"So you've never used an oven?" Mal asked.
"I was raised at the bottom of the ocean, Chum," La'gaan replied, crossing his arms. "What's your excuse?"
"I've cooked before! Well, helped my mom. As a kid." As if to prove his point, Mal turned to the oven and set the temperature. He pointed to the little red light. "When that goes out, it's hot enough."
"And how long will that take?"
"I have no idea."
"Brilliant." La'gaan consulted the recipe. "It says we need to... rub the butter into the flour."
"We need to what?"
"Rub butter into flour."
"That can't be right. Mal peered at the printout in La'gaan's hand. "Huh. Is... is there a word missing? What do they mean?"
"It's written in your native language."
"It was your idea to surprise the girls."
"I said we should make crab – "
"If we can't handle scones, we can't handle crab cakes."
The two looked at the recipe, then at each other.
"Youtube?"
"Youtube."
Mal rolled butter and flour between his fingers while La'gaan carefully measured out vanilla essence and added it to the milk.
"Okay," La'gaan said, "now we add the wet ingredients to the dry..."
"... slowly, while stirring..." Mal added, stirring.
"And once it's all solid we can knead it."
"Have you ever done that before?"
"... I've watched my Angelfish do it."
"Close enough."
"I think you're doing it wrong," Mal said, hands on his hips, as he watched La'gaan mash his fists into the dough. "You're supposed to... fold the air into it."
"'Fold the air into it'? What does that mean? Does air have some kind of mystic property I wasn't told about, where you can fold it?"
"Look, that's just what the internet said."
"You want to try, then?"
"I just managed to get all the food off my hands."
"You know you have flour in your hair, right?"
"I have..." Mal brushed a hand over his head, pushing out some white dust. "Aw, man! How did that even happen?"
"You probably touched one of the many, many things in here covered in flour," La'gaan said, gesturing the kitchen at large with one dough-laden hand. He frowned at the dough. "If kneading was that important the instructions would be clearer," he said with finality, reaching for the rolling pin. "I'm sure this is fine."
The kitchen was mostly clean by the time the girls were due back, although they'd given up trying to get the flour off everything. La'gaan and Mal had retired to the couch for a good bout of racing games when the zeta tube announced the arrival of Miss Martian and Bumblebee.
"How was it, Angelfish?"
"Hey, beautiful!"
The men embraced their respective women.
"Fine," M'Gann sighed in answer to La'gaan. "But it's good to be back."
"You're not wrong there," Karen agreed. She stretched and took a deep breath. Then paused, frowning. "Do you guys smell something burning?"