I bring treats into work on Tuesday mornings for staff meeting so Monday nights, I bake.

Sometimes I make banana bread, sometimes muffins…it really kind of depends on what I have around, what food blogs I’ve been perusing before making the shopping list, and what I feel like doing.  This week I was back in scone mode after a run of blueberry coffee cake made with the lovely local blueberries I picked and froze earlier in the summer.  The scones I had in mind to make this week were studded with dried figs and toasted walnuts, and warmed with some ground ginger, nutmeg and allspice.

I hadn’t made scones in quite a while so I had to keep referring back to the recipe a lot (baking is the only time I really ever pay attention to recipes, because way too much can go wrong if I don’t…which I have learned the hard way!  How bad can it go, indeed…), and maybe also neglected to remember that my preferred recipe only makes 12 scones.  I like to try and bring at least 14 or 15 servings to work with me, so after I had scooped out 12 nice neat piles of scone dough, I went through and trimmed a bit off each one to make them smaller and hopefully yield a few more scones in the process.  When I finished, I had 14 scones – six on one baking sheet, eight on the other.

I could almost swear to this.

Almost.

It should be noted that I wasn’t drinking at the time, either.  I just…want to throw that out there.

Anyway – so, I’m PRETTY SURE that 14 scones went to the oven, and I’m also PRETTY SURE that 14 scones came out.  I set the pans on top of the stove to cool, like I always do.  At that point Junior was spoiling for his evening constitutional, so Husband harnessed him up we took him for a quick five minute jaunt around the driveway together.  As we came inside I needed to pee so I kicked my shoes off and ran upstairs to use the loo.  I came back downstairs, went into the kitchen to package the cooling scones up, and noticed something odd…

There were only 13 scones – six on one sheet, seven on the other.

Husband happened to be coming back through the kitchen just about then, and I glared at him accusingly.

“Wha?” he said.

I pointed at the space where the scone was missing.  He blinked and shrugged.

“SCONE STEALER”, I said, pointing at him.

“I didn’t!”, he replied, without a hint of a smile.

Now, it’s not like he hasn’t nicked warm baked goods off my pans before of a Monday evening, but to be fair to him, he almost always makes it enough of a production that I’m aware he’s absconding with the goodies and have a chance to stop him if it really matters.  And even if he doesn’t, he certainly never lies about it when I call him on nicking something.  So, when I stared long and hard at him and he vehemently denied having stolen the scone multiple times without even a trace of smugness, I found I had to believe him.

And yet…I could almost swear there were 14 scones when we went outside.

Could our crazy neighbor or one of his kids have sneaked across the breezeway into our apartment, grabbed a scone and slipped back into their apartment without us noticing from 30 feet away in the driveway?  Possibly…but not likely.

Could it have been some kind of R.O.U.S. infiltration?  Again…possible, but I’ve not noticed any sign of even normal sized rodents in the apartment (thank fuck), let alone ones big enough to make off with an entire scone without leaving so much as a trail of crumbs.

Ninja pterodactyls?  Stealth scone-stealing pixies?  Aliens?

I mean…it’s POSSIBLE that I miscounted and only actually baked 13 scones…but I don’t think I did.

It’s pretty much always aliens.

Also, for the record, the next morning Husband DID admit to stealing a scone, but he was adamant that it was after I went to bed and was definitely NOT the original scone that I accused him of stealing.

Hmmm.