Ryan's birthday was last week, and I made cupcakes to take to his class. I was quite sick, so I wasn't up to making cupcakes from scratch. I cheated and bought cake mixes. However, I can't stand canned icing, and I'm not a big fan of powdered sugar icing, so I made real buttercream. I made the simple syrup, cooked the egg mixture to 165 degrees, and added 4 sticks of butter, 1 tablespoon at a time. All in all, it took 4 hours to make and decorate 30 cupcakes.
Because the cupcakes were made with real buttercream, I kept them in the fridge overnight. The morning of his birthday, I took the cupcakes out of the fridge to let them come to room temperature while I ran the boys up to my mom's house. When I got back, I discovered that the cats had licked 4 cupcakes completely clean of frosting. I had only 2 extra cupcakes, so I had a dilemma: If I tossed the cat-licked cupcakes, I'd be short 2 frosted cupcakes.
What would you have done? Here are the choices as I saw them:
- Toss the cat-licked cupcakes and go to school 2 cupcakes short, thus depriving 2 of 4 teachers of cupcakes.
- Race out and buy replacement cupcakes (didn't have time or ingredients to make new ones.)
- Carefully wipe off the cat-licked cupcakes and re-frost them, judging that cat licking is pretty harmless.
The answer was quite obvious to me, but I was surprised by the heated debate it caused when I told the story at my dad's house. Suffice it to say that my step-mother may never again eat food cooked at my house, because she was horrified that I would consider serving food the cat had licked. I truly didn't see the harm in it - the cats are pretty clean, they lick my hands all the time, I don't think they're a source of exceptional germs, and I ate one of the cat cupcakes myself. I wasn't serving them to pregnant women, so there was no chance of that cat disease that got me out of cleaning the litter box for 2 years. I was honestly surprised by Liz's revulsion and horror.
What do you think? Should I be soundly condemned for sending re-frosted cupcakes to school? Would you have done it? If I take steps to avoid cat-licking in the future, can I still be trusted to give cupcakes to the school bake sale? Knowing that I did this, would you turn down all invitations to dine at my house?
1 comments: write one!:
I would eat at your house knowing you served food that had been licked by a cat. Gross!
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