?" she asked as she turned to the window, her body nearly hidden by the large toy. "That we can make snow angels in?"
"Yeah, and snowball fights!" Edith said, pumping her fist by the window.
"Yes, real snow, Agnes," Margo said, grabbing her little sister's hand. She helped her up onto the sofa, and the four-year-old, holding Mr. Fluffy beside her, peeked over the tall sofa to see the falling snow through the window.
"Wow. It's so pretty!" Agnes said, her eyes widening.
"Yeah, I'm going outside!" Edith said, turning to leave.
Agnes and Margo also turned, Agnes saying as she squeezed her unicorn, "But I thought we were going to make Christmas cookies."
Edith sighed and turned on her heel to face her sisters. Margo, arms folded, nodded and said, "That was the plan."
"Are we going to go ask Gru if we can do it then?" Agnes asked Margo.
"Yeah, let's go ask him," Margo said, slipping off the sofa and helping Agnes down. Edith sighed but followed them as they went to the large scarlet red chair, in which they sat and pushed the button. The tube appeared and they disappeared into the secret lair.
The secret lair, as per usual, was very busy. Minions ran everywhere, holding clipboards, pressing buttons, giggling in groups, testing vials, and the like. Dr. Nefario, goggles over his eyes, worked on a new type of ray gun.
The girls passed by some minions hanging up Christmas wreaths. Someone played a Christmas song and sang along to it. It was the middle of December, and it was starting to look a lot like Christmas. Very nice.
"Where is he?" Agnes asked worriedly, no luck so far in the lair of minions.
Margo scanned the room, Edith next to her with folded arms. She spotted Gru and said, "There he is," and led the sisters over to him.
Gru studied a collection of blueprints at a desk. He had a piece of chalk in his hand and a sketch of something on the desk before him. He looked concentrated for a moment, then quickly bent forward and added one more line. He said, "Aha!" and throwing the chalk, picked up his blueprint with both hands and looked at it, satisfied. "Yes, this shall do," he said, nodding.
"Hey, Gru?" Margo asked.
He looked up from his blueprints to see the three girls all in a line next to the desk. "Oh, 'ullo," he said, putting down the blueprint. "What is it now?"
"We want to make Christmas cookies," Margo said bluntly.
"And decorate them with frosting and glitter sprinkles!" Agnes added, bouncing up and down, her unicorn shaking.
"What? Christmas cookies? I 'aven't got time for that," Gru said. He added in a more patient voice, "Look, girls, I 'ave a new plan that I've just finished—"
"So you're done and you can help us make cookies, then?" Margo asked, undeterred.
Gru stared at her for a moment before quickly shaking his head. "What? No, just because I 'ave finished drawing the plans doesn't mean I'm done with the plans."
"So you're not going to help us?" Agnes asked in a sad little voice.
Gru stooped so he was at her eye level. "No, I can't. I'm sorry, but I can't."
"All right, we'll just make them ourselves," Margo said, shrugging as she grasped her little sisters' hands. They headed back to the tube, leaving Gru saying, "Make them yourselves? You'll burn the kitchen down!"
"No, we won't," Margo said, not even turning around.
"It'll be totally cool if we did, though," Edith said as they walked into the tube.
Gru frowned and after a moment, sighed and quickly went after them.
He raced to the kitchen. He, unfortunately, ran past the door, but he was able to see the girls getting ready. Margo read a recipe while Edith reached for ingredients from the fridge, dropping a pound of butter. Agnes was on the floor, tying an apron around herself.
Gru couldn't stop his feet and ran all the way down the hall, slamming into the front door. He groaned and backed up, rubbing his pointy nose as he headed into the kitchen.
He stood in the doorway, barely seeing anything, when he straightened. Margo busily helped Agnes tie her apron around her; Edith was left unattended. She stood in the fridge doorway, stacking eggs from the carton into her arms. She had six eggs in her arms, trying to balance one more. She bit her lip as she let go of the egg; it tittered and fell.
"Ach! What are you doing?!" Gru said, rushing to the fridge as Edith reached for another egg to add to her pile.
She threw him a look and said, "Getting eggs for the cookies. Duh."
"No, no, just bring the carton, it's much easier," Gru said, retrieving it from the fridge. Next, he found Margo trying to insert cookie paddles into the handheld mixer. "No, no, that one goes in the left hole, the other in the right." The next disaster was Agnes standing on a bar stool near the counter. Her unicorn was next to her as she leaned over and dug her large spoon into the sugar container.
"Agnes," Gru said, hurrying over. "You cannot eat sugar like that!"
Agnes took out a spoonful and spilling some, ate it. "But it tastes so nice!"
"But it's sticky and you 'ave enough energy as it is," Gru said, taking away the container and struggling to put a lid on it just as Agnes dipped her spoon back in, double-dipping. She sighed and sucked on her spoon instead.
Gru, biting his lip, managed to get the lid back on the container. Hegasped when he saw that Margo grunted as she attempted to bring down the bag of flour from the cupboard.
"No! Stop!" he said; he rushed over and Margo let go of it. He instantly caught it and put it on the counter, heavily exhaling. Around him the girls popped up, putting bowls and measuring cups and a spatula on the counter. They all looked expectantly to him; he sighed and said, "All right. I'll 'elp you with these cookies."
"YAY!" all three girls yelled, their hands in the air.
"All right, game plan," he said, waving his hands about. He shoved stuff to the side of the counter and said, "Recipe."
Margo slapped the recipe on the counter. "Recipe."
Gru drew it closer to him and examined it. "Quick. Butter."
Margo dashed away and brought butter. "Butter."
"Brown sugar."
"Brown sugar," Edith said, on her tiptoes to put it on the counter.
They continued in this fashion until they had all the ingredients. Margo preheated the oven and sprayed cookie sheet pans while Edith and Agnes, both sitting on the counter, watched and peered into the mixing bowl. It was making into a dough, Gru carefully adding a cup of flour.
"Can I add one?" Agnes said, smiling sweetly.
"All right," Gru said, handing her a leveled cup of flour. She carefully took it with both hands and brought it over to the bowl. She dumped it in, while the cookie paddles were still stirring it, and Edith and the counter were promptly covered in flour. She shrugged and dusted herself off, saying, "Wow! It's like snow, only not so cold!"
"Really?" Agnes asked, curious.
"That's enough," Gru said; he turned off the mixer and sprinkled some flour on the counter.
"Can I sprinkle?" Edith asked.
"No," Gru said.
"Oh, come on!"
But Gru knew how much of a mess she could make with just a bit of flour. Margo came over and asked, "Can I sprinkle?"
"Yessss," Gru said, trusting her to be more mature.
He passed the container of floor to her and Edith folded her arms. "Hey, how come she gets to do it?"
"Because she's older," Agnes said matter-of-factly.
"Yes, right," Gru said, dumping the dough on the counter.
He brought out a rolling pin and Edith quickly waved her hand in the air. "I want to use it!"
"'ere," Gru said, handing it cautiously to Edith, hoping that there really wasn't too much damage she could inflict with it. As long as she only used it on the cookie dough, they would be all right.
She grunted and slammed it into the dough, making a valley with two hills. She grunted and pushed forward, though she could hardly move the rolling pin. The dough was barely smushed at all. It was just a misshapen ball, and despite her efforts, Edith couldn't make it flatten.
"Maybe if you try harder," Agnes said quietly.
"I am trying!" Edith said.
"Ach, let me do it," Gru said. Edith let go of the rolling pin and he rolled out the dough smoothly, making it like a large, flat, uncooked pancake.
"That's better," Agnes said cheerfully.
Margo turned to Gru, and hands on her hips, she said, "And where are the cookie cutters?"
"Cookie . . . cutters?" Gru said, looking down from his rolling. "Ach. Cookie . . . cutters."
"You do have some, don't you?" Margo asked, raising an eyebrow.
Gru laughed and turning to the cupboards, said brightly, "Of course I do." He frowned when he felt Margo look away from him, and he searched frantically, muttering to himself, "I've got to 'ave some. Aha!" He extended an arm to the girls, his hand holding a metal cookie jar. He took off the lid and showed off a vast array of old, musty cookie cutters. The girls reached in and grabbed them, some covered with bits of rust.
The cookie cutters instantly hit the dough and cookies formed. There were gingerbread men and teddy bears and silver bells and Christmas trees and stars and candy canes. Edith pulled cutter after cutter out of the jar. Agnes pressed them into the dough while Margo carefully peeled the cookies from the counter and set them on a cookie sheet. Gru rushed back and forth between the counter and the oven, wearing his mother's homemade oven mitts.
Within an hour, the entire kitchen steamed. There were racks of cookies sitting on the counter, a dirty bowl in the sink, and three little girls, still full of energy, coloring icing.
"I want red! Blood red!" Edith said excitedly, pumping her fists.
Margo shook her head, adding a few drops of red into one of the five bowls of white frosting. "I can't. We'd have to use the whole bottle, and then it would be too liquid-y to use."
"Besides, I like pink. It's pretty," Agnes said.
Gru, exhaling in relief, placed the last cookies on a cooling rack. He added the empty cookie sheet in his hand to the pile on the stove and taking off his oven mitts, asked, "Margo, are we ready for frosting?"
"Just about," Margo said, stirring the yellow food coloring into a bowl of frosting.
Agnes sighed with contentment as the yellow swirled and grew paler. "That's so pretty."
"Okay," Margo said, finishing the yellow; the three girls grabbed the five bowls and managed to get them over to the kitchen table without spilling them. Gru followed them with racks of cookies, all stacked carefully in his hands. He slid them onto the table and the girls scrambled into their seats, eyes expectant. Gru produced three butter knives, knowing enough that Edith might just grab and go wild with a sharpened knife.
"All right, now, try to not—" Gru started, but the girls started before he could finish.
Edith grabbed a gingerbread man and said, "I'm going to make mine a dead one!"
"That's gruesome," Margo said. She shrugged and held up a Christmas tree and said, "I'm going to make a Christmas tree."
Agnes grabbed a candy cane cookie and said, "I'm going to cover mine in pretty sprinkles."
"Okay, but you 'ave to be careful—" Gru said, but Edith had already slammed red icing on her gingerbread man with a vigor. Margo spilled frosting as she tried to put some into a piping bag, and Agnes finished sloppily frosting her cookie, getting frosting all over the table, and shook blue sprinkles all over it, sprinkling the entire table and bench and her sisters.
"Oh, but don't do that," Gru sighed.
Margo looked up and nodding to the pile of cookies, said, "Why don't you frost one?"
"Me? Frost a cookie?" Gru said incredulously. "Why would I do that?"
"Because it's fun," Agnes said calmly, starting on another cookie.
"No, I'm not going—Edith, no, that's not how you do it," Gru said. He took her cookie, making her frown; he placed it on the table and carefully frosted it. "Smooth surface, and not too much frosting. There." He handed it back to her, saying, "Not too many sprinkles, now."
Edith nodded and with a quick dash of sprinkles, she looked up and smiled when Gru gave her an approving look. "Yes, that's 'ow you do."
"Here, fix this one," Margo said, handing Gru a star with a splotch of red mixed with green.
"Hmmm," Gru said, stroking his chin. "There should be no mixing of the colors." He carefully separated the colors and finished frosting the cookie.
"Can I put the sprinkles on it?" Agnes asked eagerly. Gru nodded and handed her the cookie, and she carefully decorated it. Edith handed Gru another ugly cookie and he frosted and Agnes sprinkled and Edith and Margo started up their own collection of decorated cookies.
They had a lovely time finishing up the cookies, the snow falling in the window behind them as they threw sprinkles at each other. Gru didn't even reprimand them for doing that, and even joined Agnes against Edith and Margo. They ended up covering the kitchen, and neither of them, least of all Gru, minded. When they finally finished, they had racks of decorated cookies and an entire decorated kitchen.
"That was fun," Agnes said cheerfully, scraping one of the frosting bowls clean.
"Yeah, it was," Margo said.
Edith nodded and jumping up, asked, "So when are we going to eat all of these?"
"Whoa, we are not eating all of these at once!" Gru said quickly.
"Maybe we can take them to Vector," Agnes said, beaming like she had a brilliant idea. "He likes cookies."
"We're not going to the moon," Gru said stoutly.
"What are we going to do with them, then?" Margo asked. "Sell them door to door?"
"Hey, I have an idea," Edith said quickly. To Gru, "You do realize that you have, like, a tons of minions in your basement?"
"I bet they'd like cookies," Margo said positively.
"Yeah, because they totally need more sugar," Gru said, stretching as he stood up.
"Please?" Agnes said; Edith and Margo joined her, and at the sight of their faces, Gru sighed and said, "Fine, all right, but they're going to go crazy!"
"It's kind of hard not to. It's almost Christmas," Margo pointed out.
Gru picked up a plate of the cookies, one bearing four cookies, and sitting back down, held out the plate to the girls. "Might as well 'ave one before they eat them all."
Each girl took up a star cookie and smiled. Gru took the last one, a Christmas tree, and holding it up, said, "Merry Christmas, girls."
The girls' cookies touched his in a toast, all of them saying, "Clink. Merry Christmas to you too, Gru."
Awwww. Thank you for reading! MERRY CHRISTMAS, AND God bless us, everyone! :)