Sunday, April 22, 2012

Boiling down to numbers - The shape less monster cookies

They were asking this to me for many weekends now, "Aunty are we having a baking class this weekend? I was giving them a no in various colours and shades, sometimes a soft pink one, some time stern red one.

This weekend J was just non-stoppable, did I tell you before that she has a recurring but polite way of demanding or ignoring things. If I ask her to stop reading her story book and do some maths, it seldom reaches her brain. That too when my voice gets over the top and my blood pressure as well. But when she decided that it is enough time now that we haven't baking anything, and this weekend we need to do it, she cajoles me to her way. I hope her wooing skills will work on fronts other than mommy front as well.

So every one came around by 11.30 am and we started our cookie baking spree. The plan was to bake some shapeless monster cookies. The A club members have grown up now. They brought out the cookery book, read the ingredients, collected them from the kitchen and put them on the table. "Aunty, we are ready," went the chorus for me. I reluctantly told them, "Hey you know it all by now, I am not going to help you, start it on your own." They took the flour, I just checked the weight, and similarly the sugar and butter. They mixed it all. It was not a watery batter but a hard cookie dough, but they still mixed it well. Then there was one egg to add. Reluctant me could sense a drift. So I came on the board and said, today it is my chance to break the egg. I added the yolk and white of one egg that was required by the recipe. Three of them commented, "Aww, we also want to break eggs." The forth one replied," Aunty did it so that we don't fight over one egg silly." I smiled. They are learning to take notes from earlier incidents of baking class. Isn't it the marvel of human brain and how it take hints from previous incidents? Well we ended up making a glue like cookie dough. So that we could get shapeless monster cookies.

We scooped the cookie dough on the baking tray and I put them to the oven. 180 degree celsius, for 15 minutes. Some free time for them,  A club sat together with their glasses of fruit juices, and started discussing about spy gear and stuff, and how Famous Five (Enid Blyton) keeps cracking difficult mysteries, I was listening to them reluctantly while looking at computer screen. I could feel that they are dreaming for the same life as famous five can have. I know this scene, these thoughts,  only difference is that in those dreams and thoughts, I was not reluctant like today but an active participant and my friends were my partners.

The shapeless monster cookies came out well. But the number of cookies were kind of a problem, with their maths skills they were not able to divide it equally among themselves.

And o boy! I thought they have grown up, but life always boils down to numbers right?

How many percentage of marks you got? How many kilos you weigh? What is the figure of your salary? How many projects you finished at work? Did you reach your target set in last quarter? How many kids you have? What percentage of marks your kid gets? and so on and on.

The same thing happened with the A club, after almost an hour of happy time together, the discussion boiled down to how many cookies each of them are going to get after all...

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