Easy-Bake

Yes, maybe one of these *would* help my cooking skills- seriously though, baking is easy. I can do bread (bear steals it), cookies, cake, pie... anything that is yummy and not-on-the-diet. (yes, am back to the diet. Combination of raised insurance, doctor saying it 'wouldn't hurt', and me not liking the way I look in photos much...) anyhoo, with non-bakery foods the manz is still a better cook than I. (as voted by Grendel. When boy smells food, he magically appears from his room... it goes something like this: sniff...sniff...sniff......sniff...sniff. "What's this?" "Whose cooking?" if man says he is, the response is "How soon till dinner?" If I'm cooking, it's "Well.... what *is* it? I mean, what all is *in* it? Is it boy-food?") now, I have been cooking boy/man food when I cook, can't help it that I get 'creative' every now and again.

But still- I remember my ezbake oven- it was yellow, and we would get it out and put it on the counter at Headacher. (on the right side of the counter- I remember the oddest stuff). I loved the little boxes of cake mixes with little boxes of icing... and it was wonderful even though it was really a half-raw cake with wet sugar on top. You can't really bake a cake with a lightbulb very successfully- especially if it is child waiting for the cake to be done and 15 minutes is a lifetime. (I remember eating it with a spoon...) Later I graduated to other cakes, and Pete-the-Greek in Califorina gave me my first cookbook of my own- the Betty Crocker's guide to cakes (or something) after I made my first 'real' cake- a cherry chip from a mix. It was pink and lopsided and a bit odd, but I was hooked. I made cakes, cookies, pies, muffins, cobblers... all manner of things. I got so carried away that I worked in a bakery for awhile (Harris Teeter in Charleston) but mainly did donuts and the decorating part. (I can still make a mean sugar rose!) I made the cakes for my first wedding, Layla's wedding in Boone, and Melissa's wedding at the beach. Don't think I am doing *that* again as I no longer have the giant cake pan, and *this* wedding (whenever it is? mystery of the century!) it would be nice to not have to do that. I want to just have fun, all sorts of fun, at this one- so it may just be banana pudding with slowly sinking figurines for festivity. At least everyone will have their banana quotient for the day....