Ms Chef in Seattle

Who in my fan club couldn’t guess the first thing I’d do once I’d opened enough moving boxes and partially put away their contents into the new cubbyhole kitchen? There’s a birthday! Someone dear to me is turning 10 years old and she’d asked in passing a couple weeks ago if I’d please make cookies for it. She ran off and I didn’t see her since, but her father phoned a few evenings ago, so I asked him to ask her if she wanted my Sprinkles Jones.* I’d created them especially for her birthday last year in a memorable format so having a special cookie for two birthdays in a row makes sense. (Shoot, it could even be the start of a tradition! Let’s do it again next year.)

“When were you thinking?” he asked.

“Well, her birthday is on the 19th, but that’s the middle of the last-week-of-school week, and I know she’s having a slumber party. I think she wants them for the slumber party, but I don’t know the date, or if she was thinking of Sprinkles Jones.”

“Ah,” he said, “the slumber party is underway.”

Okay, then. In that case, I asked him not to ask her which cookie she wanted, said I’d choose for her and it would be a big tray of the triply-decorated Joneses as a surprise for her actual birthday. He agreed.

Today he recognized my hat while I was out walking to the store to get eggs and birthday candles. He was driving  on errands including to one of those big stores where (mostly) men go to get tools and lumber and construction stuff, so he stopped and said that I should hop in for the ride, catch up on the news and I did.

While the errands were ongoing, I said that I needed the small birthday candles, 10 of them, as part of an inclusive family event that I thought might be fun. Since she’s having Sprinkles Jones instead of a cake, there still must be 10 candles for the birthday girl to extinguish. My suggestion is that each person at the table insert a candle into a cookie, beginning with the little Missy herself, perhaps even ending with herself. I don’t know how many people will be there, but 10 is 10. Since the cookies will be on a big tray, the candle placement could make for multiple memories as well as a great photo after the singing, the lighting, the wishing and the windy moment before the clapping.

That’s my hope. I’m writing the night before. The dough is in the fridge and I will do the baking, frosting and decorating in the morning before it gets 88-90 degrees inside. Seattle is having a little heat wave. Gotta bake early. (And I did. Oven off, heat vented out by 12.)

*https://mschefinseattle.com/2017/06/20/new-sprinkles-jones-with-cotton-candy-hints/