It was the beginning of the week and we had just made plans to visit my grandparents’ house. My grandfather is an amazing cook, and he is always trying to unsuccessfully inspire me to cook as well, but it just isn’t something I am interested in.

However, my mom told him that I specifically would make a dessert for this upcoming visit. Naturally, I was quite angry at my mom for putting this responsibility on me so suddenly without my permission.

As the days in the week flew by, my time was running dangerously low and I still had absolutely no idea what dessert I would make. I wasn’t even really thinking about it, thinking I would just buy a cheap box of cookies from Walmart and display them in a fancy dish, lying about how much time and effort I put into baking them.

But part of me was excited to try something new and come up with a new recipe, even if it was something simple I copied off the internet. I am a person who likes going outside the box if I have the opportunity to, so didn’t want to just make some plain chocolate chip cookies, let alone buy some premade ones. Then suddenly, an idea came to me that I knew would be perfect.

It was near the end of the school year last year when we had planned this visit. Most Spanish classes around this time were having fiestas with plenty of food, and my class was no exception.

I walked into class that day, smelling the immense variety of delicious looking Mexican dishes. I began receiving a headache and was barely able to hear myself think from the noise that emitted from the 35 teenagers in the classroom. All of them were as just excited as I was to dive into all of this food.

Re fried beans, tortillas, ground beef, guacamole, tortilla chips and many other foods lined the large table at the side of the classroom. However, something very specific caught my attention.

In a large glass dish lied a mountain of cinnamon sugar on top of some sort of pastry-like food item. After receiving my serving, I noticed there was creamy, sweet cream cheese in the middle, sandwiched between two pieces of what reminded me of flattened out Pillsbury crescent rolls, with a topping of a crunchy layer of a cinnamon sugar mixture.

I immediately thought that this is what I have to make for my grandfather. He raves about how much he loves cheesecake and brags about how well he can make it. While I was not too sure if he liked cinnamon or not, there was seemingly no food my grandfather didn’t like so I went ahead and made it.

The food I had tastes looked like it had a complicated recipe to go along with it, and being my lazy self I didn’t want to spend more than an hour making it. Another problem I had is that i did not know what it was called. So, using the immensely helpful Google, I searched “Mexican cinnamon sugar cheesecake,” and recipe for a dish called Sopapilla cheesecake bars appeared. Sure enough, it was the exact same food I had at the fiesta.

I sighed with relief upon looking at how easy this recipe was to make. The only ingredients that were required were cream cheese, sugar, cinnamon and Pillsbury Crescent Rolls.

The next day was the day to show off my new recipe I stole from two people instead of one; the girl in my Spanish class and a simple recipe on online. These two people saved my mom from having to venture out on another trip to Walmart and saved her $20-40 which would’ve been spent on a fancy dish for some cheap cookies.

The recipe was a hit. Both my grandparents loved it immensely and kept bombarding me with compliments. A giant smile that seemed to reach all the way to my ears appeared on my face and stayed the entire time my family was enjoying the dish I actually invested time into. While I still do not like cooking at all, my heart swelled with a feeling of happiness and pride know that I did something that made others happy.

by GRACE LAPUMA