Last night, I made cinnamon rolls. I’m not a huge fan of cinnamon rolls, per se, but this recipe was included in Mario Batali’s sexual misconduct apology letter, and so I feel compelled to make them. Batali is not the first powerful man to request forgiveness for “inappropriate actions” towards his coworkers and employees. He is not the most high profile, and he is ostensibly not even the worst offender. But he is the only one who included a recipe.

And of course, the glaring question is why? Was his PR team drunk? Is life suddenly a really long, depressing SNL sketch? Do these cinnamon rolls somehow destroy the patriarchy? Does the icing advocate for equal pay?

I figure the only way to answer these questions is to make the damn rolls.

I bake a lot. Never one to pass up on a pun, my husband doesn’t bring me flowers, but flours. I’ve become skilled to the point that I can make a dessert from virtually anything, that I can have a small cake made from start to finish – including baking time – on the table in about half an hour.

According to Fox 6, administrators at Our Redeemer Lutheran School in Wauwatosa, Wis., apologized to parents after students brought home an assignment asking them to name three good reasons and three bad reasons for slavery. One parent, Trameka Brown-Berry, found the assignment offensive and posted it to her Facebook page.

“It’s highly offensive and insensitive. I was in shock. I couldn’t believe they sent something like that home,” said Brown-Berry, apparently able to contain the God-given slapping-the-shit-out-of-fourth-grade-teachers instinct gifted to most black mothers.

School Principal Jim Van Dellen admitted the assignment was “out of line” in a letter to parents, explaining that the assignment was intended to “spark debate.”

“The purpose of the assignment was not, in ANY way, to have students argue that ANY slavery is acceptable, a concept that goes against our core values about the equality and worth of people of all races,” the letter read, despite the fact that the explicit instructions of the assignment were to ask students to argue about the acceptance of slavery.