in the night kitchen

nayou’s latest obsession (or one of them anyway), is to make “mickey cakes”. this was inspired by maurice sendak’s “in the night kitchen” which we used to read a lot. its one of those really cool nonsensical and surreal children’s books where a young boy called mickey goes into a kitchen in his dreams, gets mixed into batter by three giant chefs and put in an oven to be baked into a mickey cake.

about a month ago i was playing with nayou in bed and we decided to pretend to make our own mickey cake. it was an instant hit and we have been building games and stories around it ever since. it usually goes something like this – we pretend we are in a restaurant (typically in the amazon jungle with lots of hungry animals), and announce to the guests that we have a special secret dessert. the animals all howl and demand to know what it is, but we tell them its a secret. then we retire to the kitchen (another corner of the bed) where we mix flour, eggs, sugar, butter, worms, stars, ginger and mickey into a batter and bake a cake. then there is the reveal where we present it to the hungry guests and we have fun finding mickeys arms, legs etc sticking out of the cake as we eat it. the game ends with us flushing mickey down the toilet to wash him off. we are at the point now where we can only whisper the words “mickey cake” in the house because we don’t want anyone to know what we’re making. brenda even bought flour, salt and food colouring to make real mickey cakes!