Baking With Belle

Lexi went to a sleepover at a friend's house last night.  Her friend's big sister came here for a sleepover with Vicki.

And Ellie stayed here, without anyone to have a sleepover with her.

She was absolutely crushed.  Devastated.  Sobbing-pathetically-into-her-pillow heartbroken.

In a fit of desperation I almost called her best friend's mom to arrange something, but reality, in the form of my bedridden hubby, reminded me that the chaos would increase exponentially if I added another 4-year-old to the 4-year-old and two 9-year-olds that were already in the house.

So I promised her we'd bake cookies, which, as everybody knows, is the next best thing to having a sleepover.

Because she's Ellie, she dressed for the occassion: her Belle dress, an apron, and a chef's hat.  She declared herself The Chef.

And me?  I was the sous-chef.  Her words.

As sous-chef, it was my job to read the recipe, because The Chef is illiterate.  I asked what her job was.  Apparently, it's The Chef's job to tell the sous-chef what to do.

She allowed me to cream the butter and sugar while she mixed the dry ingredients.  She mixed them very thoroughly, and all over the kitchen counter.

Also, she cracked an egg.  But she let me crack the second one when the first one "fell out", oops, on the counter (good thing the flour was there to soak it up.)

Also, did you know The Chef has more important jobs than mixing the dry ingredients?

It seems that Official Taster is another way to say The Chef.

We finally got everything mixed together.  Well, everything that wasn't soaking in egg whites on the kitchen counter.  The cookies went into the oven and the bowl went into the sink, at which point The Chef lost all interest in baking and ran off to tell Daddy what she'd been up to.

She was lured back, though, by the mouthwatering aroma of freshly baked, super tasty, (sort of stuck together because it was a new recipe, and also because a good part of the flour was on the counter and not in the cookies) soft and chewy giant cookie goodness.

Mmmmmmm...cookies.

Don't you wish you could bake with Belle, too?