...and I will arriving at exactly eight pm on the Canterlot-Manehatten express way. Hope to see you soon, Octavia.

Vinyl smiled widely for a moment before realizing that Octavia would have nothing special to come home too. The white unicorn looked around and grinned at the brand new package of chocolate chips sitting on the counter. She was going to eat them herself, but making a welcome home batch of cookies for the best marefriend in the whole world was so much better. And besides, after endless boring shows on the cooking channels, in addition to all the nights she had cooked for herself (meaning heated up take-out leftovers), she was basically a chef!

Besides, fillies knew how to make cookies! How hard could it be?

~0.0.0~

Vinyl looked over the recipe, a scowl on her face. The numbers didn't seem right at all.

"21/4 cups of flour? Why would you need that much flour?" the pony questioned as she misread the instructions. Vinyl shook her head and grabbed the bag of flour, holding it in a hoof. "This seems about right." She emptied the flour sack into the bowl, coughing as the flour made a cloud and rose into the air like smoke. The bowl was nearly filled to the top with flour and Vinyl read the next line of instructions.

"Baking soda..." Vinyl grabbed a small box and glanced at it. It said 'Baking Powder', but Vinyl poured a bit into the flour. Was there really any difference? The pony who wrote the directions probably just got confused.

"Now... salt?" the unicorn questioned, knitting her eyebrows and shaking her head. "Now who the buck would put salt in delicious cookies?" Shaking her head, Vinyl skipped straight to the next step. "3/4 cups of sugar?"

The DJ stole a glance at the bag of sugar before her and frowned.

"Nah, that's not enough." she declared, pushing the directions aside and levitating the bag over with her telekinetic grip, dumping a somewhat large lump of sugar into the bowl. "Still not enough." She tilted the bag a bit more, and anypony else could tell that the amount that had fallen out was way too much, however Vinyl Scratch definitely was not anypony else. "Nah, little more..." Unfortunately, practically the whole bag fell into the bowl and oddly enough, the unicorn smiled. "Perfect!"

She grabbed the directions, feeling proud of herself.

"Mix with one cup of butter, vanilla, brown sugar..." As she read the instructions, she dropped items into the bowl. She didn't think that an entire cup of butter would taste very nice, so she cut it down to about half a cup. The vanilla smelled amazing, so she just emptied half the bottle into the bowl. Anything that smelled that nice had to be really tasty in the long run.

"Only 3/4 cups of brown sugar? Well, if it's anything like normal sugar, it's gotta be tasty." She levitated the bag of brown sugar. "We only have half a bag?" the unicorn sighed, but emptied the brown sugar into the now overflowing bowl.

"Next?" she stole a glance at the directions. "Two eggs? Finally, something that makes sense...." She shook her head, taking two eggs from the nearby carton and simply dropping them into the mixture of ingredients (without even bothering to break them). She poured the entire bag of chocolate chips, muttering something about '2 cups isn't enough'.

"Now mix!" she grabbed the beaters, glad for something fun to do. She began to mix everything together, switching to her magic when her hooves grew tired of mixing the things together. With her magic, the mixing went on much faster. The ingredients combined in a sloppy mess, sloshing onto the counter and splashing onto the wall. Vinyl either didn't notice the mess or didn't care, as she continued to stir the ingredients together.

"Perfect!" she beamed. The cookie dough was almost rock solid as she spooned it onto the pan. The rocks of dough were littered with eggshells as Vinyl threw the pan into the oven. It didn't look as good as what was on TV, but then again, did anything?

"Cook in oven for thirty minutes on two hundred and fifty degrees?" she scowled, looking at the clock. Octavia would be home in fifteen! "I'll just do math stuff and cook it on five hundred!" she said with a panicked tone to her voice as she cranked up the dial on the oven. The oven roared as the temperature skyrocketed, and Vinyl paced back and forth. After ten minutes, she pulled the oven open and levitated her cookies out of the oven, dropping the pan on the counter. The cookies were black, with smoke issuing from the oven.

"What the buck?" she shrieked, grabbing the package that the directions were written on. Her cookies looked the exact opposite as the one in the pictures! She shuffled over to the door, deciding to run to the store and just buy some already made ones, however the second she opened the door, who was standing there?

"Octavia!" Vinyl said, with a smile. "What... what are you... shouldn't you be here in five minutes?"

"You still haven't changed the clock? It's five minutes slow, Silly Filly!" Octavia's nose crinkled. "What is that horrid smell?"

"I uh..." Vinyl looked to the ground. "I tried to make cookies...to welcome you home!"

"That's so sweet, Vinyl!" Octavia smiled.

"It didn't really go the way I had planned..." Vinyl led the way into the house and indicated the plate of charred cookies.

"You... actually tried cooking?" the cellist questioned with knit eyebrows.

"That's what I just said," the unicorn said simply, with a slight frown. "Apparently, the directions are stupid."

"I honestly thought you were just going to say you baked them and you actually bought store ones." Octavia confessed. Vinyl shook her head.

"Nope, I made these babies all by myself!" for a moment, Vinyl held her head in pride. The pungent odor of the burnt cookies filled her nose and she sighed. "Or, I tried to anyway. I'm sorry, Octy. I wanted your coming home to be special, like in movies! I just made a big mess...literally." She tapped her hoof to the sticky dough that had splashed onto the walls.

Glancing around the room, and letting out a light chuckle, Octavia rolled her eyes, placing a kiss on Vinyl's cheek. "My knowing that you just tried to do something that kind for my homecoming made my day," she smiled. "It is the thought that counts after all."

Vinyl let out a nervous laugh and the light blush that spread across her cheeks was redder than her eyes, which were covered by her sunglasses that had cookie dough had splattered all across them.

"So... how about something sweeter?" she inquired, with a smirk, lowering her glasses ever-so-slightly. "If ya know what I mean?"

Author's Notes:

And then they bucked.

Co-written by 'The Princess Rarity'. This lovely idea came to me while baking cookies! However, I, unlike Vinyl, know how to properly follow a recipe! Hope you enjoyed!