Cupcake Club

by Sheryl Berk

  Jenna shrugged. “This is so delicious,” she said, her mouth full of a Belgian bar. “You have to try this!” She held out the wrapper to Kylie, who took a tiny piece. The chocolate was so creamy, so delicate that it melted the minute it touched her lips.

  “Wow, that is amazing,” Kylie said. “So much for leftovers. I want another piece!”

  Thanks to Jenna’s experimenting (they baked five dozen batches before choosing the silky Belgian chocolate) and Lexi’s exacting artwork (she was positive North America was pointier), it was just past midnight when Kylie gave the last cupcake a brushing of luster dust. They had been working for nine hours straight!

  “There,” she sighed. “That makes 250 cupcakes—not counting the three that Jenna ate, the one Kylie dropped…”

  “And the one I ran over with my skateboard,” said Sadie.

  Kylie’s parents poked their heads into the kitchen. “Girls, do you have any idea what time it is? And there’s school tomorrow!” said her mom.

  “We just have to box these up, Mom,” Kylie said. “And, Dad, I need you to drive me over to Greenwich tomorrow before eight to deliver them.”

  “I wasn’t aware that delivery man was part of my job description,” her father teased. “But I will gladly help out. I had a paper route when I was a kid. Used to get up at the crack of dawn—”

  “Thanks.” Kylie cut him off before he launched into a long story about his childhood days in Buffalo, New York. She knew the story by heart: the freezing cold winters, biking uphill in three feet of snow, the blinding blizzards. Yet he always delivered the Sunday News, no matter the storm conditions. She hoped he would spare her friends the icy details.

  “Did I ever tell you about the time it was 10 below?” he began. Kylie rolled her eyes. “Another time, Dad, please. We’re exhausted. I think this cupcake order was more than we all bargained for.”

  “I am so tired,” said Lexi. “I can’t even feel my fingers anymore from rolling out all that fondant.”

  “Hey, I’m the one who cracked sixty eggs,” said Sadie.

  “Jenna dipped all those cupcakes in chocolate ganache, and you don’t hear her moaning and groaning.”

  “That’s because she’s snoring,” giggled Sadie. “She fell asleep!” She gave Jenna a sharp elbow to the ribs. “Wake up, sleepyhead. We’ve got 250 cupcakes to box!”

  Jenna groaned. Her face, covered in flour, was flat on the kitchen table, and she was drooling. “Five more minutes, Mommy. Please, let me sleep five more minutes!”

  Kylie opened a bottle of vanilla extract and waved it under Jenna’s nose. Her eyes flew open at the sweet aroma. “What did I miss?” she asked, yawning. “Are we finished? Are we late?”

  “We’re perfect,” Kylie answered. “We just have to pack up and clean the kitchen before my mom freaks out any more than she already has.”

  It took them another hour to pack all the cupcakes and another to wash all the dishes and bowls and wipe down the kitchen. At 2 a.m. they all passed out on the floor of the living room without even bothering to change into their pj’s or roll out their sleeping bags.

  When Kylie woke up, the sun was peeking through the curtains and Jenna was snoring in her ear. She rubbed her eyes and felt something sticky on her cheek—it was chocolate ganache. She looked down at her clothes and saw she was still in her apron, and her jeans were covered in splotches of chocolate and batter. “Ugh,” she moaned. “What a mess!” Then she glanced over at the clock resting on the mantel.

  “7:10!” Kylie jumped to her feet and shook Sadie. “Wake up! Wake up!” she screamed. “We overslept! We have to get the cupcakes to Greenwich now!”

  All the girls stumbled to their feet.

  “You’re kidding me!” Jenna gasped. “How did this happen?”

  “I guess we were so exhausted,” Lexi said, “that we forgot to set an alarm.”

  “Take it easy, girls,” Kylie’s dad said. He was already dressed in his suit and tie, and dangling his car keys in his hand. “I’m ready to go when you are.”

  “Now!” shrieked Kylie. “We have to go now or we’ll never make it on time.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want to change first?” her dad chuckled.

  “No time!” Kylie said, pushing him toward the door. With all the boxes, the car had only enough room for her and her dad in the front seats.

  “Break a leg…or an egg…or something,” said Jenna, as she waved them off. “I’m not sure how you say good luck for a cupcake delivery!”

  • • •

  On the way to the Golden Spoon in Greenwich, Kylie was convinced her father hit every bump in the road, jostling the cupcake boxes stacked on the backseat and in the trunk of their small Corolla.

  “Dad, please take it easy,” she said, nibbling her nails. “You’re killing the cupcakes!”

  “If I go any slower, we’ll never get there by eight,” her father replied. “Your choice.”

  “Okay, go. Just be gentle.”

  When they arrived, Mr. Ludwig looked as nervous as Kylie. He was pacing the aisles of his gourmet shop, right between the shelves of coffee beans and the boxes of tea biscuits.

  “Do you see the time? It is 8:05,” he informed them. “My customers come on their way to work. I said I needed these cupcakes by eight.”

  “Does five minutes really make a difference?” Kylie’s dad asked.

  “In the bakery business, five minutes makes a great deal of difference,” Mr. Ludwig replied. “Would you leave your cupcakes in the oven five minutes longer?”

  “No, you’re right. I’m so sorry,” said Kylie. “We were trying to drive slowly so we didn’t mush the cupcakes.”

  Mr. Ludwig grimaced. “Let me see! Let me see!” he said, grabbing a box from Kylie. When he opened it, one of the cupcakes was dented, its Earth decoration stuck to the inside of the lid.

  “This one is unacceptable!” he said, mopping his brow.

  “It’s just one cupcake—and we made ten extras,” Kylie said quickly. “Just in case.” Mr. Ludwig opened each box to inspect them. Thankfully, the rest were just fine. His face lit up.

  “I am very, very pleased,” he told Kylie. “These will be my weekly ‘In the Spotlight’ gourmet special. I’m sure they’ll sell very well, and I will be reordering for next Monday.” He handed Kylie a check.

  “Next Monday? You mean you want us to do this again?” Kylie couldn’t believe it. “I can’t! We can’t!”

  Mr. Ludwig ushered her and her father out the door. “Lovely, thank you for coming,” he said, ignoring Kylie’s hysteria. “I’ll be ringing you soon.”

  Kylie was in shock all the way back to New Fairfield.

  “Well, you wanted to have a successful baking club, and now you do,” her dad said, trying to soothe her. “It’s great, honey. You should be happy.”

  Kylie shook her head. “I’m exhausted. I’m sticky. I’m not happy.”

  “You and the girls are just going to have to figure out a way to make this cupcake thing work for you…or hang up your aprons,” her dad said.

  Kylie thought about how Juliette had once called her a quitter—when she said she couldn’t find any members for the club. Now she had a club, a great one. How could she give it up when things were just starting to take off?

  When Kylie got to school, she thought everyone was looking at her funny in the halls. Her hair was a tangled mess, her clothes were covered in stains, and she was sure she smelled like a combination of vanilla and hours-old milk. She truly looked—and felt—like she’d been through a war. How could she possibly do this all over again and be a normal fourth grader?

  She was in the bathroom, trying to clean herself up, when Meredith breezed in with Emily.

  “Eww…if it isn’t the Creature from the Black Lagoon,” she giggled. “Or
is the Swamp Thing? I can’t tell.”

  Kylie thought of what Jenna would do in this situation. She ignored Meredith and continued scrubbing the chocolate off her face and hands.

  “What happened to you?” Emily asked.

  “I was up all night baking cupcakes for an order,” Kylie replied.

  “Really?” Emily seemed impressed. “Like you have your own cupcake business?”

  Kylie dug into her backpack and pulled out one of the business cards Lexi had made on her computer.

  “Cool!” said Emily. “Peace, Love, and Cupcakes.”

  “More like Freaks, Barf, and Cupcakes,” Meredith snickered. She grabbed the card out of Emily’s hand and tossed it into the toilet.

  “Don’t forget to flush.” She smiled and walked out.

  Kylie may have doubted herself before, but she knew then that there could be no turning back. She had to make PLC work. She had to prove to Meredith that she wasn’t a freak or a joke. She had to have the last laugh.

  During first period, Lexi passed Kylie a note. “How’d it go?” it read.

  Kylie gave her a thumbs-up and went back to doing her social studies before Ms. Shottlan noticed them.

  Kylie caught up with her club over lunch. “You want the good news or the bad news?” she asked.

  “Good news,” said Jenna.

  “Mr. Ludwig loved our cupcakes,” said Kylie.

  “So what could be the bad news?” asked Lexi. “You said he was happy with them.”

  “Oh, he was happy. The bad news is he said he’d be calling us later this week to place another order of twenty dozen for next Monday.”

  Both girls were silent. “Yeah, that’s what I thought too,” said Kylie. “It’s just too much for us to handle.”

  “That wasn’t what I was thinking at all,” said Lexi. “I was thinking we should make Mr. Ludwig some custom cupcakes just for his shop—maybe with a fondant golden spoon on top. That way the decoration would be one color and take a lot less time.”

  “And now that I know what chocolate we like, we don’t need to bake any samples first,” said Jenna. “Kylie, this is totally doable. And it’s a lot of money every week.”

  Just then Sadie raced in. “You wouldn’t believe it if I told you,” she said breathlessly. “A fifth grader just came up to me in the hall and asked if she could hire us to bake cupcakes for her birthday party this weekend. She loved them at the Eco Fair!”

  Kylie pretended to bang her head on the table. This was getting ridiculous. They were not professional bakers—they were just fourth graders with an after-school club! Who were they kidding?

  “Wait, Kylie. Before you say no, let me tell you the theme of the party,” begged Sadie. “This girl wants us to make Twilight cupcakes.”

  Kylie’s ears perked up. “You mean vampire and werewolf cupcakes?”

  “Just think, Kylie, we could fill them with raspberry puree that squirts out like blood when you take a bite,” Jenna suggested.

  “And I could make fondant fangs and bats,” added Lexi. “Really authentic-looking ones.”

  Kylie mulled it over. Monster cupcakes were impossible for her to turn down. “You guys come over Friday night, and we can watch a double feature of New Moon and Eclipse for inspiration,” she said. “Maybe try splattering some raspberry puree to see if it looks bloody enough?”

  “And what if Mr. Ludwig wants to reorder?” asked Lexi.

  “Then we’re going to have to charge him 25 cents more a cupcake for Lexi’s original golden-spoon design,” Kylie said. She was surprised at how much the girls’ confidence had lifted her mood. Even though she could barely keep her eyes open, she was actually getting excited to start baking again. Especially the oozing blood cupcakes.

  “Oh, and one more thing…” Sadie hesitated. “The girl kind of wants one hundred cupcakes for her party on Sunday.”

  Lexi gasped, but Kylie reassured her. “Piece of cake,” she said with a wink. “We can do it with our eyes closed.”

  Which was a good thing…because she really, truly needed a nap!

  • • •

  After two months of catering cupcakes for birthday parties and the Golden Spoon, PLC had found its groove. Of course, there had been mistakes along the way. Like the time Ms. Fine asked them to make zucchini cupcakes for her dinner party using zucchinis from her garden. They accidentally confused the zucchini with cucumbers (they’re both green, after all!) and the cupcakes tasted awful (“Like my mom’s face mask!” Jenna said, gagging)—even with mounds of cream-cheese frosting on top. Luckily, they convinced Ms. Fine that carrot cupcakes would be just as yummy—and Sadie’s mom had a bunch in their fridge.

  Then there was the zoo birthday party for a five-year-old boy who wanted cupcakes that his favorite animal, an elephant, would eat. Kylie did some research: elephants are herbivores and eat cabbage, lettuce, apples, and bananas. So they combined everything into one batter. Kylie looked inside the mixing bowl. The batter was gray, the color of an elephant.

  “Eww,” said Lexi. “That does not look good.”

  Jenna stuck one finger in the batter and took a lick. “It tastes even worse than it looks.” After five batches of trial and error, they decided on an apple-cinnamon cupcake with banana buttercream frosting. Lexi sculpted cabbage and lettuce leaves out of fondant on top in pretty shades of green.

  Jenna took a bite. “Way better!” she pronounced.

  The club met on Wednesdays to brainstorm ideas and baked on Fridays for weekend deliveries and on Sundays for the Golden Spoon. Both of Sadie’s brothers had even volunteered to help them make the deliveries.

  With every batch, the girls got quicker and better. Now even Jenna could crack an egg without getting any shell in the batter. They saved some of their profits to buy a large commercial mixer that could whip up larger batches and assorted piping tips so Lexi could do more designs. Soon they had perfected ten different flavors of cupcakes—including some really creative ones like Peachy Keen, Sour Patch Kid, and Fudge Mud.

  • • •

  One afternoon Kylie was in the kitchen, her head buried in cookbooks, looking for a great recipe for a Nutcracker-themed holiday party, when her mother walked in.

  “What exactly is a sugarplum?” Kylie asked. “I know they can be fairies and you dream about them at Christmas.”

  “They’re candy,” her mom said.

  “Perfect! Now we just need to get enough for three dozen cupcakes.”

  “Well, while you’re shopping for ingredients, a lady in the supermarket asked me to give you her number. She’s a Blakely parent and she’s having a dinner party. Wants you to bake her dessert. I told her no promises, but I would ask the club president.”

  Kylie nodded, clipping the slip of paper to her PLC notebook. “I’ll call her later to get the order.”

  “Kylie, Dad and I are getting a little concerned. You’re spending an awful lot of time with this club. What about your homework?”

  “I did all my homework,” Kylie replied. Well, almost all. She hadn’t read the chapter in her science textbook or started her report on colonial times that was due the next week. But she’d get to it.

  “The club is great, and we’re really proud of you,” her mom continued. “But we don’t want your schoolwork to suffer because of a hobby.”

  “A hobby?” Kylie cried. “Mom, it’s not a hobby! PLC is really important to me and my friends.”

  “I know it is, but you’re only two years away from middle school.”

  “I practice math all the time when I figure out how much money we have in our budget, or how many minutes we’ll need to bake ten dozen cupcakes. And last week I had to research all the planets and constellations for a planetarium birthday party. I’m learning so much, Mom!” Kylie pleaded.

  “Okay, yo
u made your point—I know who to call if I want to find the Big Dipper. Just keep it in mind, okay, Kylie? A cupcake business is a lot of responsibility for a grown-up, much less a kid.”

  Kylie nodded and went back to her recipes. Her mom was right—PLC was growing faster than any of them could have imagined. She tallied up all the orders in her notebook: over the next two months, they would need to bake hundreds and hundreds of cupcakes. Almost every day they got another call or email.

  She called an emergency meeting at her house. “I was looking at our orders, and especially with the holidays coming up, it’s a lot,” Kylie began.

  “How many is a lot?” asked Sadie.

  “Well, to be exact, we have orders for 2,440 cupcakes.”

  Jenna’s mouth fell open. “Seriously? In the next eight weeks you want us to bake 2,440 cupcakes?”

  “Actually, about 2,500—we should throw in a few extras just in case,” Kylie tried to joke.

  “It’s nuts !” cried Jenna. “I have a huge math test coming up and my science project.”

  Lexi nodded. “Kylie, Jenna’s right. We have to turn down some of the orders.”

  Only a short while ago, her friends had convinced her that PLC could do anything. When she wanted to throw in the towel after that first Golden Spoon delivery, they pushed her onward and upward. Now it was time for her to be the leader and cheer them on. Besides, Kylie couldn’t imagine a week without the club baking together.

  Part of the excitement was dreaming up the cupcake recipes and designs, but the other part was racing to meet the deadlines. She felt a thrill every time they completed a tower of cupcakes with beautiful swirls of frosting and decorations. Each was a mini masterpiece that every member of PLC had put her heart and soul into.

  “I know it’s doable if we work together,” Kylie insisted. “Let’s take a vote. All in favor of keeping the current schedule, raise your hand.”

  Jenna, Lexi, and Sadie all sat motionless while Kylie’s hand waved in the air. “Come on, guys. What happened to making lots of money? Being popular? Having the best club at Blakely?”

  “It’s a nice idea, Kylie, but I think we bit off more cupcake than we can chew,” said Sadie. “And you know there’ll be more orders. What then?”