He was the cook of the family.
He was also the artist, but he liked to call cooking another art form. He was used to making food for the family; ever since he was young he would mix and match flavors and cook up something that everyone would enjoy. Donnie would tend to call him another scientist of the family; and though he would never admit it, he liked experimenting like his older brother. The kitchen gave him a way to express his thoughts in ways his art just couldn't.
The box turtle grabbed ingredients to make his famous sugar cookies. He began looking for the sugar and frowned when he couldn't find anything.
"Huh..." he paused as he looked in the cabinets once more; just to make sure. "Guess the sugar's gone..."
He pulled out his phone to look up an alternate. Being a cook, sometimes you had to substitute things in your creations. He had done it before, just not when he was making sweets. He scrolled through his phone, sometimes making faces at the weird alternates he had found. He finally stopped at one and thought.
"Honey..." he said to himself. He paused for a minute, then shrugged his shoulders. "I mean, I've done weirder stuff."
He looked in the cabinet and smiled when he found the honey. He took it out and mixed it into the other ingredients as he would with sugar and put the cookie dough in balls on the baking tray.
"Hopefully it doesn't react differently," he said as he set a timer on his phone. "Wouldn't want to burn them, or the lair."
He decided to pass the time by bringing his sketchbook into the kitchen so that he wouldn't be too far away from the oven. He sat and drew in his sketchbook, unaware of the guest that came into the room.
"Hey 'Angelo," his purple-clad brother said. The softshell went to grab himself a mug for his coffee. "You baking something?"
Mikey looked up from his drawing and smiled. "Hey Dee," he said. "Yeah, I'm making cookies."
Donnie nodded his head in response as he started to make his coffee. Once he was done, he sat down beside his younger brother. They both sat in silence; engraved in their activities. They were soon interrupted by the oven's beeping. Mikey went to go and grab his mitts while Donnie stayed and watched. He knew that Mikey had done this for years, but he stayed to make sure the box turtle didn't hurt himself, even if it would only be a small burn. Mikey grabbed the cookies out of the oven and placed them on the cooling rack. He smiled at his creation but remembered that he had substituted the ingredients. He tasted the dough before it went in the oven; it tasted great, but what if the cookies didn't turn out good? What if they didn't bake right due to the substitution? He then felt a hand on his shoulder. He looked up to see Donnie with a concerned look on his face.
"You ok?" he asked. "You look like you're lost in thought."
"I'm fine," Mikey answered. "It's just that we ran out of sugar. I substituted it with honey, but I don't know how well the cookies baked."
Donnie looked at the cookies on the rack. From his view, they looked just like any other sugar cookies. But he knew that it was a matter of taste. He walked over to the cookie rack; made sure the cookies weren't too hot and took a bite out of one of the cookies. Mikey looked at him with fear in his eyes but instantly smiled once his brother began to gobble up the cookie.
"Micheal," Donnie said to his brother. "These are amazing! You should put honey in the cookies more often."
Mikey went over to the cookie rack to try one of the cookies as well. He instantly grinned as he took a bite, letting the cookie melt in his mouth.
"Wow," he said once he finished the cookie. "They are good, aren't they?"
From that day on, Mikey made sugar cookies with honey. He kept his secret with Donnie, and when the others would ask for his secret, he would just laugh.
"I can't tell you what it is," he would always say. "But it's a lot sweeter than you would think!"
