Did I tell you about the time when my teddy friends and I decided to cook a cake to take the Annual Teddy Bear's Picnic? I didn't? Okay, well grab a cushion for your back, make sure that you are in a comfy seat and  I will tell you all about my baking adventure.

Hmm… well I have to admit it really was a baking "disaster"! It all started when my teddy friends and I all received our gold edged invitations to the Annual Teddy Bear's Picnic, which is held yearly. I suppose if it is called annual it would be held each year wouldn't it? But anyway, back to what I was talking about.  On the bottom of this invitation… I do have to stop here and just describe the invitation. I just thought that you may like to imagine it. It has lots and lots of us teddies of all shapes and sizes sitting around on picnic rugs and big checked red tablecloths line the ground and there are pictures of balloons and streamers and picnic baskets and mini music boom boxes and everything! And the invitation always comes in a bright red envelope and Percy the teddy bear Postie has the honour of personally handing it to each one of us! It is just so exciting to have such an invitation in your hand and to carefully split the end and open it up and read it and...and…and know that soon we will meet up with all our friends!! And it always seems to be so sunny on the day of the picnic! (Oh, I am so sorry. My teddy mind was a little bit forgetful. I forgot about the time when for the whole day of the picnic it rained and rained and the wind blew and blew and Barbara bear's bright colourful umbrella turned completely inside out, and Timothy teddy got poked in the eye by one of the spokes on Barbara's umbrella, and dear little Trixie teddy who is such a tiny bear and does not have a lot of weight was carrying her little pink umbrella and the wind completely uplifted her of the ground and she landed right into the bushes!! There was a collective big teddy gasp inhale of breath when that happened and we all rushed to the bushes to see if she was okay, but poor little Trixie emerged from the bushes a bit scratched, bruised and shaken, but apart from that there were no broken paws.  Of course Timothy needed to see Owen the Optician bear to have his teddy bear eye checked out because it really isn't nice to have an umbrella spoke pushed into your eye. But he was cleared of any major damage. (Hmm... I have a few teddy bear friends that have lost their eyes from over exuberant playing by their friendly owners though!)

Anyway at the bottom of the invitation this time, was the request to bring a cake. It could be a fruit cake or a chocolate cake or a lamington cake, a sponge cake or lots of little cup cakes. All the cakes would be put on a huge long table and everyone could then have a slice of any one which they would like to taste. My friends and I didn't want to "let the side down" and not bring a cake so we decided to turn our cupcake recipe into a big cake…and use other secret ingredients that I just can't wait to tell you about. ( But you will have to wait a little longer because I have  more to tell you before we  get to that stage of the story!!) 

 We needed of course to rent an oven with a gas top to cook our cake in, and melt the butter on the top. We whipped out our handy bear mobile phone and gave "Ricky's Rentals" the number one rated teddy bear rental company a phone call. Ricky is such a cheery bear and so very helpful. He was quite apologetic though when he answered the phone. He explained to us that he would be very pleased  to let us rent one of his ovens, but there would be a short delay in being able to get the stove to us because there had a been a slight "hiccup" with the previous renter of it! He then related to me the very sad tale. Apparently Matilda bear, who is married to Matthew bear and has a daughter called Martha (it is always good to know the family history, don't you think! I am always curious about family connections and history, and well, I suppose I could also be considered a little bit nosey!! Yes, I have been called "Nosey Kiosk Ted" often in my lifetime, but always in a nice way!) Anyway, Matilda decided to make a soufflé to take to the picnic, and she put it into the oven…and it started to rise…and rise… and expand and expand…until it completely filled the whole space in the oven and all you could see when you looked into the oven through the front door was a big mess of white gooey soufflé mixture!! Then to top it all off, there was a loud "BANG!" as the front door of the oven burst off and poor little Matilda got such a fright and just didn't know what to do! Matthew and Martha were not at home as they had gone to the local park for little Martha to have a swing and slide so Matilda was all on her own. The only person that she could think to ring was Ricky…although she did feel a slight embarrassed that it happened whilst using his rented oven! But the ever-smiling and obliging Ricky straight away became Matilda's "hero" when he popped his teddy coat jacket on and rushed over to the house to try to help her. Well, they both spent a very long time trying to rid the oven of this gooey and sticky soufflé mixture and Ricky then said that he would take the oven back home and finish cleaning off the stains there. Matilda profusely thanked him, and very quickly gave him a cherry ripe bar to thank him for coming to his rescue. So….that is why it was going to take just a little bit longer for us to get the oven, because Ricky had to finish cleaning it up! (It also sounds as if the teddy bear's picnic may be soufflé less this year!!)

Eventually Ricky was able to deliver the oven to us, and we got to work on making our cake!

Well we knew that the Kiosk wouldn't mind us a using a few of the items from off the shelves and in the fridge because they are a very kind and friendly group of people!

The recipe first called for melting the butter with the milk in a saucepan, and so I grabbed a block of Western Star butter from the Kiosk fridge and "borrowed" a carton of Devondale long life milk off the Kiosk shelf.  Don't tell anyone but…. yes, I know I shouldn't have but I really did need it…. I  snuck into the next door Strathalan café and a saucepan just happened to leap into my hands and didn't want to leave my arms so of course I had to take it with me, and when I got back to the Kiosk I thought to myself : " that was just what I needed for melting the butter and milk!" So of course I went about this duty quickly, cutting up the butter into little pieces to make it melt quicker. I was very, very careful though because a finger- less teddy is also known as a very sore little teddy! Whilst the melting was taking place, my friend Mr. Oliver from Oxford bear measured out the flour and sugar. Well, perhaps I should rephrase that statement again. He didn't exactly "measure" it precisely out , he just brought the packets over and "tipped in" how much he thought was needed of the flour and the sugar!! As he took the flour back from the vicinity of the bowl, he picked a quite inopportune moment though to sneeze (but not in the direction of the cake so don't worry, us teddies do always follow the recommended health and hygiene practices!) and with that enormous sneeze the flour packet exploded and poor little Ally bear was covered in nice white makeup!! She does like wearing lipstick but this white "face powder" of flour did not really suit her complexion!! We then had to quickly help her get to a sink and wash her face .  Hmmm... Yes you can guess what happened! We forgot about the milk/butter combo that was on the stove top and it started to creep to the upper edges of the saucepan and become quite frothy!! I made a big teddy lunge to grab the saucepan and take it off the heat flame, and I just got there in time before it overflowed!! The melted mixture looked okay to me, even though it was a bit frothy, so I made an "executive decision" to just use it in our cake recipe.  I was a bit concerned about how I would scrub the saucepan if I had caused the bottom off it to get burnt, but Oliver reassured me that he would use his elbow paw grease and make it look sparkly clean! So sparkly bright that "you could see your face in it" he promised me! Well, we put the milk/butter mixture in with the flour /sugar combination and gave a big stir. Then came the time to put in the egg from out of the Kiosk fridge.  Have you ever trusted a teddy bear to hold an egg in their hands?  No?  It is a bit difficult because our paws are very furry and we don't have 5 fingers like our other friends who visit the Kiosk to do their shopping have. Very, very carefully I got an egg out of  the fridge , and then Oliver picked that precise moment to tell me a funny joke and I of course gave a little chuckle and  …the next thing I knew the egg had catapulted up into the air and landed with a plop on the top of Oliver's head and there was yellow yolk running down his face!! It was such a funny sight to see!! Even Oliver got the giggles, and ended up calling himself an "egg head"!! I got out another egg, and this time made it safely to the bowl to get it into the mixture. After buttering and lining and flouring the tin, the mixture got poured in, and we put it into the oven.  Hmmm.. who forgot to put on the oven earlier to pre-heat it? Guilty as charged was the loud reply from all of us bears!! We then had to quickly light the gas in the oven, and then the cooking process could begin. Then, an awful thought crept into my mind, I hadn't used a sifter to sieve the flour and sugar! Would it still rise? Only time would tell!! After the 27 and ½ minutes of cooking time had elapsed (us teddies are always exact when cooking you know!)  lots of teddy eyes   including my own decided to have a little peek inside the oven door. Well, the cake had risen okay, but perhaps not as much as usual. But it was quite acceptable for our cake cooking purposes.

     Now, we get to the special secret part of the cake. Perhaps you have been looking forward to the secret ingredients that I briefly mentioned earlier? Well, the suspense is over! I can reveal all about it now! We put the cake onto a board, and right around the edge of the cake we lined the edges with tim tams! And we got the tins of strawberries, blueberries, mixed berries and raspberries that the kiosk sells and after slicing the cake in 2 we put all these berries on one half of the cake and then put the other cake layer on top of it! Then we got some long life cream and poured it over the top of the top cake layer, and on the top of that we put some shavings of kit kat and peppermint crisp choc bars!!

Our Masterpiece cake was finished!! And it did look quite yummy to eat! My teddy friends and I thought that we should also take a box of chocolates to the picnic to share around, just to be friendly you know. But which type of chocolate box to take was the 64 million dollar question! We narrowed the choice down to 2 options: Roses or Cadbury favourites. Hmmm...they were both good choices. Decisions! Decisions! Well, after a few seconds of concerted teddy thinking we agreed on the winner…it was the Roses chocs with Cadbury favourites just a splinter back in 2^nd place! We grabbed a box from off the Kiosk shelf, and we were all set to head off to the Picnic. 

But…then we realised that we had better clean the Kiosk up a bit after our cooking antics!! What if the Mynards happened to come into the Kiosk whilst we were away?!! Heather might open the door and just as her eyes met the sight of our cooking mess and she was about to exclaim: "What has happened?!" she may then go topsy turvy onto the floor if she slid on some flour, sugar  or other ingredients that had not been cleaned up! Then she may have a broken nose or a broken foot or even a sprained ankle, and when she went to the doctor's and he asked her for the reason for her fall, she would have to truthfully answer: "I did not slip on a banana skin. It was a result of slipping on some reminders of Kiosk Ted Strath and friends cooking adventures!' How embarrassing for us!! No, no…we must never let that happen!

Teddy aprons on, brooms in hands/paws, vacuum machine whirring, and cleaning commencing now!!  Well, in a very short time we had the Kiosk very clean again!!

Right, we were now ready to leave for the picnic! We put our cake in a square cardboard box , and carried it carefully out to Oliver's bearmobile car. His bright red bearmobile, with the gold horn that goes "Toot! Toot" and has comfortable cushions and even a radio!  Oliver is always the designated driver. He drives so very well you know! He is very courteous on the roads, never indulges in teddy road rage and has great driving skills. Well perhaps I could rephrase this last comment; he has excellent driving skills when he is actually driving along, but his starting up of the motor engine and taking off, and his bringing the car to a standstill is a little bit …well not as good! But it is okay, because we all know about this, and we all just have our paws "grip" the side of the bearmobile car as we take off, and hold  on tight when we are about to reach our destination. My teddy friends and I all got into the bearmobile , and I decided to sit in the back seat and hold the cake box in my arms on my lap. Oliver started the motor engine…and we were off with a jolt! Hmm…yes, we were definitely off with  a jolt and poor little Melanie bear who was sitting in the front seat very quickly had the whole of our beautiful, prized,  masterpiece cake in the back of her hair!! The cake box had completely jumped out of my hands as we took off, and I just couldn't grab it back in time and the next thing I knew Melanie had a completely stylish new "cake-y" hairstyle! Another jolt occurred when Oliver had to stop the car because of all this commotion that was going on! With this last jolt, the last remaining part of the cake flew in another direction, and a part of it hit Oliver on the nose! We were all chattering and talking and our teddy eyes were wide open at the sight of where our cake had landed! We all got out of the bearmobile, and rushed back to the Kiosk, with me secretly hoping that no Strathalan residents were going for a nice leisurely walk around the Strathalan grounds! They may have got quite a surprise to see this band of highly animated teddies encircling a cake-y Melanie and rushing back to the Kiosk to clean her up!! Yay! We made it back to the Kiosk unbeknownst to anyone else, and after cleaning Melanie and Oliver up, everything was "right with the world" again! Except for the "small" matter that we were now cake-less! It would be soooo embarrassing if we arrived at the picnic empty-handed! Although we know that all of our teddy friends would be so nice to us, and just empathize with our cake mishap. But we still wanted to take something. We had our box of Roses chocolates, but what else could we take? I looked and looked around the shelves…and then made a discovery! Snowballs were the answer! We would make a pyramid of them on a plate (after we arrived at the Picnic though!) and this could be our contribution to the Picnic!! Mr. Oliver and all the other teddies were very happy with that suggestion, and they even patted me on the back!! We grabbed a couple of packets of snowballs., rushed again to the bearmobile, and we were off again to the Picnic! And …you must be getting tired listening to me so I won't tell you about the delightful afternoon we spent at the Teddy Bears Picnic. But please know that it was such a fun, happy, bright time we all had with lots of giggling, balloons and our pyramid of snowballs was place proudly on the checked tablecloth…and they were taken and eaten very quickly by many other teddy friends of us!!

Until next time,

         Happy cake baking and eating!

                        Your friend, Mr. Kiosk-Ted Strath

                       Also simply known as "Ted".!!