~Chapter 43 – Cookies & Ice Cream~

            Just as Suho said spring break really did approach quite quickly as the weeks flew by the lessons and training for Sehun and Luhan finally began.

            “Okay! Lesson one! Cookies and ice cream!” grinned Xiumin as he stood behind the counter of the kitchen station beside Tao who yawned sleepily after laying his head on a sack of flour.

            “Too early for this,” mumbled Luhan leaning his head on Sehun’s shoulder.

            Sehun at the moment was fighting to keep himself up right so that both he and Luhan wouldn’t end up on the floor in a heap since Luhan was leaning on him for support while the two stood near the counter top of the kitchen station.

            “It’s only 8am!” protested Xiumin completely wide awake and chirpy.

            “Exactly!” yelled back Tao and Luhan with their eyes still closed while Sehun just wobbled a bit.

            Clearly these three were not morning people.

            The only morning person in the room looked at the three nearly comatose people with exasperation before pulling out two large cookie baking pans. With one last look at the three younger ones and a sigh, Xiumin banged the two cookie sheets together repeatedly eliciting loud crashing sounds from the colliding pans over and over.

            ‘CRASH CRASH CRASH’

            Tao, Luhan and Sehun jumped from the sudden noise, clasping their hands over their ears from the obnoxious sound “GAAAHHH!!!”

            Seeing that the three were finally more alert and responsive, Xiumin put the cookie baking pans down and grinned “Great, now that you’re all awake, let’s begin.”

            Tao and Luhan let out a groan while Sehun took to leaning on Luhan.

            “Why couldn’t we have done this around noon!?” whined Luhan.

            “Because this lesson might take all day and Tao doesn’t like walking around campus when it gets late because it’s dark and creepy outside, besides the more practice time the better, you guys have to win no matter what right?” explained Xiumin.

            Luhan let out a sound that was a mix between a groan and a cry but either way it was a sound of indignation towards waking up early but he couldn’t deny what Xiumin said.

            Sehun just nodded at Xiumin still in a bit of a stupor, besides they explained pretty much the general details of the situation to everyone already anyways. Now it was just the matter of following through with the lessons and then learning and practicing as much as they can in preparation for the Dessert Finale.

            “But why did you wake me up too!? You could have started the lesson and then I would have showed up for my part,” whined Tao giving Xiumin a pouty look that usually got him what he wanted.

            “Because you probably would have gone somewhere else if I let you sleep in and then you'd forget to show up for the lesson,” answered Xiumin avoiding Tao’s pouty look.

            Tao’s jaw dropped ready to rebuttal Xiumin’s statement but after realizing what Xiumin said had quite a bit of truth in it, he only settled for more pouting.

            “Alright now that the questions are out of the way, let’s start,” said Xiumin as he pulled the sack of flour Tao was laying on earlier towards him.

            Xiumin suddenly did a double take to the outside of the bag “Ah, Tao, you drooled on it.”

            “Ew,” said Luhan as he took a closer look on the flour bag.

            Sehun looked like he could care less.

            Tao spluttered in embarrassment “It was your fault for waking me so early, I was tired!”

            “Yeah, yeah, okay at least it was on the outside,” said Xiumin as he opened the bag of flour and got out the rest of the needed tools and ingredients “Anyways I’ll be giving you tips on how to improve your cookie techniques first and then Tao can take over afterwards.”

            Tao let out a whiny noise but didn’t say much more as Xiumin patted his cheek while passing by to get the bowl.

            “Alright, first tip; be careful of the amount of flour you use. Flour can easily make the cookies too tough or dry if you add too much,” as Xiumin talked he was also working on making his batch of cookies to show the three in the room. “It’s also important to soften the butter properly as well, by either letting it sit at room temperature or you can grate it into a bowl and then it’ll soften faster but don’t use the microwave because that’s not the same as softening.”

            Luhan and Sehun were now paying close attention to the tips Xiumin was telling them and observing how he worked, early or not this was information they needed to take in.

            “Another tip, when you are making the dough, this is just a simple recipe for chocolate chip cookies that I’m working on right now but the same principles apply to about every other cookie recipe, you don’t want to over work the dough because that also makes the cookies come out tough, usually a good technique would be to just mix the ingredients until the flour disappears,” Xiumin began stirring the ingredients together until the dough formed in the bowl.

            Luhan and Sehun nodded as they took in everything Xiumin told them. Tao rested his head on the counter looking like he could fall back asleep at any moment.

            “Also a good tip to know although you might not be able to use it all the time is that if you chill the dough for a bit before baking it can make the dough stay soft,” Xiumin at the moment was wrapping the dough up and placing it in the quick chiller for a few seconds before taking it out and then began to scoop out little balls of cookie dough with a spoon to place on to the baking sheet.

            “Well that explains why your cookies always came out so tasty,” said Luhan as both he and Sehun took down the tip mentally.

            “Oh and since I’m only making these as demonstration I didn’t feel like rolling it out with a rolling pin like I usually do but when you do need to do that remember that tip about flour, too much and it’ll make the cookies dry and tough so it’s best to sometimes mix the flour with a bit of powdered sugar to decrease the flour use,” explained Xiumin as he continued scooping out cookies on to the baking pan.

            As Xiumin began finishing up Tao suddenly stood up straighter as he held his hand out towards Xiumin and made a grabbing gesture by opening and closing his fist, an expectant look on his face.

            Luhan and Sehun looked at Tao with confusion wondering what he was doing and if the latter has finally cracked from waking up at 8am.

            “Okay sleepy panda baby,” murmured Xiumin fondly as he handed Tao the cookie dough covered spoon.

            Tao smiled brigh