Baking

As mentioned yesterday, the continuing quartet had their first performance last week.  Normally I would give out Freddo Frogs as a reward, but I'm bored of that.  For my own chamber music concert recently, I baked mini cupcakes and decorated them with appropriate musical things (as well our group name).  For these girls I baked mini cupcakes and decorated them with the clefs and some musical signs.  At the end of rehearsal, I let them choose.

Girls: Oh you baked? Wow they are so cute!  And - aww, they've got a -
Viola: YAY!  You know how to do an alto clef.  I have to have that one.  Thank you!
Cello: Can I have... Can I ... ooh, can I have a G clef please?  Violin 1, you should have the f and violin 2, I think you need to take the p and - oh wow!  These are actually really yummy!
Me: Er - thanks...  You sound really surprised.
Cello: Well.  Yeah.  I mean, you made these.  And they taste good.
Me: Ye-es...  Is that really such a surprise?
Cello: Well, you see... Whenever my mum bakes, it's ... just... terrible.  I keep telling her, you need to use a bigger tin, because it all - well - it just - okay, all the baking soda separates and so it sticks to the bottom and it's just ... ergh... And then no-one wants to eat her cakes, and she's all like "Why don't you eat my cakes?" and I'm all like "Because it doesn't taste good" and then the next time she'll do exactly the same thing and then we go through whole conversation all over again and I'm, just, agh!  MUM!
Me: O...kay...
Cello: Man this icing is good!  How do you make icing, anyway?
Me: Icing sugar and water.  A whole of sugar and very little water.
Cello: Is that it?  Wow.  That sounds so simple.  Ha.  Mum always says "We don't have time for icing" but that is so not true.

Lamington Cupcakes

One of my grade 3 girls is very sweet... But oh boy can she talk!  From the time she steps out of her classroom - and sometimes even before this - she is talking.  I have to actually tell her to stop talking and play when I've asked her (between the flood of words) to do something. 

Today's flood started like this:

Me: Hello!  How are you?
Girl: Good... I practiced this morning!  Oh and on Saturday mum and I did some baking, we made cupcakes but they weren't like normal cupcakes they were like lamingtons because my sister doesn't really like lamingtons unless they're the ones with jam inside...
Me: ooh they are yummy
Girl: Yeah but my sister doesn't really like the normal ones so we made cupcakes that were just normal but they had chocolate topping and then we dipped them in coconut but maybe next time we should do them with jam because jam makes everything better... Except maybe soup.

And this just got us half-way to the lesson.