When I was about 13, I committed to making something for our Sunday School Bake Sale. I spent hours looking through all of my mom's cookbooks, until I decided on my very favorite of all baked confections, the Bavarian Cream Filled Cream Puff. Now I had helped my mom, grandmother, and my great-grandma cook all my life so I was fully confident that I could make these. I told my mom I was ready to start baking. She set up the mixer and made sure I had plenty of flour, butter, eggs, and sugar. She then headed off to the store with my grandmother. I got to work right away. I measured everything perfectly; sifted when indicated; separated, whipped, mixed, and divided per the recipe. I baked cooled down, split, and filled. When all was done, I had 4 dozen of the best looking and best tasting, if I do say so myself, Creampuffs ever to grace a baking sheet. It was just as I was finishing that my mom came back. I proudly tried showing her the magnificent gastronomical morsels that I had so expertly created. Nevertheless, for some reason she seemed distracted. She failed to notice the exquisitely browned exterior of my puffy creations. She totally ignored the decadent vanilla Bavarian Cream filling. She didn't even pay any attention at all to the artful dusting of confectioner's sugar crowning each luscious treat. Nope, for some reason that still eludes me to this day, she was not at all interested in my culinary masterpieces. Instead, she seemed to be singularly focused on my ever-so-slightly less than perfect cleanliness. Well, that and her bizarre claim that she had no clean pots, pans, or trays left in the kitchen. To this day, she makes up stories about it, claiming (obviously in jest) that she still finds flour in places. Personally, I just think she was jealous because of how well they turned out; but no, she would rather make some ridiculous “disaster area” statement. The oddest part is that, even though my adoring public just raved about those Creampuffs (in fact all 4 dozen sold in less than an hour), she never let me make them again. I never have figured out why…

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