Nahant girl prepares 1,000 Thanksgiving treats

NAHANT – For years, Kaly Glavas helped serve cranberry sauce to the people who came to the annual free Thanksgiving Day dinner at Brothers Deli, which is owned by her uncle. Then the 14-year-old from Nahant became responsible for bringing dessert.”It’s sounds so cheesy but the look on the people’s faces when they got to the register was so amazing? and I wanted to have that effect on people too,” Glavas said Tuesday evening as she mixed butter and sugar. “So I decided if I could do what I do best, which is baking cupcakes, I could do it for my community and have the same effect.”Every Thanksgiving, George Markos serves a free turkey dinner for patrons of Brothers Deli on Market Street. The extended family comes and helps out, serving food, clearing dishes and cooking up a feast as people of all ages and circumstances gather at the restaurant.Glavas is one of the Markos family helpers and is also a big fan of baking cupcakes.So this year, Glavas is baking 1,000 mini vanilla cupcakes for the Brothers Deli feast – a three-day project of mixing, baking and frosting that takes over the Glavas home’s kitchen.But the eighth-grader is a familiar fixture in the room.”I try to bake as often as possible, but now I’m in eighth grade it’s a little hard with the workload,” Glavas said.She also said she likes experiments involving food. In addition to adjusting proportions of vanilla and trying different recipes, the kitchen has become a science lab for extracting DNA from strawberries and making sourdough so Glavas could watch the yeast multiply.Not all are successful (the sourdough had to be thrown away) and some kitchen skills need a little more practice.”It’s not one of her strong suits,” Glavas’ mother (and assistant pastry chef) Maria admitted when asked who did the dishes.But the baking project – like the Thanksgiving Day feast – has become a favorite tradition for Kaly and her family.”It kind of calms me down sometimes because I know what I’m doing,” Glavas said. “Plus, I really like cupcakes, especially now because I’m doing it for other people.”