Alexis and the Missing Ingredient (14 page)

“You mean Jeff?” Emma asked. She's a good listener; she always remembers every detail of every story you tell her.

I nodded. “Yeah, I might as well get it over with. But Mia made me feel better. I figure if I don't like him, Mom will break up with him.”

Emma frowned. “Maybe. But didn't you see that movie on the romance network? This girl's mom had a boyfriend, and the girl didn't like him, but the mom married him, anyway, and it turned out he was a secret jewel thief.”

I suddenly felt worried. “I didn't see it, but it was based on a true story, right?”

Alexis interjected. “Katie, your mom is a lot smarter than that woman in the movie. If she thinks he's a nice, good guy, then you'll probably like him too. Besides, it's just one dinner. You can't let too much ride on it.”

“Alexis is right, Katie. That woman in the movie was nothing like your mom,” Emma agreed.

“Katie's mom is so nice,” Mia remarked.

“Definitely,” Emma said. Then her blue eyes
got big. “Oh, I know. At our cupcake meeting on Thursday we should bake cupcakes for the dinner!”

“You mean, like, ‘Hey Jeff, I hope you're not a creep' cupcakes?” I asked.

“More like ‘Nice to meet you' cupcakes,” Emma said, laughing.

“It's a good idea,” Alexis said. “We have a request for strawberry cupcakes for a party in a few weeks. We can test out the recipe.”

“Wait? So now Jeff is a cupcake guinea pig?” I asked. “What happened to ‘nice to meet you'?”

“He won't know the difference,” Alexis pointed out. “Besides, it's the thought that counts.”

“Sounds good,” I said. “Text me the recipe, so I can make sure we have the ingredients.”

I heard my cell phone beep in my backpack ten seconds later. Alexis is superorganized. That night Mom and I went shopping for the ingredients, and on Thursday we were ready for our cupcake meeting.

The Cupcake Club meets every Friday during school lunch, but we have to meet at other times too because business has been pretty good since we started. Alexis handles most of the business stuff, because she's best at it. She keeps track of how much money we earn and spend and keeps a
record of our supplies and other expenses. She also makes sure our clients pay us, which is important.

Some meetings, all we do is business stuff, which is boring but important. At other meetings, we bake cupcakes for our clients or test out new cupcake recipes. It's important to try new flavors, because if you don't test them, then you won't know if they're good or not until it's too late, and all it takes is one bad batch of cupcakes for a client to ruin our business. That's why it was a good idea for us to make a batch of the strawberry cupcakes that day. And yeah, they have a mix for that, but we make our cupcakes from scratch. “From scratch” means we make everything fresh, from the beginning. That's why they're so good!

Alexis, Emma, and Mia all got to my house at five. My mom had started a batch of veggie chili in the Crock-Pot that morning, so we could all eat dinner after our meeting. We got started baking right away. My friends and I have gotten pretty good at baking together. Usually two of us work on the batter while the other two do the icing. Alexis knew the strawberry cake recipe by heart from studying it, so she and I did the batter together.

“It's not easy to get cake to taste like strawberry without using artificial flavor,” Alexis remarked.
“But I think the jam in this batter is going to be nice.”

“And using homemade strawberry syrup to flavor the icing will really taste good,” I added.

Mia was stirring the mix of strawberries, water, and sugar on top of the stove while my mom looked on.

“It smells awesome,” Mia reported.

The strawberry syrup cooled while we baked the cupcakes in the oven. Then Mia and Emma mixed the syrup in the blender with butter and powdered sugar to make the frosting. When the cupcakes were done, we had to wait for them to cool before we iced them, so Mom spooned us bowls of veggie chili. Mia and I put sliced jalapeños on top of ours, because we like things spicy. After the chili, we iced the cupcakes.

“They look so pretty,” Emma said admiringly.

“The client wants pink flowers on top, but you can work on that, right, Mia?” Alexis asked.

Mia nodded. “No problem.” She designs most of our cupcake decorations.

“These look great, but they're kind of boring for ‘nice to meet you' cupcakes,” I said.

Mom's face perked up. “Oh? Who are these for?”

“We thought we could use some for our dinner
with Jeff,” I said, and Mom looked like she might burst with happiness.

“Oh, that's so sweet of all of you,” she said, beaming. “Thank you! He will love them.”

“I hope he likes pink,” Alexis said.

“If he doesn't like pink, then he's just not a good boyfriend,” I announced, which made no sense at all if you think about it. But Mom didn't look worried. “Anyway, I still think they look boring.”

Then I remembered the sleepover with Mia and had an idea. I ran into the kitchen closet and came out with a container of rainbow sprinkles.

“These make everything better,” I said with a grin, and I grabbed a spoon and started sprinkling the cupcakes.

Alexis shook her head. “You are rainbow crazy.”

“Sprinkles are great,” Mia said. “They cover up any mess you make with the icing.”

“And they're pretty besides!” I added.

When we were done, we had a plate of very cheerful cupcakes. We stood back and admired our work.

“If Jeff doesn't like these, then he has no soul!” I said.

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“Boy did I mess up this time,” Alexis said. Right away the rest of the Cupcake Club turned to look at her. “Oh great, and we're already late—this is really going to throw us off schedule.”

“Why, did we do something wrong?” Emma asked.

“No, it's not you,” Alexis said with a sigh. “See this shopping list? Useless! Give me your phone.”

As Emma passed Alexis her phone, Mia and Katie wondered what was wrong.

“Really, Alexis, it can't be that bad, can it?” Katie asked. Alexis didn't answer.

“Now what?” Mia wondered aloud as Alexis shouted into the phone.

“Dylan, you left the most important ingredients off our shopping list for our famous brown sugar and bacon cupcakes, and now we have to go back to the store.
Bye!”
Alexis took a deep breath and handed the phone back to Emma. “Can't have a boy-crazy girl write out your shopping list,” she said. “Oh well. Next time I'll know better, but right now we have to get back to the store—and fast!”

What ingredients did Dylan leave off the shopping list?

Circle the first letter of each sentence, and write it below on the lines. (If you don't want to write in your book, make a copy of this page.)

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