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"I'm really sorry that I'm taking over our hangout to do this," Yugi said breathlessly the instant Ryou opened the door, clutching a bag full of baking ingredients.
"And I told you before, I'm okay with it," Ryou said as he gently shut the door after Yugi entered the apartment. "You make your cookies for the shop, I'll make us some supper. It'll be fun!"
"If you're sure," Yugi said doubtfully even as he set his bag down on the counter and started unloading its contents.
The Kame Game Store had just gotten in a new shipment of Duel Monsters cookie cutters, and Yugi figured the best way to advertise them was with a bake sale with sugar cookies made with them. The only problem was that neither Yugi nor Atem really knew how to bake very well and no one at their home had the time or know-how to help them, so they turned to Ryou for help.
"I, uh, found this recipe on the internet," Yugi said, waving around a sheet of paper he had pulled from the bag. "I hope it'll work?"
Ryou stepped over beside him to peer at the recipe. "Hmm, yeah I think it'll be fine. Though, a 'little bit' of milk? That's kind of imprecise. And kind of weird? Cookie recipes don't normally have milk."
Yugi winced. "Is that bad?"
Ryou waved it off. "Nah, should be fine. You'll just need to start with a really small amount, like REALLY small and see if it needs more liquid afterwards."
"Oh… Okay." Yugi squinted at the recipe's first steps and mouthed along to the words as he read them. "Oh, I guess I need a bowl…"
Ryou rummaged around in his cupboards and pulled out two bowls he figured would probably be big enough. "You're making a double batch, right? You'll want two bowls, one for the wet ingredients, one for the dry ingredients. Use the bigger bowl for the dry ingredients because you'll end up adding the wet ingredients into that one."
"Um… Okay." Yugi peered at the bowls. "So the… smaller bowl, it's still pretty big," he mumbled the last part to himself, then spoke up again and continued his question, "I'm supposed to use that for, um…" He squinted at the recipe again. "Creaming the butter and sugar?"
"Yep," Ryou confirmed as he inspected his freezer to see what he had to work with for supper. "I told you before that my electric hand mixer broke so you'll have to cream it by hand. That's okay, right? Also, how do you feel about meatloaf?"
"Yeah, that's fine. Uh, to both of your questions. I like meatloaf." Yugi picked up the container of butter and the container of sugar he brought, apparently pre-measured. "2 cups of sugar…" he mumbled to himself as he dumped the contents of the tuperware of sugar into the smaller bowl. "1 cup of butter…" He opened the container of butter.
Ryou looked up from the oven he was preheating to 375° F. "Wait," he said before Yugi could dump the butter in. "Is the butter softened?"
"Softened?" Yugi poked at the butter, his finger leaving an indent in the cube of butter he had. "What does that mean?"
"If it's, like, straight from the fridge, it's too hard to cream very easily. If it's not softened enough, you'll have to put it in the microwave for a bit — but take it out before it's melted," Ryou said as he pulled out two 1 lb packages of shredded turkey from the freezer.
"Oh. It's, uh, been sitting out all day. Is that, uh, softened enough?" Yugi asked.
"Should be fine, then," Ryou agreed, taking out a bowl for himself.
Yugi dutifully dumped the container of butter into the smaller bowl, the butter landed with a soft plop and scattering some of the sugar. "So, uh, what's creaming?"
"You mix it together until it's creamy and mixed together," Ryou said, passing Yugi a large wooden spoon. "A lot of cookie recipes ask for it. And if there's more than one egg, you add them one at a time."
Yugi paused in delicately squishing the butter into the sugar so that the sugar wouldn't fly out when he started mixing in earnest. "Uh, I already cracked the eggs," he said, nodding at another container with 2 eggs worth of mixed egg goop. "Is that okay?"
"Yeah, just add a half of it at a time," Ryou answered. He finally managed to get the plastic covering off of the two turkey packages he had, then set them on a microwavable plate and set them in the microwave for a couple minutes. While waiting, he took out a cutting board, a knife, and an onion and set to work dicing the onion.
While he chopped the onion into smaller and smaller pieces, Yugi continued to stir the butter and sugar.
Only after he was satisfied with the size of the onion pieces did a thought occur to Ryou. "Oh. You don't like onions, do you?" he asked Yugi.
"Hm?" Yugi looked over at what Ryou was doing. "As long as it's small and in something else, it's fine," he said before turning back to his bowl. "Does this look right?"
Ryou walked over and looked into the bowl, absentmindedly blinking away onion tears. The butter and sugar was definitely mixed together to some extent, but he could still see big clumps of butter. "Ah, it still needs a little more," he said.
"Aww, okay," Yugi said with a slight pout. He kept stirring, using the back of the spoon to press the bigger clumps of butter into the side of the bowl then scraped the butter off the side into the rest of the mixture.
The microwave beeped insistently, having finished a few minutes ago and being annoyed at him for not opening the door.
"Yeah, yeah," Ryou muttered, marching over to the microwave and pulling out the plate inside. He brought it to the bowl he got for himself and started using his hands to scrape all the thawed meat off of the still frozen meat and into the bowl, making sure all raw meat was well away from anything Yugi was using to bake. This was his least favourite part because the meat was always so cold and he always ended up with frozen hands and then when he ran his hands under warm water to both clean up and warm himself up, it meant his hands were wet and got cold that much faster and it was so annoying.
Once he got all of the thawed meat, he put the still-frozen meat back onto the plate and into the microwave again. Then, he washed his hands thoroughly, feeling the sting of the hot water on his cold hands.
"This good?" Yugi asked.
Ryou turned off the tap and dried his hands on a towel. He peered into the bowl — the sugar and butter was now well incorporated, the creamed mixture sticking to itself in the center of the bowl. "Yep, you can add half of the eggs now, then mix it up, then add the other half."
Yugi cheered and excitedly went to grab the eggs.
Ryou dumped the onions in the bowl of meat, then searched the freezer for bread crumbs. The microwave beeped before he could open up the bag of breadcrumbs, so he closed the freezer and set the bag down. He pulled the plate out of the microwave and set about another round of pulling the thawed meat out before microwaving the rest of the frozen meat again.
"Okay, so I think I put the vanilla extract and milk in now," Yugi said while staring at the recipe, having finished with mixing the eggs in. "Almond milk is fine, right?"
"Yeah, should be fine," Ryou confirmed while dumping in a generous heaping of breadcrumbs into his own bowl. "And I'd just put the vanilla extract in first to see what the consistency is like. I'm not sure the milk is necessary. In fact, maybe wait until everything is mixed together, and then if the dough is still too thick you can add in some milk."
Yugi shrugged. "Sure." He grabbed the bottle of imitation vanilla extract he had brought and poured a little bit into the bowl. He heard somewhere that it didn't really matter too much if you got the vanilla extract amount slightly wrong. Which was good, because he didn't really want to bring a small container just for one teaspoon of vanilla extract.
The microwave beeped again as Ryou put the breadcrumbs back in the freezer. By this point, he was pretty sure all of the frozen meat had thawed enough to add in. And when he opened the microwave and brought the plate over to the bowl, he found out that the rest of the meat, while still cold, was thawed out enough that he was happy with just dumping it in.
With the wet ingredients done, Yugi moved on to the dry ingredients. This part was easy for him and he didn't have to ask Ryou because it was just mixing 4 cups of flour, 4 tsp of baking powder, and a tsp of salt together. All things he'd already measured out into the same container, so it was just a matter of dumping the container into a bowl and stirring it around a bit — he used the spoon he used for the wet ingredients just because he didn't want to have to ask Ryou for another spoon for something so simple, though it was maybe not the best idea because the flour and whatnot started sticking to the spoon. He glanced at Ryou then back at his bowl and decided it was fine.
The next step was adding the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients, another thing he was pretty sure he could do without asking questions. So he dumped the wet ingredients in and started stirring it around, making it so that reusing the same spoon didn't matter anymore.
Ryou, meanwhile, cracked an egg into the meat bowl, sprinkled some salt and pepper into it, then washed his hands one final time in preparation for the next step.
He breathed in and out, then reached out in his mind.
Spirit, he called. Did you want to mix the meatloaf?
The Spirit came forth immediately, as expected. His favorite part was mixing together the raw meat with his bare hands, a task Ryou didn't mind at all but was happy to offload to someone who enjoyed it.
The Spirit dug his hands into the bowl, gleefully mixing together raw meat and egg and breadcrumbs and onion, unbothered by the cold of the raw meat against his hands.
"Hey, uh," Yugi said hesitantly, his sharp eye catching the difference between Ryou and the Spirit.
The Spirit grunted in reply, annoyed by the interruption and wanting Yugi to just get his question over with.
"How is this looking?" Yugi asked finally. "Like, do I need to add the milk or…?"
The Spirit leaned over to peer into the bowl. He made a face. "It's too dry. It won't roll out like that."
"So… Add the milk?"
The Spirit rolled his eyes, focusing on breaking apart a chunk of frozen breadcrumb with his hands. "Yes, add the milk. Just a little at first."
"Okay…"
Once he was satisfied with the mixing, the Spirit took a backseat again, ceding the way to Ryou again.
Ryou scraped the raw meat off his hands into the bowl, then washed his hands again. He had forgotten to get out a loaf pan beforehand, so he did that now, greasing the interior for good measure because he couldn't remember if it was necessary or not. With that done, he scooped the meatloaf mixture out of the bowl and into the loaf pan, then pressed it down evenly with his hands.
He made a face, realizing he added too many breadcrumbs and now there was almost too much meatloaf to put in one pan. The taste would be fine, it was hard to add too many breadcrumbs to meatloaf, but he didn't have another loaf pan to split the meatloaf between. He gauged how much room he had left in the pan for the topping, then decided it would probably be fine. The ketchup-brown sugar topping wouldn't bubble over and spill in the oven like pie did, right? Maybe he should put a pan below it just in case…
He thought it. He decided he didn't want to have to search for a pan to catch any theoretical drippings. It was probably fine.
"How's this?" Yugi asked again.
"Hmm… Looks good," Ryou decided. He hadn't made sugar cookies in a while, so he was making a decision based on foggy memories, but he was pretty sure it was fine?
"Okay, now it says… Roll it on a lightly floured surface?" Yugi read from the recipe.
Ryou handed Yugi a washcloth. "Clean the counter first. Then dry it. Then maybe wait a bit so you don't have to scrape goopy flour paste off of the counter."
"…What if I don't want to wait?" Yugi said while following his instructions to clean off a part of the counter.
Ryou shrugged. "You'll be the one to clean it up, so it's not my problem."
Yugi grinned. "I can deal with that."
He then squinted at the recipe, then looked back at the ingredients he had left. "Uh… Can I borrow your flour? I assume a 'floured' surface is just, you put flour on it? I, uh, didn't think about needing more flour than the recipe called for."
"Sure, I don't mind," Ryou said easily, pulling the big tub of flour he kept out of the cupboard.
"Thanks!"
Anticipating his needs seeing as how Yugi also didn't bring a rolling pin, Ryou retrieved said tool and set it on the counter.
The dough was rolled out in a big slab, Ryou eyeballing the thickness and telling Yugi when it was the right thickness.
"How do you know?" Yugi asked in awe, convinced it was some sort of baking wizardry.
"Eh, it doesn't matter that much, really. It's a matter of preference, you know? I don't think there is one correct thickness for it to be," Ryou explained. "So, to answer your question, uhh I don't really know, I just guess."
"Coool…" Yugi was still impressed by his magic baking knowledge gleaned from experience.
Ryou just hummed and pulled out a glass measuring cup, a bottle of ketchup, and a bag of brown sugar. He squirted a generous heaping of ketchup into the measuring cup — he never really kept track of how much he made, though it looked like about a cup or so of ketchup — then spooned a few tablespoons of brown sugar in and stirred. That done, he spread it evenly over the meatloaf.
With the topping done, he put the meatloaf in the oven and set a timer on the oven for an hour.
"Arrgh, it keeps sticking to the cutter… thingies…" Yugi complained, trying in vain to detach dough from the kuriboh cookie cutter he was holding.
"Put flour on the cookie cutters, or the dough. Either one." Ryou said. "Do you want me to help? It'll go faster with my help."
"I would love that!" Yugi said with a smile, the kuriboh-shaped dough he was fighting with finally falling out of the cutter and onto the counter.
They worked together, using the cookie cutters to press into the dough and cut out shapes. Ryou showed Yugi his tactic of leaving the cookie cutter in the dough while putting another cookie cutter next to it, to make it easier to tell where you could cut while maximizing the amount of cookies you got per slab of dough.
Once they couldn't cut out any more cookies from the rolled out slab, they transferred the cookies to a baking sheet pan, then gathered all the scrap dough not used for cookies and used it to roll out another slab.
Another round of cookies, another slab rolled out. After that one was cut into cookies, there wasn't much dough left.
"You're better off just cooking those into mishapen blobs. At this point, it's been rolled out enough to start getting tough, so you wouldn't want to sell it anyway," Ryou counselled.
By this point, the first pan of cookies was in the oven and ready to be taken out.
(It was starting to smell weird, with the savoury smell of the meatloaf conflicting with the sweet smell of cookies.)
"Yeah, they're cooked. They're brown on the edges, see? Because these were thinner than some of the cookies you might see in stores, these are crispier." Ryou said, watching Yugi take the cookies out of the oven and set the pan on the stove.
"Is that bad?" Yugi said even as he put a new batch into the oven.
"It's a matter of preference. You get more cookies out of it if they're thinner, though." Ryou liked them thin and crispy, himself. Too much of the cookie itself and you realized sugar cookies were dry and a little boring.
Yugi poked at a cookie despondently. "…They expanded a bit. They look a little funny…" Many of the cookies ended up looking more blobby than they had when they first went in the oven.
"Hm. Maybe that's why all the other recipes said to refridgerate the dough." From the shift in the register of his voice, Ryou was pretty sure this was Atem speaking, not Yugi.
"But then I'd have to wait!" Yugi whined in response.
"It won't matter if you decorate them well enough," Ryou said as he cleared a spot on the counter and set down metal cooling racks to transfer the cookies to.
Yugi perked up and set to work reading the recipe instructions for the glossy royal icing he was planning on using.
Ryou never put much effort into decorating sugar cookies. It all tasted the same, and it was faster to just mix up some simple icing and slap it on the cookie, add some sprinkles, then done. Sure, he had his pride as an artist and it would be fun to actually put effort into decorating them one day, but most of the time he just didn't have the patience. Especially if the cookies were just for him or his friends.
But this time, with so much time left before the meatloaf was done, maybe this was the perfect opportunity to try out properly decorating a sugar cookie.
…Well, after he cleaned up the bowl that was used with raw meat that he had neglected up until then.
Yugi and Atem were arguing out loud over how best to decorate a Dark Magician cookie when the oven's timer went off.
Yugi's head snapped to the oven, argument interrupted.
By this point, the smell of the meatloaf had overpowered the cookies and filled the apartment with a smell that made his mouth water. Ryou was definitely hungry by this point, and he had no doubt that Yugi was also eager to eat.
Ryou put the finishing touches on the Blue Eyes White Dragon cookie he was working on, then set down the piping bag he was holding.
After washing the icing off his hands, Ryou pulled the meatloaf out of the oven.
"Looks like it's supper time," Ryou said cheerfully.
The Spirit took over immediately as he began to eat, and the rest of dinner became consumed by the sounds of eating and nothing else, everyone too focused on eating to converse.
"That was good!" Yugi said when he was done eating.
"I'm glad you liked it!" Ryou said as he gathered up the dishes to put in the sink. That done, he set about covering the loaf pan in cling wrap so he could the leftovers in the fridge.
When he turned back to the sink, Yugi had already cleaned the dishes they had just used and was working on drying them.
Ryou shooed Yugi away and stole the towel he was using to dry the dishes himself.
Yugi laughed at having gotten away with doing something resembling chores at Ryou's place — a constant politeness competition between the two of them whenever they went over to the other's house.
"Just wait, I'll get you back for that," Ryou threatened goodnaturedly, shaking a finger at Yugi for added effort.
"You can try!" Yugi challenged him in good humour.
They both laughed, warmed by the simple motions of this game between them.
Yugi clutched his container of cookies under his arm as he waved goodbye to Ryou. "Thanks again for all your help!"
"Oh, don't mention it," Ryou said warmly. "I had fun."
"Good! I had fun too! See you later!"
"See you."
Ryou closed the door with a gentle click, left with a smile on his face and the satisfied joy curling through his chest. He really enjoyed hanging out with his friends.
Good, he's gone, the Spirit said, though Ryou knew he didn't really mean it — He enjoyed their hang outs with Yugi just as much as Ryou did, even if most of the time he just hovered over his metaphorical shoulder and watched.
Stop, stop, you'll ruin my reputation as a MYSTERIOUS and MALEVOLENT spectre, the Spirit joked.
"What reputation?" Ryou returned with a little laugh as he absentmindedly pushed the chairs into the kitchen table.
RUDE.
Ryou stuck his tongue out at empty air.