Surprising the Surpriser

Little Sister's birthday has always taken a back seat to Halloween. This year, I'm changing that . . .

Happy Birthday, L'il Sis!!!

Before

During

 It was a surprise.

In more ways than one . . .

Mom and I were away for the day . . . somewhere.

My twelve-year-old brother and ten-year-old sister were home alone.

Well, technically, they were in the house alone.

Dad and my older brother were out in the barnyard.

But I digress . . .

Little Sister decided to surprise everyone.

With a delicious, delightful, delectable (that’s all the yummy ‘d’ words I can think of right now) dessert.

A cake.

She had seen Mom do it.

Even helped.

She dragged out the recipe and equipment and proceeded to assemble and stir.

All went well.

Soon, the smell of ‘cake’ was permeating the house.

Skillfully, she tipped the finished product out onto a platter.

Perfect!

And pulled out the ingredients for icing.

Sugar and milk and vanilla.

All according to her handy, dandy (oooh, another ‘d’ word) recipe card.

She added the requisite amount of sugar and milk.

A dribble of vanilla.

And . . . voila . . . what’s wrong with this stuff?!

The mixture at the bottom of the bowl more closely resembled soup than icing.

What had she done wrong?

She read the recipe again. She had measured correctly. Why wasn’t it working?!

She added more sugar.

Still a watery, sugary mess.

She knew that Mom often added flour to soups to thicken.

Maybe that’s what she needed. A bit of flour . . .

Nope. If anything, that made it worse.

She stared into the bowl.

Maybe that was how it was supposed to look?

She tried smearing some on her perfect cake.

Disaster.

Then she did something not mentioned on the recipe card.

She cried.

And that’s when Mom and I walked in the door.

I think Mom managed to salvage the situation.

And the cake.

With a gently-taught lesson on which kind of sugar to use. (Did you know there were kinds?)

Powdered is best for icing.

Turns out that granulated only works in certain, very select situations.

And flour never, ever goes into icing.

Little Sister still bakes. Infrequently, according to her.

After

Maybe she simply too busy being a wife, mom, grand-mom, flight attendant, business owner, cub leader, runner and all-around good friend to worry about anything else.

And that’s okay.

Love you, Best Friend!