A Tasty Surprise

Ruby and Eliza Claire have a book called You Can Do it, Sam that was a favorite a few months ago. It is a darling book about a bear named Sam that bakes cakes with his mom and the delivers them to all of their friends. He takes them to each door all by himself.

I decided to do our own version of this book since I had devised a recipe for Moravian Sugar Cake using the Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day's Brioche bread dough recipe. I wanted to try it out but did not want to have a whole jelly roll pan of sugar cake sitting around my house as I knew what would happen if I did - I would eat way too much sugar cake.

Sunday night I made the dough. Monday morning we got up and I got the dough in the pans. I measured out all the topping ingredients and then put each girl on a stool with her set of ingredients and let her make sugar cake.






First they had to mix the brown sugar and cinnamon together. Then they had to use their index fingers to make indentations in the dough. Then they had to sprinkle on the cinnamon/brown sugar mixture and last but not least they had to drizzle on the butter.

While the cake baked the girls made cards to go on the cakes. They said "A tasty surprise! Love, Ruby and Eliza Claire." When the cakes were done we cut them into squares and wrapped them in wax paper.

Now it was time to deliver them. When we got in the van, a warning light came on. It was not one I was familiar with so I looked it up in the owners manual. The manual told me to turn the van off and restart it (sounds like any electronic troubleshooting device - always start with rebooting, oops tangent - back on subject now). Restarting it made the warning go away so we headed out to deliver our tasty surprises.

Our first delivery was to Grandma and Grandpa and then to one of their neighbors. At each house one girl would "ding, the ding bell" and the other girl would deliver the tasty surprise. Then at the next house they would switch tasks. When we got in the van to go to the next delivery, the car didn't want to start. It took a couple of tries and then started but the warning light was back. Not wanting to completely derail our tasty surprise fun we made three more deliveries and just made a point to leave the van running, knowing that when were finished those we would go to the car dealership in that neighborhood and have the van looked at.

Our friends at our last delivery invited us in. I explained that we couldn't come play for a bit as I couldn't turn the van off. My dear friend was nice enough to offer to watch the girls while I took the van to the dealership. I took her up on it! Michael ended up meeting me at the dealership and waiting for the van. I picked the girls up and we finished our deliveries.

It is funny. I realized Monday morning that we have become a society that never drops in on people. It was kind of daunting to embark on a day where I knew I was going to drop in on eight or nine households, completely unannounced. At each door, the person answering the door looked confused. Grandpa even asked if they had been supposed to watch the girls that morning. Luckily, while everyone was a bit disconcerted to find us unexpectedly at their door they were happy to be receiving a tasty surprise.

It was a fun day. One I hope the girls will remember. One I hope to repeat at least occasionally. Maybe next time we will drop in at your house with a tasty surprise.

Oh, and the sugar cake tasted just like Dewey's , though looking at the picture ours was not that thick and had more topping on it. I think next time I'll do everything but drizzle the butter and let it rise in the fridge overnight before baking...

Jenn

PS There is at least one other book about Sam and his Mama called Where's My Hug?