Scratch Cake

Meet Chef Rachipoo.


As I stated the day I saw her in the chef uniform, "aw, she looks like a real person." Odd feeling, seeing your kid in the role of a person rather than the traditional role of kiddo.

Chef Rachel was ready to bake and lucky for her, there was a birthday on the horizon - Grandma Marilyn's birthday. So Chef Rachel scrounged up a cake recipe on the internet and a frosting recipe too and put on her uniform and got to work. She wasn't going to just bake a cake...she was baking a cake from scratch.

So there I was, snapping photos and squawking at the other kids and I kept hearing her say something about knees and claws. She'd said this at another time, also in the kitchen and also when she was getting ready to bake, so I finally asked her what on earth knees and claws had to do with anything.


"Mees in plaus," she says in her superior way. "It means to get all your ingredients measured out into little bowls so that it's all ready for cooking." Ah, okay, so "knees and claws" is actually "mise en place" (everything in it's place). Something those of us NOT on the culinary tract would know about. Knees and claws indeed.


Good thing I invested in a KitchenAid mixer last year when I won that gift card online to Amazon. Yessiree.

I told Rachel for Christmas I would give her a drawer in the kitchen where she could slowly acquire and store the wares of her trade. You would not believe how excited the girl got over the prospect of her own drawer and her own kitchen things. Sheesh, if I'd know that's what motivates her, I'd have given her a drawer a while back.
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I'd like to think I've gotten a bit comfortable with myself when I can post a picture of me shoving frosting in my face like I'm five. All in the name of making sure the birthday girl doesn't get ill or anything.

Seriously, is the above picture just not the craziest thing you've seen? There's this person in a uniform totally frosting a cake.

And it was fabulous. Moist and light and the frosting was so incredible (as evidenced by that photo of me above).

I don't think my kid Rachel could do this, but this Rachel person sure did.