Empire building

As you know, Alison has been on a cupcake tear the past few weeks. In a valient effort to save myself from gorging, I convinced her to take most of them to volleyball practice, and I took some to my friends at work.

In the Marketing Department, the reviews were awesome and when I told them Alison had made the treats, Barrett Young asked how old she is.

"You should get her a Pinterest account," he said, licking his fingers. "An 11-year-old cupcake maker? She could be famous!"

I demurred on Alison's behalf because up to now, she's been very private, hates to be the center of attention and had deplored my use of her in the TeamReedBlog more than once.

But on the way home from school Friday, she was reminiscing about her volleyball team's response to their treats, and her friend Amanda's reaction to the cupcakes Ali had squirreled away for her.

"I think I want to make money this summer by having a cupcake stand along the Monon Trail," she said.

I suggested she take my friend, Kelsey Taylor, up on her suggestion to make a cupcake care package for her college-aged daughter. I said I'd post on Facebook that she was taking orders if she wanted.

Then, hyper aware that I've been fronting her for the cost of the made-from-scratch, somewhat gourmet cupcakes, we started talking about how price them.

"Ooh, Mom. A business seems kind of hard," she said.

She fretted about whether she would be plagarizing her cupcake book authors if she profited off their recipes. (6th grade social studies apparently is talking up plagarism.) She worried about taxes, packaging and delivery.

I suggested that she needn't get too carried away because as good and pretty as her cupcakes are, she probably would be doing a dozen here and a dozen there and she might not have an actual cupcake empire right away.

"Well, I don't think it'll be an empire until I'm 12," she said.