The weather was changing. Frost feathers decorated the windowpanes in the morning, and children started wearing shoes to school, something done with great reluctance. During first recess, Lily watched Beth peel back the wrapper from a chocolate cupcake topped with fluffy white frosting and take a big bite. Lily could practically taste that sweet cupcake.
It had been a long time since Mama had baked cupcakes. Lily thought she’d make a tiny suggestion to Mama as soon as she got home from school. Mama might even tell her to go ahead and make some. Chocolate, of course. Chocolate cupcakes were the very best cupcakes of all. Lily’s mouth watered just thinking about it.
As soon as Lily walked in the house after school, she hurried to find Mama. She looked in the kitchen, then the living room, but there was no sign of her. “Mama?” she called. She heard voices in the basement. She ran down the basement stairs and into Papa’s woodworking shop. Mama was helping Papa steam wood to make curved chair backs. They looked up when they saw Lily.
“Can I bake some cupcakes?” Lily said.
Mama picked up the corner of her apron and wiped her forehead. “I just baked a big batch of chocolate chip cookies today. We should eat those before we bake something else. I don’t want them to get stale.”
Lily had no worries about chocolate chip cookies having a chance to get stale. Mama’s cookies were legendary. She watched Papa and Mama work for a little while, wondering how to get Mama to change her mind.
“Could I make just one cupcake?” she asked.
Mama looked at her in surprise. “That might be hard to do.”
“Let her try, Rachel,” Papa said. “It would help her with long division.”
Mama grinned. Lily complained bitterly about long division. “Okay. Go ahead. One batch of cake batter makes twenty cupcakes. You’ll need to divide everything by twenty.”
Lily ran upstairs and pulled Mama’s blue Amish Cooking cookbook from the cupboard. She paged through it until she found the chocolate cupcake recipe.
She found a paper and pencil and sat down to figure out the measurements she would need to make one cupcake. First, she had to divide twenty into two cups of sugar. Oh no. This was harder than she had thought it would be.
And then there was water. She poured a cup of water into a bowl. She scooped the water out, tablespoon by tablespoon, into another bowl. She found out there were sixteen tablespoons in one cup. That would mean thirty-two tablespoons for two cups. If she divided that by twenty, it meant that she would need one full tablespoon and three-fifths of another one. Lily checked Mama’s measuring spoons, but couldn’t find one that was three-fifths, so she decided the half tablespoon would have to do.
She felt dizzy from all those numbers. All this dividing was harder than long division at school. Maybe she should rethink this. Immediately, the vision of a warm chocolate cupcake bounced in her head. She would keep going.
She measured the sugar and butter into her little bowl and mixed it. It was hardly enough to coat the wooden spoon. Lily looked at the recipe again. One egg. This was a puzzler. How could she divide an egg by twenty? And Mama wouldn’t want her to waste one anyway so she decided this cupcake would have to skip its egg.
When the ingredients were mixed, Lily carefully scraped the little bit of batter into a cupcake liner. It looked lonely in a big muffin pan. She opened the oven door and slid the muffin pan inside and closed the door gently. She set the timer to make sure her little cupcake wouldn’t burn. She had divided everything else by twenty so that must mean she would have to divide the baking time by twenty.
She smiled. That meant she would have to wait for only one minute before her cupcake was ready! When the minute was up, she pulled the cupcake out of the oven. It looked just like it did when she put it in the oven. She slid it back inside and ran to ask Mama how long she would have to bake it.
“It will still have to bake for twenty minutes,” Mama said. “The cooking time wouldn’t change.”
Lily’s cheeks flushed. Of course! She should have known that. Everybody knew that.
She hurried back upstairs to wait until her cupcake had finished baking. When the twenty minutes were over, she found several pot holders and carefully removed the cupcake to set it on the counter to cool. It didn’t look as big and fluffy as she had hoped, but surely it would still taste good.
In the refrigerator, Lily found a bowl of leftover frosting. As soon as the cupcake had cooled, she spread the frosting on top of her cupcake. Finally, she took a bite.
Yuck!
It was awful! It didn’t taste like any cupcake she had ever had. It was bitter and very rubbery.
She took it down to the shop to show it to Papa and Mama. “It doesn’t taste good.”
“Let me try it,” Papa said. He took a bite and coughed.
“It’s terrible, isn’t it?” Lily said sadly.
“It tastes like an old shoe.” Papa handed the cupcake to Mama but she shook her head.
“Did you ever taste a shoe?” Lily said. She tried to imagine him chewing on a shoe, but the thought was so funny that she started to giggle.
“No, I never did,” he said. “But with all my brothers, I have smelled a few.”
“At least you had fun trying to make a cupcake,” Mama said. “Next week we can make a big batch.”
That sounded like a good plan to Lily. “Chocolate?”
“Yes,” Mama said. “And now you need to go clean up the kitchen.”
Lily cringed. The sink was filled with dirty dishes. Making one cupcake used just as many dishes as if she had made twenty.