There's something fundamentally disastrous about elementary schools and bake sales.
Jacob offered to help Ruthie bake cupcakes for the sale to raise money for a class field trip. Neither one bakes much but both are fiercely independent and heavily resistant to supervision. And so Henry and I went to the library and left Ruth and Jake home to do some hardcore baking. They had some mixes and all the tools required. It sounds simple, right?
We returned two hours later to find them on the phone with Jacob's mom, in preparations to start over again. The kitchen was trashed, just about every bowl and spoon used, batter on the walls, floor and ceiling. And on the table, cooling, the fruits of their labours: giant-sized mutant cupcakes that were black on the outside and still liquid in the middle.
I couldn't do a thing but stand in the doorway and laugh and laugh. Their reasonings were priceless. Bigger cupcakes will fetch higher prices, and to speed up the baking process, if the oven is hotter everything bakes faster.
Henry said they were volcanoes, black mountains that spew hot lava. That sent us into fresh peals of laughter. It took forever to calm down but finally we stopped and cleaned up the mess and went out for more supplies and then I showed them tricks like turning off the beaters before lifting them out of the bowl, and using a broom straw to test for doneness.
The cupcakes were a huge hit yesterday at school, and Ruth was able to contribute $25 to the trip. She sold out.
When asked if she was willing to make cupcakes again for a future fundraiser, she respectfully declined and asked if she could sell chocolate bars instead, or maybe even just pay cash.
