Ah, the baking craft, and oh, the guilt-ridden job of mother. How I love thee both.
As can happen among mothers, I am the least crafty of the species. I see projects like SusieJ’s ghost feet and I think they are fabulous, and I feel I should be good at these things, and I know I’m staring at failure. Although my heart tells me I should make them, that these are the precious memories I should be making with my children, I know that their memory would be different. They would be laughing their heads off when the dough wouldn’t harden or when it spontaneously combusted, both of which would be real possibilities. This is simply the way it is with me and crafts. It’s a complicated relationship.
Speaking of relationships, during the first year we were married, I decided to bake my new husband a birthday cake. I was going to make it from a box, like all good wives do, but I didn’t know which type was his favorite. When I asked, he said, “Italian Cream Cake,” and I had the sinking feeling that kind didn’t come in a box. I secured the recipe from his mom, purchased the ingredients, and got busy. I measured and poured and folded. When I was done, the batter still seemed awfully runny, but I slid it into the oven and crossed my fingers. A few seconds later my husband came into the kitchen and I mentioned this peculiarity to him. He peeked into the oven. Kindly, ever so gently, he asked, “Um, did you add the flour?” Ah ha! And this was the first of many.
And so, it is with some wonder that I have become a birthday cakes for my children. After that first attempt, most sensible women would have thrown in the towel, sold their beaters on Craig’s List, and called 1-800-Costco. But no. If nothing else, I am stubborn. Determined. I will not be beaten by flour and eggs.
But the cupcakes in the waffle cone bowls? They almost beat me. They could smell victory, as close as it ever was.
So here’s how it went down: Several years ago I met a crafty mom who trades sleep for making party favors and the like. One year, she made cupcakes for her child’s birthday. Now cupcakes, I can do. But no. She didn’t make cupcakes in paper like the rest of us. She made them in edible waffle cone bowls, which I thought was brilliant. Instantly, I knew I was inferior. But it was easy, she said, and she told me how she did it. I tried it. Lo and behold, it was easy and just like that I was back in the motherhood game.
Flash forward. I remember the waffle cone bowls. So do my kids. My son asks me to bake them for his class. And the other class that’s a part of his team. That’s 50 cupcakes in waffle cone bowls. “Okay,” I thought, “this was easy.”
I use a box mix and open the waffle cone bowls. Several are cracked. Hmmm…won’t the batter just run out? Those bowls are out. What about the chipped ones? Probably okay. I bought 5 boxes of bowls and at 10 per box I don’t really have any to spare. The chipped ones are in. I pour the batter into the bowls and put them in the oven. Only a few batches to go, right?
Except. Except when I open the oven to check on them, batter is oozing out of several of them. The others are strangely misshapen, flattened out in a quite unattractive matter. Panic starts to settle in. I salvage the ones I can and get the next batch ready. I’m very careful not to put too much batter in each bowl. I wait, I peek, and…same deal. Oozing and strangely flat. I plead with my husband to run out and buy more waffle bowls, at once calculating my insanity and the rising cost of these stupid cupcakes. He arrives with the extra waffle cone bowls. Now I’m almost done. I just need one more cupcake but the only waffle cone bowl left has a small hole in the bottom. “Hmmm,” I think. “I’ll just bake this one in the muffin tin and pop it into the waffle cone bowl afterwards. No one will be any wiser. And that’s when it hit me. I’m the one who should be wiser.
You’re not supposed to bake them in the darn bowls. You’re supposed to bake them in the muffin tins, let them cool, and THEN pop them into the waffle bowls. If you do, they look like this, all pretty and perky.
Otherwise, you get the misshapen, random effect.
But I am here to testify that icing and quantity trump perfection. Because not one kid cared that they didn’t have a pretty cone. They just wanted to get their hands on one of these.
And all is right in the world.
