I seemed to have energy today!  What a change from earlier in the week!

I cleaned house, planned lessons, paid bills, worked on expenses, baked a cake with Belle, frosted it tonight, mixed dry ingredients for muffins in the morning, filled the bird feeders, bathed the children....and the list goes on, but it is much shorter now.

The cake was an interesting experience.  We will see how it turns out when we feed it to our visitors tomorrow.  It is supposed to be a chocolate cake, and we had to melt unsweetened chocolate and cool it before adding it to the batter.  The melting went fine (unlike my previous chocolate-melting experiences), as did the cooling.  What I didn't do was warm my metal mixing bowl.  Well, the chocolate hit the cold buttermilk and eggs, and the VERY cold bowl, and solidified into clumps, most of which were beat into smithereens by the beaters (at least what didn't solidify into cement on the inside of the bowl).  But the batter didn't look like chocolate cake batter when I poured it into the pan.  Instead it looked like white batter sprinkled with pepper.  It baked to a pretty golden brown color though, and I haven't yet cut into it to see what it looks like on the inside.

My frosting did turn out to a reasonable taste (I licked the spoon) and spreadable consistency.  I hope that isn't the only redeeming factor to the experience.

One can perhaps ascertain from my cooking disasters that I don't bake very much.  I don't.  And when I do, I usually bake pie.

Belle did a good job with her measuring of ingredients and reading the recipe.  It was fun to do it with her too.

Now I can just hope my energy carries over into school next week.