Let’s just cut to the chase -my weakness is a blonde haired, blue eyed girl who has my heart!  Four years ago I became a grandma & it absolutely changed the way I look at almost everything.

       Earlier in the week I invited my daughter, Anderson, to come for dinner.  I hoped to lure her into a visit by promising a pot of chili!  And, I told Elizabeth Rileigh, the grandbaby, that she and I would make cupcakes and decorate them.

One minor problem:  the element in my oven is out and I wasn’t thinking.  Actually, I thought I’d have time to do it this past weekend.  But, I forgot all about it.

       That is until Monday when I called the girls to make sure they were still coming.  When Anderson finished catching me up on her weekend, Rileighbug got on the phone and reminded me, “Betts, we are making cupcakes tomorrow!”

The knot that instantly hit my stomach is indescribable.  If there is one thing I simply cannot stand it is disappointing people -especially children.  If I promise to do something, I’m doing it.

It was, however, too late to get an element.  So I thought back to my early teaching years, and all the times I had my kindergarten and first graders “cook” in class.  The activity would have to be fun, consist of easy steps she could do herself and it needed to be yummy.

       After work, I headed to Dollar General.  It was an easy stop on my way home and I knew they would have everything I needed.  I purchased: two types of Little Debbie snack cakes (a less sweet pumpkin cake that was thin, and a thick vanilla one), a can of cream cheese flavored icing, M&Ms, candy corn and some paper cupcake holders.

The girls were waiting for me when I got home & one of them was really excited about “making cupcakes”.

After dinner, Anderson took all of the snack cakes out of their wrappers while Rileigh arranged her M&Ms and candy corn. I located small and medium sized biscuit cutters and warmed the icing in the microwave to make it easier to spread.

Rileigh then got to work, using the small cookie cutter to press out the smallest bottom layer of the cupcake (the thin pumpkin cake).

She then added a little icing to “glue on” the next layer.  Using the medium biscuit cutter, she cut a circle out of the vanilla snack cake.  Icing went on top and she decorated them with M&Ms and candy corn.

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 I think we actually had more fun constructing these than if we had simply baked the cupcakes!