Evidently the notice of the bake sale/service project came home over a week ago, but Andrew has already entered the middle school twilight zone and isn't so great about passing along important school information anymore. This notice made it clear that the 5th grader should make the bake sale item,supervised, but on his own, and was due in school on Thursday morning.
I love to cook and am pretty good at it most of the time. But baking? I'd say I'm more hit than miss. I'm just not good with the details and the specifics of a cake or cookie recipe. I'm fine with a box mix, but even those final products tend to suck when compared to something that Eric does with flour and sugar and a rolling pin. He's the baker in this house, FOR SURE!! Let me just offer up this photo of the cake Eric made for Adrienne's 5th birthday and then his follow up for the 6th.
Wednesday morning at breakfast when Andrew finally remembers the bake sale and remembers to pass along the information and requirements, I immediately think this task is perfect to pawn off on Daddy. Afterall, he is the baker. Let him do a school project for once.
I love Eric. He's a great dad and very involved, but let's face it: most (strike that--ALL) school projects always fall on me. I'm the one filling pop bottles with rice and spray painting the syrofoam ball/head to create an Abraham Lincoln. Or I'm the one who searches all over town for a rubber guinea pig that JUST HAS to go in Andrew's book report diorama. The things we've done this year with shoe boxes, tri-fold posterboards, and artist's pastels is mind boggling to me.
For a non-crafty person its very stressful to have to rise to such achievement with rubber cement and construction paper. But don't get me wrong, I am happy doing it. It's part of the mommy gig. But given the chance to be off the hook for one thing? I'll take it.
Then I remembered that Eric works most evenings. He sees patients from 2pm -7pm which pretty much rules out any baking in the evening. And since Andrew really gave no advance notice on this thing, I've got to be the one. As usual, it's me--all me.
My plan was to have Andrew do the majority of the baking. I'd just supervise and maybe with that arrangement we'd actually end up with an edible baked good. But then Andrew arrived home from school on Wednesday with a soar throat and a weird rash on his chest. He was in bed by 7pm and I was left to my own devices with the cookies.
I would have been much more comfortable assembling the summer booklets for the teacher appreciation swag bags. Actually, I was feeling a bit more than bitter that Eric was working, Andrew had gone to bed and I was left with a baking project when I'd rather be working on a paper project of my own creation. And in sulking about that, I decided to make labels for our cookie bags first. I named us THE HOUSE OF HEIN BAKERY and gave us this cute little house logo.
When finished with the printed labels for my cookie bags, I had primed the creative pump and was ready to bake. I decided on sugar cookies because not only did they appear to be the quickest cookie to bake, but the ingredient list and instructions were also the shortest.
I channelled my "patience is a virtue" gene and took my time--assembling wet ingredients in one bowl, dry in the other, then merging only when advised by the recipe. I beat the batter for exactly the right amount of time and followed every instruction to the letter, including cookie size and bake time.
The end result actually turned out pretty good. I thought my cookies were very tasty--not too sweet, but with the perfect "not too soft not too hard" texture. I won't be baking at Christmas side by side with Eric the baker-extroadinaire, but these sugar cookies I whipped up were perfect for the bake sale.
On Thursday morning, Andrew was pleased with the packaging and seemed moderately impressed with the cookie itself. He liked the texture, although he commented that he would have liked to taste the cookie right out of the oven to be sure he liked them. I did feel a bit stung by that comment, but it's baking we're talking about. I took it in stride.
Yesterday after school, the kids told me that THE HOUSE OF HEIN BAKERY sugar cookies were the first to go. I did package three cookies to a bag for 50 cents to ensure value, but I also thought a high quantity to low price ratio would ensure sales and give my cookies a perceived popularity that I might not have other obtained in a taste test.
This week has been busy, but chock full of success. And for my self-evaluation of this weeks' tasks? I'd have to say, "She shoots, she scores!" Enjoy your holiday weekend!
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