Free The Cupcake Diaries Collection: Katie and the Cupcake Cure; Mia in the Mix; Emma on Thin Icing; Alexis and the Perfect Recipe by Coco Simon

steps are the kind that are trimmed into a perfect globe shape.
    Alexis looked surprised when she answered the door.
    “Hi, Katie,” she said. “What’s all that?”
    “It’s for our meeting,” I explained. “So we can experiment with cupcake flavors.”
    “Oh,” she said. “I thought we were just going to talk about it.”
    “Why just talk when we can taste?” I asked.
    Alexis led me into the kitchen. I’ve been in her house a few times so far, and I’m always amazed how clean it is in there. For example, there is nothing on the kitchen counter, not even a toaster. Our counter has a toaster, the big red mixer, a cookie jar shaped like an apple, Mom’s spice rack, and usually a bowl of fruit.
    Alexis’s mom was at the kitchen table, setting up a pitcher of water and glasses for our meeting, along with a bowl of grapes. I noticed there was a piece of paper and pencil at each of the four places around the table.
    Mrs. Becker was wearing a button-down light blue shirt and dark blue dress pants. I’ve never seenher wear jeans, not even on a Saturday. Her hair is auburn like Alexis’s, but it’s cut short.
    “Hello, Katie,” she said when she saw me. She noticed the bag I was carrying. “Did you bring snacks? How nice.”
    “It’s actually supplies, so we can make test cupcakes,” I told her.
    “You mean you’ll be baking?” she asked. “Oh dear. I didn’t know you’d be baking today, Alexis.”
    “We’ll clean up when we’re done, Mom,” Alexis said. “Promise.”
    “It’s true. We clean up all the time when we bake at my house,” I added.
    Mrs. Becker gave a little sigh. “All right. But let me know when you are ready to turn on the oven!”
    She hurried out of the kitchen.
    “Mom doesn’t like it when the plan changes,” Alexis explained. “Especially when there’s a mess involved.”
    “I promise we won’t make a mess,” I said. Then I remembered what my kitchen usually looks like when I bake cupcakes. “Well, not too much of a mess, anyway.”
    Emma and Mia arrived next, at the same time. Alexis neatly piled up the pencils and paper, andI took all of the ingredients I’d brought out of my bag. Besides the basic cupcake-making stuff, I had mini marshmallows, chocolate chips, nuts, sprinkles, red-hot candies, tubes of icing and food coloring, and a jar of cherries—just about everything I could grab from the pantry.
    “Mmm, everything looks so yummy,” Mia said.
    “Well, I was thinking that we have to make a really incredible cupcake if we’re going to sell a lot,” I said. “Something we’ve never done before.”
    “How do we do that?” Emma asked.
    “We experiment,” I said. “Mom and I do it all the time. That’s how we came up with our famous banana split cupcake. Only I didn’t have any bananas, so we’ll have to come up with something else.”
    I turned to Alexis. “Do you have a mixer?” I asked.
    “Not the kind you have,” she replied. “It’s the one you hold in your hand.”
    “That’s fine,” I said. “First we need to make a regular vanilla batter.”
    I had made so many vanilla cupcakes over the last few weeks that I didn’t need a recipe at all. Pretty soon we had a perfect bowl of batter ready.
    “Now we just have to figure out what to add in,” I said.
    “Everyone loves chocolate chips,” Mia suggested.
    We stirred some in.
    “Marshmallows go well with chocolate,” said Alexis.
    Emma nodded. “Definitely.”
    We added some mini marshmallows to the batter.
    “What about nuts?” Emma asked. “It might be good to have something crunchy in there.”
    “Some people are allergic to nuts,” Alexis pointed out.
    “That’s true,” I said. “But sprinkles are crunchy too. Maybe we could put sprinkles in.”
    Alexis wrinkled her nose. “You mean put them in a cupcake instead of on top?”
    “Why not?” I asked.
    Nobody had a good argument. I dumped in half a bottle of rainbow sprinkles.
    “They look good,” Mia said. “And I