The next day, Calvin wandered into the kitchen to find Mom was busy baking some more. Goodies stacked high along the counter and tabletops like crates in a dockyard. Cakes, cookies, pies, fudges and even candy canes!

"How do you bake candy canes?" Hobbes whispered.

"Don't ask. Just be nice."

"Isn't that like calling the kettle black?"

"Back off and let the master in."

Calvin walked forward.

Hobbes paused for a moment and looked around. "Where's this master I was informed of?" he mumbled.

Calvin approached Mom. "Hey, Mom? Need some help?"

"No. Go away."

"But I wanna help!"

"No."

"But I—"

"No."

"I wanna—"

"No."

"But I just—"

"No."

"I'LL COOK EVERYTHING ACCORDING TO THE BOOK FOR FREE WHILE YOU DO SOMETHING YOU LIKE!"

"Fine."

Mom grabbed a book and left for the living room.

"Wow, that went over better than I thought it would," commented Hobbes.

"Okay, what should we bake first?" Calvin wondered.

Hobbes grabbed a notepad from the table. It had a list of goodies on it and places they had to go.

"Okay, we need a cake for the Susie, brownies for Moe, Rosalyn needs a pecan pie, and Miss Wormwood wants five cakes, fifty brownies, three pecan pies and a chocolate chip cookie."

"Wow, I never would have thought she had such a large family," Calvin commented. "Okay, let's get started. First, we need to make that cake."

"Okay," Hobbes said, pulling out the cookbook. "First we need a mixing bowl, measuring spoons, a cake pan and a measuring cup."

Calvin flew through the cupboards and pulled out everything. Except measuring spoons.

"I couldn't find them, so I just got different spoons."

"It could work. Next we need milk, eggs, flour, sugar, vanilla and butter," Hobbes said.

Calvin jumped into the fridge and got what he could.

"We only had skim milk. You think that'll work?"

Hobbes gave him a look. "No."

"Well then, we're in trouble."

"Okay, fine. Put in the skim. We need two cups worth."

Calvin did so, and then the wreck began.

When he had to melt the stick of butter, he forgot to put in the measuring cup, so he got butter all over the microwave. He still managed to get half of it in the bowl. Then he broke half a dozen eggs until finally he got in two that were presentable enough. Next he got flour and sugar all over the floor. He looked like a ghost and was extremely hyper. Finally, they put in the vanilla, but Calvin overloaded it, and put in the whole bottle.

They took the pan and started to mix it all together, and then they tossed in the oven.

"You haven't explained how we're going to do this without running out of ingredients," said Hobbes.

"It's quite simple, Hobbes. Thanks to a cardboard box of mine, it won't be a problem."

"You mean…?"

"Well, I don't know. What do you think I mean?"

"I think you mean that we're using the Duplicator to make more of these cakes so that we don't waste anymore than we already have."

"Huh? Hey, that's a great idea! I was going to suggest using the Transmogrifier to turn random household objects into ingredients!"

Hobbes held the bridge of his nose, groaning.

Calvin ran upstairs and got the cardboard box.

When the cake came out, Hobbes (wearing oven mitts) placed the pan under the Duplicator. Calvin pressed the button, making the "boink" noise. When Calvin pulled the box off, he pulled out six.

"Okay, I'm going to deliver these to the houses," Calvin said. "You get started on the brownies."

"Whatever," said Hobbes, flipping through cookbook.

Calvin loaded the cakes up into the wagon and started to patrol towards Susie's, who was two houses down. He punched his fists into the door.

"CAKE DELIVERY!" he yelled.

Susie opened the door. She looked like she'd been run through a trash compactor.

"Whoa, what happened to you?" Calvin asked.

"Nothing. What do you want?"

Calvin picked up a cake. "Here, from my mom and dad from the bottom of their hearts, I present you with a fudge cake, yadda, yadda, etcetera, etcetera, ya get it, here ya go." He shoved the cake into Susie's hands.

Susie raised her eyebrows quizzically. The cake smelled strange and it was a little too lumpy.

"Who made this?"

"Mom," Calvin said quickly. "Well, gotta go. Bye."

And with that, he pulled the door shut quickly for her.

"And away we go," he said, hauling the other five to Miss Wormwood's.

Not surprisingly, he got the same reaction when he got there, but it was a little more rushed.

When he finally returned, Calvin found the kitchen to be an absolute mess. More than before even!

Hobbes was wearing a white chef's hat as he pulled a brown substance out of the oven and headed for the Duplicator.

"What the heck happened in here?" Calvin asked.

"Oh good, you're here!" said Hobbes. "Be a good boy and turn the oven off."

Calvin looked at the mess about him as he closed the oven.

"As I was saying, WHAT DID YOU DO!" he shouted.

Hobbes wiped the spit off of his face with his poofy white hat.

"Well, I accidentally dropped Alka-Seltzer into the first batch, so it kind of exploded. This one went over a bit better. I had plenty of eggs, flour and sugar, but we ran out of skim milk, so I had to replace it with butter milk."

"Well, I suppose its butter and milk in one," Calvin decided. "But why didn't you use the brownie mix?"

"That's what exploded," Hobbes replied.

"Very well. Moe's mom wanted one tray of brownies, and Miss Wormwood wanted fifty. I think it's strange. She must be throwing a party."

Once they had fifty-one trays of brownies, they stacked them into the wagon.

Calvin took off down the street as fast as he could.

When he got to Moe's door, he pounded on the door as hard as he could.

Moe opened it. "What do you want, Twinky?" he snarled.

Calvin quickly shoved a tray of brownies into his hands.

"From Mom and Dad, I give you brownies. Enjoy. Sayonara!"

Calvin blasted from the door like a torpedo.

Moe looked unwillingly at the strange-looking brownies.

After dropping off the rest at Miss Wormwood's, Calvin ran back to his own house, exhausted.

He found Hobbes was waiting for the pecan pie to finish, and in the meantime, he was attempting to clean up the mess.

"Well, I'm beat. When'll that pie be finished? Rosalyn's probably waiting like mad!"

"No doubt," replied Hobbes. "It'll be ready any second now. In the period in-between, hand me that sponge."

Calvin grabbed a damp sponge out of the water-filled bucket and handed it to him. Hobbes resumed cleaning.

There was a DING, and Calvin opened the oven. He tossed it under the Duplicator, and with a "boink", he pulled out three. With the addition of a chocolate cookie, he set off for the houses once more.

Calvin ran up Rosalyn's doorstep.

"Stupendous Man looks into the Evil Babysitter Girl's secret hideout," he said to himself. "There are motion detectors everywhere."

Calvin ducked below a window where Rosalyn's parents were near.

"After stupendously defeating the guards, our hero must cut this adventure short. If he wants to defeat the Crab Teacher, he must get past Evil Babysitter Girl. In order to do that, he must lure her to a sedative."

He placed the pecan pie on the doorstep with a note on it. Then, wagon handle in hand, he pressed the doorbell and ran.

By the time Rosalyn got there, he was out of sight. She found the pie, but it looked a little misshapen, and not in a good way. She took it in anyway.

"Evil Babysitter Girl takes the bait!" Calvin crowed. "Now to defeat the Crab Teacher and her treacherous minions."

Calvin ran up Miss Wormwood's walk and banged on the door.

Miss Wormwood approached. "Did you include the cookie?" she asked.

"Yeah, I got the goods, Crab Teacher," Calvin said heroically. "Now give me the information I need!"

"What?"

Calvin shook his head lightly. "I mean, yes I did. Please take these, as courtesy of my parents. Again. Now take these to your guests."

"What guests?"

"You don't have a party in there?"

"No."

"Then why did you want so much…?"

It took a minute to realize it, but then he got the picture.

"Oh, that's right. Tis the season to overindulge, huh?"

Miss Wormwood grabbed the pies (and cookie) and put Calvin in the wagon, pushing it away. She slammed the door.

"Also 'tis the season to be crabby."

When Calvin returned to his house, he was surprised to find a mob of people at the door. He saw Hobbes sitting in the snow nearby.

"Hobbes, what's going on?"

"Apparently, everyone's mad at your mom."

Mom and Dad were at the door, frantically trying to calm everyone down.

"Will you all calm down?" Mom shouted.

"We're getting frantic!" added Dad.

"Our fudge cake tasted like cement!" yelled Susie.

"Our brownies tasted like turpentine!" added Moe.

"Our pecan pie tasted like grapes!" said Rosalyn.

Calvin stared at Hobbes. "You never did tell me what you put in the pie," he said suspiciously.

"Well, we didn't have any pecans," Hobbes said sheepishly. "Grapes were the closet things on hand."

"We didn't make the food you got," Mom shouted. "Calvin made it all!"

"YOU TRUSTED OUR SON IN THE KITCHEN!" Dad hollered.

"WELL, I WAS DESPERATE FOR SOME TIME TO MYSELF!"

All eyes whirled around at Calvin.

Calvin looked for Hobbes. He had disappeared.

Mom and Dad stomped towards Calvin.

"For one thing, we're mad you messed up the kitchen and wasted food," said Mom, "but you've also ruined our bake run this year! Now I've got to make the food for the neighbors all over again, but I can't until I've made a run to a store tomorrow!"

"Calvin, you are to clean up the mess in the kitchen. Plus, you are grounded until I say otherwise," Dad said through clenched teeth.

Calvin would normally have done something to get out of trouble. But not this time. He simply looked Dad in the face and said, "Fine."

Mom and Dad looked flabbergasted. "That's it?" asked Mom.

"Yes, I don't need to argue. I ruined Christmas by trying to get all of you to cheer up and be nice to each other and not make Santa think we were all bad. But instead, I realize that I shouldn't have tried to help. So instead of an argument, I'm just going to go to my room and be quiet."

With that, he walked past his dumb-struck parents, as well as a bunch of people, who had also listened to him and were no quieted down.

No one knew what to say.

Calvin spent half the night cleaning the kitchen. He didn't see Hobbes during the duration.

He finally found him in bed. He simply got into his purple pajamas, got under the covers with Hobbes, turned out the light and went to sleep.

There was a brief pause in the dark before Hobbes turned the light back on.

"I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE! WHY AREN'T YOU YELLING AT ME! WHY AREN'T YOU COMPLAINING THAT YOU GOT BLAMED FOR WHAT I DID! I WANT ANSWERS NOW!"

"What's there to be said?" Calvin asked. "We failed, Hobbes. We tried to do something right, and it blew up in our faces. We just have to accept defeat."

Hobbes looked upset.

"But I thought you said you wanted gifts."

"Who cares about that anymore? What matters is that a dark cloud now hangs over the city, and it's all my fault."

"Not necessarily," Hobbes said. "Maybe we can fix everything!"

"How?"

"Well, there's always Plan A!"

"You mean the pageant?"

"Right!"

"But I don't wanna go onstage in front of a bunch of grumps!"

"Calvin, it could work! You just have to try! You always say that we must take all options into consideration!"

Calvin sighed. "Okay, fine. Plan A is back on. I'll start rehearsal tomorrow."