Mess of a cake

I suppose it's my fault. It's time to make a change.

Last night, I went out for an hour alone, to write in my journal. I love my journal time, but I only get it maybe once a month. Anyway, last night we had nothing going and I headed out.

When I got home, my oldest son ran out to the drive way to meet me. I asked him how everything was going.

He answered, "It depends on who you ask."

Uh Oh, do I want to hear this?

"When you bake a cake," he begins, "and you use two boxes of cake mix, and you only put in enough eggs for one box, does it make a big difference in how the cake turns out?"

Yes, it does.

I go into the house. The smell of cake is in the air. Hubby is on the phone with his family and working on my computer at the same time. I peek into the kitchen and my second son has a towel and is mopping up the floor. I assume one of the kids spilled some water. Slowly, I begin to find out what was going on during that hour I was away.

Hubby told the boys they could bake a cake. They've never done this on their own, but they are 11 and 9 years old, smart, and they know how to read. Hubby assumed the boys could follow the directions on the cake box well enough. Well, it seems, they couldn't find a cake pan, so they used the bundt cake pan. The mix only filled up a fourth of the pan, so they decided to add another cake. It seems they forgot to put in the eggs for the second cake. They added green food coloring to the cake, too. Boys... they love to see foods that aren't normally green turn green.

They also spilled the brand new bottle of oil all over the floor, dumping about half of it out. That's what my son was mopping up. Well, they didn't tell us that is what they did. Hubby went into the kitchen to get something and nearly fell when his tennis shoes hit the oily floor.

To make a long story short (too late) we discovered they boys aren't ready to bake on their own yet. I need to invite them into the kitchen more often and supervise. They need to remember to put in all the ingredients, close bottles when they are done using them, time what they bake, and clean up after themselves! There is a big mess in the kitchen this morning thanks to them.

The green mess of a cake was immediately iced by the boys, so the icing melted on the hot cake. everyone tried it. Amazingly, it was edible. It falls into the "ugly but tasty" category.

We'll try it again sometime soon, but this time, Mom's going to be watching their every move.