She didn't need to know the truth

As you know, my older sister is endowed with a variety of abilities, and expertise in her kitchen since before she was even in her teens is certainly one of them. She knew how to kindle a fire in the old coal range and, after awhile, poke her hand quickly in, then out of the oven to "see if it's hot enough," she said, there being no thermometer to verify the temperature. As for me, I stayed clear of the kitchen as much as possible after she told me that since she did the baking it was up to me to wash whatever receptacles she'd had to use while doing it.

After she had finished college and graduate school and had become a social service worker with a job in Charleston, W.Va., I visited her a number of times and eventually met the chemical engineer who was working at Union Carbide in Charleston and was calling on her frequently. I particularly enjoyed going with them in a rented boat down the Kanawha River one summer evening. My sister had put together a picnic supper and cupcakes that would be generously topped with chocolate icing for dessert. When she came home for lunch that day she made the icing, then left it to me to spread it on the cupcakes after she went back to work.

My sister has always had a tendency to put an extra bit of effort into what she does and she didn't spare it where the cupcakes were concerned. She'd made chocolate icing before and this time she figured it would be even tastier if she added a little more chocolate. Unsweetened chocolate, of course, and she generously lathered the cupcakes with it. She could hardly wait to get it all done so she could lick the spoon, which she at least partially did.

It did surprise me that she should say we didn't need to tell the other picnickers who made the cupcakes, because the platter of them was something to behold. But I supposed she was being modest, so I didn't take the suggestion too seriously. I didn't think it would hurt me to brag on her.

With the job all done and my sister on her way back to work I gave in to temptation. I pinched a taste of icing from one of the cup cakes and put it in my mouth with great expectations. UGH! That icing was downright bitter. It was awful. Nobody would be able to eat it and I wasn't about to subject a prospective brother-in-law to it. So I did what had to be done. I scraped those cup cakes clean. Then I got out the cook book and followed a recipe for chocolate icing word for word, and when it was in place those cup cakes looked exactly like they did with my sister's icing on them. When one of the fellows - actually the one who became my brother-in-law - commented on how tasty the frosting was you should have seen the smug expression on my sister's smiling face.

Over the years my sister, living happily with her husband and their six children, reminisced with me about the picnics we had on the banks of the Kanawha River. But not until a few - a very few - years ago did I have the courage to confess to her what I had done about the icing she had so carefully spread on her cupcakes.

I didn't think it was the kind of thing she needed to know during all the decades that have slipped by since then, but she laughs about it now.

Thank goodness.

Louise Bailey is a native of Henderson County and lives in Flat Rock. She is the author of several historical books on the people of Henderson County and writes from a lifelong interest in the history of the area.