Katie's birthday

Those who know me know that I have home schooled my two oldest girls until three weeks ago. At that time I enrolled them in 4th and 5th grade in our small town's public school. My four-year-old is in her third year of pre-school, but she's an entire blog unto herself.

It's Katie's birthday and she's going to a new school, so I wanted to make a good impression by taking some kind of treat to her classroom. My good friend suggested I buy cookies from the local cookie shop--all the same kind to avoid the "I wanted CHOCOLATE CHIP not oatmeal!" argument. By the way, we may live in Podunk, Kansas, population 2000 (almost), but our local cookie shop owner has been featured on THE Food Network. Bringing cookies from her shop would be "a good thing." So, did I take my seasoned-parent friend's advice? Of course not. Instead I saw an idea in Martha Stewart's magazine about baking cupcakes in ice cream cones.

I have learned one lesson from past baking experiments: do not wait until the last minute to try something new. So, yesterday after school the girls and I did a practice run of cupcake cones, with decent success. I thought, "Wow! Maybe I really CAN be Martha." I cleaned up that mess (a big surprise to all who know and love me) just in time for Carl to come home from work.
He took one look at my practice cones and said, "Those aren't full enough."

"Well, yes, they could be more full, but I need room to frost them." I said, then added with a little irritation, "They're fine."

"Here, let me help you."

At this point, I was running out of steam and still had plenty left to do, so I went with it. We filled those cones, not to the brim, but pretty doggone close. Somehow I knew my dreams of Marthadom were coming to an end.

At 8:00 last night I pulled the cupcake cones out of the oven. Goodbye Martha. The cake had poofed up nicely at first, but then proceeded to ooze over the sides of the cones and dollop sadly onto the cookie sheet below, like little poopies. Just scrape it off you probably think, as I did. But scraping off the cake resulted in removing half of the mushy-underneath-cone as well.

8:00 is an important time in podunk, KS. The grocery store closes at 8. Dollar General is closed. Heck, I think the gas stations are even closed. If you run out of gas here after 8:00, you'll be sleeping in your car until morning. No motel. Nothing. On the good side, it's a safe neighborhood and you probably could leave your windows rolled down and/or your doors unlocked. But that wasn't going to help me make more cupcakes.

Why didn't I just listen to my cookie-advising friend in the first place? Now I had a destroyed kitchen, unwrapped presents, hungry kids (did I mention that their chocolate bowl-licking turned out to be supper since I sorta forgot about fixing a meal?) and two dozen disgusting-looking cupcake cones to show for it. Will I ever learn???

Now where's the number to that cookie shop?