The Icing on the Cake (4 page)

When we finally make it through the door and everyone is finished drooling over Cole, Chef is all, “Welcome, welcome,
mis amigos, mis corazones
.” As we reach the long steel tables, he actually winks at us, which is cute, but kind of weird. Frankie and her mom aren't here yet, but I'm sure she and Lillian would say he's winking at my mom. Ick.

Chef's mother, Angelica, rushes over in a jangle of silver bangles to hug us all and kiss us with her red-lipsticked smile. In a snap she sweeps Cole out of the stroller and into her arms, just like she did last fall,
when I was sure my brother was going to ruin an entire session of cooking classes before they'd even begun.

“Mijo, mijo lindo,”
she sings as he dissolves into giggles. Angelica dances Cole off to their special corner, where she already has a bunch of stuff laid out for them to play with.

“Hi,” I say as they spin away into their own happy world. “Nice to see you, too.”

Errol and Henry, the two old college friends who are probably now in their fifties (older than our parents, that much I can tell) and planning to open a restaurant together, are already sitting at one of the tables. Except, wait a minute, someone else is sitting with them too—a cute boy with blondish skateboarder hair and dark gray eyes. Not really my type, but definitely noticeable. I try to get a better look at him without flat-out staring, while Errol wraps Mom and me in big warm hugs.

“Hey, gorgeous girls,” Errol says. “Aren't you both a sight for sore eyes!” He's from the south like
my mom and has one of those smiles that people describe as “infectious.” I mean, it always makes
me
feel better, I know that.

He points to the cute skater kid. “I want you all to meet my nephew, Tristan Holland.”

“Hey,” Tristan says, with a sort of half wave. Not a chatty guy, I'm guessing.

While Henry asks Chef all about the new kitchen design, Errol tells Mom and me that he was inspired by our mother-daughter togetherness last session. He thought taking a cooking class would be a great way to spend some time with his nephew, now that he's in ninth grade and not so big on field trips to the zoo. It doesn't look to me like Tristan is so into this idea either—it actually looks like he'd rather be anywhere else—but Errol is so pumped about it that I hope it works.

I feel a tap on my shoulder and manage to tear myself away from staring at Tristan long enough to turn around.

“Hi, Liza,” Lillian says, smiling like a jack-o'-lantern. “Fancy meeting you here.”

Lillian and I hug like we haven't seen each other in months, even though it's actually been less than twenty-four hours. Over her shoulder I see Dr. Wong, who's busy inspecting the appliances in that very serious, scientific way of hers. One of the cake mixers gets a nod—she must be impressed.

Lillian and I are still hugging when the studio door slams open and everyone spins around to see who it is. In their typical Caputo family frenzy, Frankie and her mom rush in, late to class as usual. Despite the fact that there's an incredibly cute boy just a few feet away, Lillian and I grab each other's hands and jump up and down like total goofballs—we're all here! Oh well, he's bound to see us act like dorks eventually. Frankie waves excitedly at us, and then her eyes go wide like an anime cartoon, and I can tell they've landed on Tristan. Frankie has some special radar that's super sensitive to any hot boys in
the area. Uh-oh. All the way from across the room, I can hear the gears cranking in her head.

Frankie's mom, Theresa, hugs mine, and—to my surprise—the very proper, a little bit scary, Dr. Wong. I guess everyone is excited to be here.

Chef Antonio claps his hands. “Okay, good people! We are all back together again,
mis amigos
, so let's get cooking! We shall roll up our sleeves and dust the hands and make some tasty pastries!” Sometimes Chef really reminds me of a thinner Cuban Santa Claus, he's that jolly.

When Chef gets started, it's hard not to get caught up in his mood. Today we're tackling cookies, he says, since no one can resist a cookie. Apparently, on the food history time line, crackers came before cookies, and some kind of crackerlike item has been around forever. Basically, they're just flour and water made into a paste with salt or spices to preserve them. When you break it down like that, it doesn't sound so yummy to me, but
I guess that's all a Saltine is, and there's nothing better when you're sick.

Chef tells us how crackers used to be baked twice to keep them firm, which is where the French word
biscuit
, or “twice cooked,” came from. Eventually people started adding sugar, spices, and fruit to make the sweet biscuits we call cookies today. So where did we get the word “cookie,” you might ask yourself. Good question! And, of course, Chef has an answer: The Dutch called them
koekje
when they came to this country, and since Americans were pretty anti-everything-British for a while, they decided to use the Dutch word, which morphed into “cookie.”

“So, everybody, step up to the tables and let's bake some cookies!” Chef Antonio hollers after our history lesson.

Frankie gives me a look like, “Here we go again,” as she and her disaster-in-the-kitchen mom take their places at one of the long work tables covered with little bowls of flour, sugar, and other ingredients.
Lillian and Dr. Wong stay with Errol and his nephew at one table, so Henry joins the smiling, snuggling Newlyweds. That leaves Mom and me together, until Chef appears. So he's helping us, I guess? I can think of other people who need it more . . .

Chef tells us all to start with the softened butter, which needs to be creamed, first by itself and then with the sugar. We crack the eggs—I hear Theresa, Frankie's mom, shriek when an egg rolls out of her hand and off the table with a splat. “Here we go again” is right. I don't even need to look at Frankie—I can feel her embarrassment all the way over here.

We sift flour, baking soda, and salt and mix it all up. The first thing we're making is some dough that needs to chill in the fridge before we can shape it. As we follow the recipes propped up on clear plastic clipboards, Chef brings some tables melted chocolate to fold into the dough. Some of us will be making chocolate logs, while the others will make vanilla ones. Luckily, Mom and I are at a chocolate table.
Later, when we slice our logs into cookies that are round and flat, we get to put all sorts of toppings on them. So that explains all the little bowls of nuts, dried fruit, and candies. Yum.

We shape the dough with our hands and then roll it into a log. It's fun to do and I think I'm doing a pretty good job with mine, while Mom and Chef bond over the fact that growing up, both of their mothers called refrigerators “ice boxes” (I'm guessing Angelica's version was in Spanish—I know “ice” is
hielo
, but I don't think I've ever learned the word for “box”—I make a mental note to ask Javier, if he ever shows up). We all carry our rolls over to chill for a few minutes in the freezer, and I notice both Lillian and Frankie (maybe Tristan too, but it's hard to tell) giggling at the chocolate logs on our tray. Are they less impressive than I thought? I take another look and realize that the little brown rolls do sort of look like rows of, well . . . there's no other way to say it,
turds
. I laugh along because it is kind of funny in
a gross way, but part of me wishes I'd never made the connection between my edible creations and well, you know what. Whatever. I'm sure they'll taste better than that. And anyway, Frankie's mom's rolls look more like lumpy snakes that are busy digesting a bunch of rats than a soon-to-be tray of cookies, so we all end up laughing at them, too.

Frankie, Lillian, and I are still cracking up when Javier strolls in through a door in the back of the studio, where Chef Antonio has his office. He looks around like he's just landed in the Emerald City. “Whoa, I forgot this was starting up again today,” he says, making a big show of surprise and running his hand through his dark, shiny curls. Hardly. He totally knew we were coming—we've been texting him about it all week. I guess he thinks pretending he has more important things to do than keep track of our cooking-class schedule makes him seem cool, or mysterious.

Javier turns to Frankie, Lillian, and me. “Hey guys,” he starts to say—and then he notices Tristan.

All of a sudden, it's like when Frankie's pug Rocco smells a cat—or maybe more like another dog. Javi looks Tristan up and down like he's trying to decide if he's someone he wants to be friends with, or avoid.

“Dude,” Javier mutters, tipping his chin up in some weird boy greeting.

“Dude,” Tristan says back. End of discussion.

I roll my eyes at Frankie, who shakes her head in agreement. Boys. Lillian, on the other hand, can't seem to take her eyes off Javier, even though now that his riveting conversation with Tristan is over, he doesn't seem to know what to do with himself. This session of cooking class is definitely getting interesting. . . .

*  *  *

While the rolls are firming up so we can slice them, we make
biscotti
—Italian cookies. More dough ingredients, except that this time, we use olive oil instead of butter. We get to toss any of the goodies from the little bowls on the table into the biscotti—
cranberries, pistachios, almonds, slivered ginger—anything that we want. . . . I like coming up with wacky combinations—chocolate and dried blueberries! cinnamon and candied orange peel!—and mixing them into the dough. Since this dough is a little stickier than the one we made for the logs, we have to dip our hands in water to shape it into rectangles, which feels kind of slimy.

I guess seeing all of our disgusted faces makes Javi want to join, so he dunks his hands into the water on Frankie's table. Since he doesn't have any dough (duh!), he decides to fling the water off his hands instead—in Tristan's direction. Maybe it was on purpose, maybe not, it's hard to say—but Javier is definitely not into the fact that there's some competition for him in the class this time around. Luckily, Errol saves the day.

“Javier,” he says, waving Javi over, “I'd like you to meet my nephew Tristan. He was a little concerned about being the only boy with all of these lovely
young ladies, so I'm sure he'd be really thrilled if you'd stick around.”

Clearly embarrassed, Tristan gives Errol the evil eye, but Errol just smiles and hands him a paper towel to wipe off his still-wet face. Tristan's not really my type (do I even have a type?), but blushing somehow makes him even cuter. Frankie's practically drooling.

I guess what Errol said worked, because Javier—whose surly-puppy face has suddenly morphed into his I'm-the-man look—strolls over to Tristan and holds out his hand, palm up.

“Sorry, man,” he says, nodding his head toward Frankie. “I was aiming for her.”

Frankie half laughs, half snorts at Javi—yeah right, nice try—but he ignores her.

Tristan smiles. “S'okay,” he says, slapping Javi's hand. A high five? Really? Boys don't make any sense.

Chef sends Javi to the sink to wash his hands and claps at the rest of us again. “Now we will make some very special chocolate chip cookies. You can
do this anytime, if you have the leftover Easter bunnies or Valentine's hearts or just want to make bigger chocolate pieces!”

Instead of using regular chocolate chips, we get to cut up these really fancy chocolate bars into different size pieces. I look over at Lillian's table and notice that her mom is actually letting her cut them—but of course she's making sure that every piece is as perfect and even as possible. Mom's and mine look pretty good, although there are chocolate shavings all over. Chef doesn't seem to mind, though—is it my imagination or is he coming by every few minutes to brush off our table?

After we mix our chocolate chunks into yet another bowl of dough, we drop spoonfuls onto baking sheets to go into the huge, gleaming ovens.

“These very special cookies will emerge in a few minutes, so, okay,
mis amigos
, while those are becoming golden brown morsels of deliciousness, how about we slice some logs?”

While most of us cut the logs into little round cookies, Frankie and Lillian get to make icing that will get pressed between some of them as sandwich cookies. At our table Mom and I make a thumbprint on each cookie and then press a nut or an M&M into it for decoration. Meanwhile, we're also working on the biscotti, which we'll bake once, take out, slice into strips, and then put back in the oven so they're hard enough for dunking in coffee or hot chocolate.

Just as the biscotti are going into the oven for the second time, Chef announces that we're going to cram one more recipe in—meringues—even though we're running out of time. He has already prepared bowls of egg whites that he tells us to whip into “stiff peaks” with the giant professional mixers.

“Make mountain tops,
señors y señoritas
, mountain tops! But first, while the egg white is still foamy like the tip of an ocean wave, sprinkle more
dulces
from the little bowls—chocolate, fruit, nuts—-anything is good baked in little meringue.”

Over the noise of the mixers, Chef tells us about all the shapes meringue can take—flowers or cups or nests. My mom starts squealing—seriously—about how we could make these for my birthday party and fill them with ice cream. Ugh. I was having such a good time and totally
not
thinking about the dreaded birthday party—why did she have to bring it up?

Luckily, everybody seems too busy with the last-minute meringues or twice-baking their biscotti or not burning the other cookies to even really notice. Lillian and Frankie are both arguing with their moms—Dr. Wong won't let Lillian “operate heavy machinery” like the mixer, and the Caputos just can't get their egg whites to peak. I'm not big on conflict, but right now I'm glad they're all too preoccupied to join in my mom's birthday party menu planning.