Baking Day Near-Disasters

Looking ahead, we decided to begin our baking. And being fall, we thought that pumpkin was the flavor of choice. New recipe from southernfood.com (Cake was served last night and was delicious!) Anyway, got the cake done, and 4yo comes into the kitchen, chatting non-stop as usual. She climbs up onto a stool near the counter where the cake sits. She likes the higher view. The rest of us were busy with other things... Then 4yo says "Moma, help me!" I turn to find icing on her hand and the sleeve of her dress. I was a good mother, didn't lose my temper, and carefully cleaned her up. And left her with the typical mother comment "Be careful when you're up here." She got down and walked into the next room. Her sister hollers out "What's all over the back of your dress?" Looks like 4yo attempted to sit up on the counter, scooching (is that a word?) herself backwards from the high stool. When her hand hit the cake, she stopped, but not before her backside had hit it too. Hmmm, no wonder the icing looked a bit messed up. Fortunately she had not sat upon the ENTIRE cake, but had only pushed at it.

Part 2: I didn't use all the pumpkin for the cake, so we decided that pumpkin cookies were a good idea. Emma wanted to do that baking, so I handed her another recipe from southernfood.com. I pointed out that it called for a certain amount of pumpkin, yet we had slightly more, so she would need to adjust the recipe accordingly. We calculated that she needed to 1 1/2 times the recipe. She started working it in her head, and I handed her a pencil. I said "It would be a good idea to write the new amounts in the margin." Haha, words of wisdom... So Emma got everything put together and was just about to put the cookies on a baking sheet, when she said "What? I've got to grease the pans?" To which I responded "What? toss that recipe..." But I told her instead to just go ahead and proceed without greasing the pan, since there's butter in the recipe. I looked at the recipe, and discovered that while she had increased all the ingredients to the proper amount, she had accidentally quadrupled the butter amount. OOPS! And we had no more pumpkin at this point. Emma left the room while I worked on the recipe. Finally I determined that bar cookies were the best bet. And they turned out perfectly!