Bake Cake, Remake

(This story was submitted to A Write Laugh, under 5-13 category, with word limit of 500. The intent of the competition was to unearth funny stories.)

Bake Cake, Remake

Dora’s mother’s birthday was soon coming and Dora and her dad wanted to surprise her mother with a yummy chocolate cake. Dora and her father watched the instructions on YouTube and bought all the ingredients from the shop - flour, baking soda, baking powder, chocolate powder, milk, eggs, sugar, salt, butter etc. Dora learnt that you need fine grain sugar to add to a cake. You can’t use normal table sugar. The fine grain sugar looks very white and powdery. 

Dora and her dad arranged all the ingredients on the table top and started making the cake. Dora switched on the oven, while her dad added the ingredients one by one into a bowl - eggs, milk, flour, butter. Then Dora’s dad asked her to add 1 bowl of sugar and 1 spoon of salt, while he readied the pan.

When the dough was ready, Dora added it to the pan and they put it into the oven. When the cake came out, it looked nice and fluffy and Dora’s dad took out a thin slice from the corner so that they could taste it and make sure it was tasty. When Dora’s dad tasted it, it didn’t taste well. Then he took another slice and gave it to Dora to see if she tasted it the same. Dora tasted it and immediately spat it out and yelled “Yuck”!!

It tasted all salty!! It turns out that since both the salt and the baking sugar looked the same, Dora added 1 bowl of salt and 1 spoon of sugar instead of the opposite!!

Dora and dad set about making a second cake. This time, Dora’s dad wanted to be in charge of adding the ingredients for the cake. He told Dora to just add milk, egg and flour and he promised to take care of the rest. 

So Dora added 4 eggs, as the instruction said, then one bowl of flour and then she needed to add one cup of milk. She took out her father’s beer mug to measure one cup and added it to the flour. After the ingredients were mixed and put into the pan and baked. When the cake came out, it wasn’t fluffy or spongy. It came out like a pancake. When Dora’s dad asked how much milk she added - Dora pointed to the beer mug. It turns out that a beer mug is too much milk - about twice a cup that was needed. Both Dora and her dad had a big laugh about this.

They enjoyed the chocolate pancake with their cup of tea, and then set about to make a third cake, which they hoped would come out nicely. This time, Dora’s dad supervised all the steps that Dora took to ensure there were no silly mistakes. 

This time the cake came out nicely. Later in the day they wished Dora’s Mom a very birthday with a tasty, good-looking chocolate cake. 

Trouble With Animals

 (This story was submitted to A Write Laugh, under 5-13 category, with word limit of 500. The intent of the competition was to unearth funny stories.)

Trouble With Animals

It was a glorious summer morning and Clara wanted to enjoy the day as soon as she woke up. She wore her favourite turquoise summer dress with white polka dots. Clara was hoping to spend her day in the garden enjoying a mango ice cream and watching her favourite movie on Netflix.

While she was eating breakfast, Kitty, the neighbour’s cat purred and meowed. Clara’s mum started complaining about the cat. In her mind, cats were as dangerous as tigers and they should only be allowed in Jungles and Zoos.

While playing in the terrace with her dolls, Clara’s mum reminded her to keep the door closed just in case Kitty got curious. Clara heard her mum, looked up from her toys and realised it was already too late. The door was open!

Clara saw Kitty cat-walking through her living room. She was hoping to get Kitty out of the house before her mum could see her. Before she could do so, Kitty had jumped on to the sofa. By this time, Clara’s mum came and screamed “Oh My God!!!” in horror. Listening to this, Kitty got scared and started jumping here and there, knocking off the glass vase and their family painting.  After ransacking the living room, Kitty ran out of the house. Clara could see her Mum’s eyes red with anger!

Clara’s father came to rescue Clara and took her for a walk to the nearby duck pond. Before heading out, Clara’s dad packed a box of duck food to feed the ducks. 

While at the pond, Clara was enjoying feeding the ducks and swans in the pond. She even saw some cute baby swans, called cygnets, come along for the food she was throwing into the water. 

While she was feeding them and enjoying the walk away from her mum’s angry eyes, she heard some geese coming towards them for the food. They were making scary noises like “eee aaw, eee aaw”, which was very startling. Clara took a step back.

The geese got fierce in their attempt to get food and approached them hungrily and noisily. Clara took a few more steps back. Her father shouted “look out!!” to Clara but it was too late. 

Splash!!! She had tripped and fell into the pond. Her father had to pull her up out of the water. Clara’s beautiful turquoise summer dress was all wet and dirty. Even one fish had made it into the pocket of the dress which Clara had to fish out.

Clara learnt that today was not her best day with animals and birds.