Sugar and Spice.

I’ve got this. How hard can it be, after all? It’s not like having my boss’s instructions to teach this little gremlin how to cook will in any way impact my job. But it really does, right? Sally is too busy to spend hours in the kitchen with her daughter, but she thinks that passing the job off to me, since I am getting paid anyway, will be a good idea. “It’s like working from home,” she told me yesterday. If only. One look at this surly kid makes me think twice. If her eyes could shoot mud on my newly purchased clothes, I’m sure they would. But, I’m getting paid, so this is my job for the day, even if working with a teen is ten times harder than my day job. I’ll start with the basics. “First, you mix all your dry ingredients.”

“What does that mean?” Oh boy. I make a strained effort not to roll my eyes. It’s not so much her question as the manner it’s asked, like I have requested her to conjure goo from Saturn. I show her how to mix together the flour, sugar, baking soda, and measure everything out using my new measuring spoons and cups. They need to be used anyway, but she keeps dropping them as she dips them into the ingredients. After the third mishap, my nerves are nearly shot so I take a spoon from her, passing over a spatula instead. Surely she can’t ruin the batch while mixing.

Amazingly we get all the wet ingredients added with very few egg shell mishaps. I remark to myself that she won’t have egg on her face when this soon-to-be young lady actually presents it for the bake sale. She complains the whole time that she has to make her own cookies, except then she continues talking about how her friends are getting their moms to make it. Not quite a young lady, yet.

“Maybe this is your mom’s way of making sure that you learn something you can do on your own.” She doesn’t react very well to that. Another set of crossed arms. This time accompanied by a frown. For the next step I explain, “Now you--”

“You know why my mom got you to help me?” she interjects, waving her dough-filled spatula in the air. The oven is nearly ready, so we scoop the pieces onto a tray and leave the extra in the bowl.

I shake my head and my arm free of edibles, not knowing if I’m about to yell at this little person or laugh. Either one is possible.

“She says it makes everything more convenient ‘to expand your diversity and teach as well as take orders’.” Her voice imitates her mom on the last part.

“Great.” I ignore her poorly-timed advice. “Put your sprinkles or powdered sugar on the top and pop them in the oven.” I begin to wash the dishes and she luckily doesn’t burn herself. When she claimed that she had baked before, I didn’t believe her. Maybe it has some merit. “Done!” After ten minutes we take blobs out of the oven which don’t look half bad. They do look half-baked, but I like gooey, and she mmm’s her way through, so I even offer her a scoop of raw cookie dough with the admonition not to tell her mother. “You might actually have the makings of a cook,” I admit. The teen grins and talks to me through her cookie, handing one over. This is a lot sweeter than the others we just made. I look down at the tray of Christmas-looking cookies and shrug. Then I take a large bite--

--and run to the fridge for a glass of milk. She didn’t put red sprinkles on the top of those cookies, but cayenne pepper!

“Let’s try dipping it in chocolate, like a Mayan treat.”