Blame it on watching Mary Poppins one too many times as a child, but I have come to believe the most boring of tasks are simply more fun with more people (throw in a duet with Dick Van Dyke, and you’ve got a riot of hilarity).

Anyway, I had a number of Christmas parties coming up – like I’m sure many of you have – the cookie swaps, the Christmas teas, the office parties, etc.

All of these events required me to bring a baked good of some sort.

And with a rather strict December calendar, I really only had one day to make it all.

Facing off against the idea of making, baking and decorating close to 500 cookies and three cakes, I called in reinforcements.

One sorority sister and a ninth-grader from the youth group later, the three of us tackled the baking head-on with an all-day bake-a-thon last Saturday.

Now, let me tell you, we had some obstacles in our path.

For one, I soon realized that I had never really done any heavy duty baking in my oven before.

As many of you bakers out there assuredly know, knowing your oven’s peculiarities is step one in the baking process.

After we burnt the second cake so badly it would not come out of the bundt pan, we deduced we should set the oven around 25 degrees cooler than the recipe read.

Then, there was the topic of the recipes themselves.

While working through my grandmother’s recipe for meringues, I came to the conclusion that subjectivity has no place in the kitchen.

Who’s to say what constitutes a “dash”?

How does one truly define “firm”?

Golden brown? Brownish-gold? Honey colored?

No, no and no.

I need specifics. I need practical. And in the case of the meringues I just needed my mom to show me how to do them all over again.

Anyway, while it did take some time to get over some of the complex intricacies of the baking process, we ultimately hit our stride and knocked out some heavy duty baking.

Plus, as a bonus, there were two people there to help with the clean-up effort as well, which there is plenty effort needed after eight hours of baking.

Watching them break out the broom and mop, I could not help humming, “Just a spoonful of sugar…”