Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Cupcakes

My granddaughter Athena wanted an Easy-Bake Oven for Christmas, this follows on the heals of her getting a Disney Princess Cool-Bake Oven for her birthday. What a phenomenal waste of money that was. It's bad enough the darned cakes are so small, and "refills" are at least $5 for two packages making approximately 4 cakes (about a tablespoon of cake) each, but they were also disgusting. so as my daughter Tess and I were shopping for Christmas we were discussing the Cool-Bake Oven fiasco, and trying to figure out what else we could do to satisfy Athena's need to bake.

She also wanted a cupcake maker, which is actually just a cupcake decorator. Her dad volunteered to buy her the cupcake maker so that left it to us to handle the cupcakes.

We discussed the price of refills for the Easy-Bake Oven, the amount of mess and clean-up required, and the ridiculous one-bite size of the darned things. I mentioned it was too bad there wasn't a way to use regular cake mix for it, and my brilliant daughter said, "Mom, she knows how to use the oven and the Easy-Bake cupcakes are hot when they are done so she won't be much more apt to burn herself with regular cupcakes. Why don't we just buy her muffin pans, cake mixes and frosting in the regular baking department." We ended up getting some of the cutest little specialty cupcake pans and liners as well as the cake mixes and icings with sprinkles.

Last night I heard someone on my front porch and a moment later in came Athena and Tess with a plate of cupcakes complete with icing and sprinkles. What a nice surprise. And how wonderful to share in Athena's first cupcakes. Yum!!!

9 comments:

Barrie said...

Brilliant idea!! Cupcakes are YUMMY!! What a lucky girl Athena is - and you know, you guys are giving her skills she'll be able to use one day to impress her future husband! LOL

rosebud101 said...

Nummy and fun! Did I tell you that I LOVE cupcakes?

Deronda designs... said...

Oooh, just think of where she can go next...what a fabulous idea.

Nancy McCarroll said...

good on you! Athena is on her way to being a chef!

Anonymous said...

what fun Rita! It sounds like you've set her up for the future, won't you feel proud when she's head pastry chef at some posh restaurant or hotel!

anita said...

and now she has the joy of sharing her new learned skills...
she must have felt so grown up with her own real pans and sprinkles! love this!

Pam @ The Blue Between said...

Luke got something for christmas that is basically an easy bake oven but it cooks gel bugs! He loved it. Not sure if he will ever use it again after the one day of use... but it was way better than disgusting half cooked cupcakes!

Rita'z R-tistic Ramblez said...

Pam, My cousin had something that made gel bugs when we were kids. They were supposed to be like gum drops, but were really nasty things. It sure was fun to make them, though.

Maggie said...

Rita, Learning how to do the real deal is so much better than using a lightbulb to cook with! There are so many cool cake pans that you can get her for future holidays.

I had that creepy crawler deal when I was a kid. I also had a mini grill that we used to make sausage patties and mini hamburgers on. The silliest I had was a tootsie roll smoosher, you could make different shapes in the molds, kind of like playdough. Fun stuff.