Cookie monster

The stuff I helped sell at last weekend's cake stall looked so good, so professional, that I felt like such a culinary failure in comparison. I'm the one who once made a sponge cake and forgot to put the sugar in, the one who didn't have enough beef for her casserole and made up for it in pork.

But today I decided it was time to make gingerbread men. It seems such a waste to have bought those expensive cookie cutters, and only use them on playdough. I also thought TLM might enjoy helping me mix the dough, cut the cookies and taste the results.

She was great at mixing time. But she kept trying to toss in extra ingredients while I was already onto the knead'n'cut phase. Then she wouldn't get away from the hot oven while they were baking. I was pleased that she seemed to like them, but while I was cooking her lunch she kept sneaking up to the kitchen table and taking the box of cookies away (though she hasn't yet worked out how to open it).

In the end I had to sit her in front of Dora, just to give myself a break from preventing scalds and over-full tummies.

A piece of cake

I've started organising a cake stall to raise funds for The Little Madam's childcare centre. It's going to be held in the local shopping mall, and the girl who booked the space for us sounded really keen to try our baking.

"Is there going to be black forest gateau, by any chance?", she asked hopefully. I certainly didn't want to get her hopes up, as I have no idea what the parents' abilities are like in the cake- and biscuit-making arena.

But I do know that it might not be a good idea to offer anything that comes out of my oven. Not if we want to make a profit and avoid disabling an entire neighbourhood with indigestion.

So I'm thinking, unless I find a fool-proof recipe for a delicious and expensive-looking cake or biscuit (and which requires no electric mixer), then I'm best off employed purely on the retail side of things...

Gore in the kitchen

TLM's first real day at daycare was apparently fun-filled and separation anxiety-free. As expected, she spent about two hours in standing in front of the outdoor water trough, scooping it up and pouring it down her front. In fact, she seemed to have had such a good time that she didn't eat a thing all morning except for a small pot of yoghurt and two gingernuts.

She made up for the lack of appetite at dinner time though. Just in case she's displaying a renewed food pickiness, she's getting cheesy pasta 'n' peas for lunch next time she goes to daycare.

This little domestic tale could have ended here, if I hadn't stepped on a bit of glass just as I was getting TLM out of her highchair.

This tiny bit of glass embedded in my heel was no doubt a missed remnant from a couple of nights ago when the boy broke his second-to-last wineglass. It was surprisingly easy to remove though, and I soon resumed to pottering around the kitchen putting away TLM's leftovers.

I didn't know it at the time, but I'd been spraying foot-blood all over the kitchen floor. TLM was fascinated by the little red puddles and my efforts to wipe it up with paper towels were too slow to stop her from dipping fingers in the stuff.

That's when I remembered a movie I'd seen as a child, in which someone was poisoned when he unknowingly sipped a drink containing a small amount of someone else's blood. Please let that be utter fiction.

And just as I mopped the smudges of blood off the floor, I heard the distinct "chink" sound of yet another glass fragment...