So this story ends with me and my friends looking at my baking book and thinking about what I should bake next, but it begins inside an old trunk.

Perhaps you noticed someone new in that last picture. This is NuNu, but before I can tell you about him, we have to talk about the trunk.

So the girl is like 51 years old which means she has what she calls junk in the basement. I think that’s so funny because we don’t have a basement, but we do have a closet.

One day she showed me inside the trunk in the closet. That’s where the OG is — the Old Guard, the girl’s plushies who are almost as old as her.

One of those guys is NewNew. The girl said her mom made NewNew out of her favorite blanket with buttons from her favorite jacket when she was like four years old. He’s stuffed with a cloth baby diaper.

When the girl saw NuNu on Amazon a few months ago, she thought of OG NewNew from the trunk, and so she ordered him. Family resemblance, she said.

NuNu was already here when I came to live with the girl, but he is really, really shy.

NewNew is really more at home with his generation in the trunk, so we don’t see him very much. But NuNu is getting to be more social.

On Saturday I made the Toffee Poke Cake from my Bakeshop Classics cookbook page 54 because NuNu said he wanted to try it. I was like, you want to try a cake that has holes poked in it, and he was like, yeah!

First I had to make chocolate cake from a box which the girl thought was beneath my skill level.

I had to blend the batter with the mixer, which was awesome because that means. . .

I got to lick the beaters!

Which the cake box said was against the rules!

I thought that was so funny. The girl was like, see Jones, this is why we make our own cakes from scratch!

I poked a toothpick in it when it came out of the oven and it was perfect.

My book said to poke holes in the cake with the end of a wooden spoon but we didn’t have one of those so I used a chopstick.

Then I poured caramel syrup over it and some of it went in the holes but some of it didn’t and I wasn’t sure if that was right. The girl said maybe I put too much syrup on so we poured some off before proceeding.

I covered it with whipped cream like the book said and we only needed one carton.

Just like with the Butterscotch Blondies I made before, the book told us to use Heath bars. This time the girl found little ones at Menards so we didn’t have to make a substitution.

My knife skills are improving and I chopped them up into little bits easily.

Then I threw them at the cake, which I thought was so funny.

Dark clouds were coming in by the time I got finished so it looks like night time when we took this picture even though it wasn’t.

I took off my apron and Sketch, Munch Munch and NuNu came into the kitchen to have a look at my accomplishment.

We decided NuNu should get the first bite. Munch Munch said he was our honorary taste tester.

NuNu was like, OMG, Jones, do you bake like this every week? And I was like, welcome to my patisserie!

Sketch thought the poke cake was really good too. The caramel made the cake really moist and the Heath bars added a crunchy touch.

We posed for a team photo since it was the first time we all ate cake together.

Then we were all like, cake coma!

Except for Munch Munch. He was like, you guys are weird.