Make a Mess

My daughter received a cupcake book for her birthday last summer. We immediately spent hours poring over the brilliant photographs and imagining all the occasions for which we might need alien cupcakes, or crocodile cupcakes, spider cupcakes or pup-cakes.

Sadly, no holidays were upon us and my first instinct was to return the book to the shelf after we flipped the back cover.

Then I had a moment: “you know, we could just have a cupcake party for no reason at all.” Brilliant. The lovely part of this adventure is that we have a built-in excuse to try everything.

Why not? After all, it’s all about learning to cook.

So they picked a creation (penguins!), we invited a couple of school friends over and everybody set to work crafting penguins with cupcakes, icing and some guidance from the cookbook. At the end of the party, our penguins were more…well…natural looking than those glossy models in the photographs, and they were delicious!

This experience also reminded me that sometimes you just have to be willing to make an excuse, make a mess and do something fun. We still talk about the penguin party, months later, and even if we never make another elaborate cupcake, the book will have been a success. On the other hand, I’ll bet those aliens would be just perfect for that meeting on St. Patrick’s Day!