Camp Wildheart

Party Crashers

Sophie

Ugh. Just ugh. That was all she had to say about Biana's insistence upon finding her a dress. Her plan was skoveralls (skirt overalls) and whichever t-shirt was cleanest, but of course that 'wasn't glamorous enough' or whatever the excuse was. 

Biana just liked dressing up. At least Sophie could lose herself in party prep and hanging out with her new friends.

The first thing on the agenda was giving the decor a new life, which Sophie was glad to let Keefe take over on. She was okay at art, but Keefe was a genius with paint. 

By Saturday, everything was ready except the food, and Sophie led the most responsible half of the campers into the kitchen, leaving the rowdier half to bring the old-new party supplies to the pavilion's large closet for easy set-up tomorrow.

After making sure everyone had a hairnet and washed their hands, Sophie pulled out a binder full of recipes and handed one page to each person, making sure to match the levels to how much experience she thought they had with food creation.

"Read your recipes first, then pull out the ingredients and wait for the next step. GO!" Sophie hustled over and began pulling stuff out of the pantries. Eggs, butter, chocolate, salt, peanut butter, flour, sugar,  et cetra... was she forgetting anything? Nope, she wasn't. Photographic memory wins again, then.

Sorting her ingredients out by step, she noticed that everyone, even Carter was ready, their ingredients lined up in front of them for the next step. "Read the instructions again, then you can get the necessary tools and start." Following her own advice, she glanced over the paper one more time before sweeping away to get an industrial mixing bowl.

"We're making for a lot of people, so we need to make sure there's enough. There are calculators in the bin," Sophie nodded to the calculations area, then continued, "You should make at least 300 servings of everything, so you will have to do some math." Turning back to her paper with a pencil, she quickly wrote in the numbers, visualizing them in her head carefully so as not to make a mistake.

The next few hours were more of a dance than a chore, swirling around, mixing and drizzling, putting a pinch of this or that in to make the recipe better. Several times, she had to leave her station and fix one person's mixing technique (folding over makes the time lessen, but you have to be careful not to knock all of the air out of the batter), or give them a tip on mixing the cookie dough (use your hands, as long as they're clean!).

Sometime during the session, someone had turned on music, and as the last refrains of some pop song faded away, she slid six round cake pans into the oven and closed it, setting the timer and immediately going to help Magnus, who was eyeing his uncooked pan of cookies trying to figure out what time to put them in for.

After explaining the way to tell if they would be just gooey enough, she went to check on the others in the kitchen, explaining as she went how to tell if a doughnut had enough filling to Carter (butterblasts, and he wasn't even on that step yet, it would come tomorrow so the cream would be fresh), reassured Annabeth that her mallowmelt was NOT uneven, and gently reminded Hazel that ripplefluffs could deal with a bit of knocking around just fine. 

Piper and Rachel were dealing with the more snacky type of stuff, having so much fun making Prattles knockoffs and preparing non-peanut, gluten or dairy items for the campers who needed them.

At the end of the session, they all had been covered with baking ingredients, but they were extremely happy. All that was left was the final prep, which they would complete a few hours before the party, so they were triumphant as they marched out of the dining hall and back to the grove.