When I Grow Up...

I'm a lucky gal. There are so many things that I could be. Most presently, I could totally be a chef. Or a baker. No- a pastry chef. I am so unfortunately in the wrong field. Instead of helping people get fit, I could base my career on creating delicious temptations that could potentially make them fat. Like this:



OK so maybe food photographer is not among my many career options. But this piece of heavenly goodness is what I call my peanut butter cookie cake. Oh yes. It has cookie. It has peanut butter. It has chocolate. And it has cake. All in one delicious swirl of cellulite-causing delightfulness. And it's sitting on my kitchen table right now.

Unless the dog got to it.

It started out with an entire 16oz log of chocolate chip cookie dough spread out on a pizza pan, then baked.



This in and of itself is enough to get me excited.

Oh, and the fact that it's sitting on a pizza stone is purely coincidental. I didn't bake the cookie on it. It just doubles as my cooling rack/oven mitt/laptop station/paperweight.

Then combine (natural) peanut butter and vanilla frosting, with a little milk to make the most heavenly peanut butter frosting I've ever tasted. Smear it on top of the cookie. Pour some chocolate cake batter into another pizza pan and bake it. Then once it cools, plop it on top of the cookie/peanut butter frosting yumminess. Then top it all off with chocolate frosting. And you get this: Hint: click on photo for full effect.



So if you look back to the first photo above, you see the corner of a Where's Waldo book. The only incident (if you remember from waaaay back, I have a history of bad baking incidents) was when I tried to remove the cake from the pizza pan before it was ready. It kind of broke in several places. So when the time came for me to plop it on top of the cookie/peanut butter combo, I slid the only thing available that was slim and sturdy underneath to keep all the pieces somewhat together. Whatever, I'm sure the book was clean. It was sitting on the kitchen table, it's not like I dug it out from under the dog's bed or anything. Right?

Stop judging me.

SB's favorite part was eating the cake batter. Does that make me a bad parent because I let her lick the beaters? They were out of the mixer, I promise. No Homer Simpson-esque tongue mangling in the egg beaters.

Anyway, the end result was fantastic. It was just the right amount of cookie, cake and peanut butter to satisfy the fiercest sweet cravings, and then some. I should look into pursuing a career as a pastry chef. But the problem is I would eat all my creations. You know, to make sure they tasted ok.

Seriously. Stop judging me.

By the way, that wasn't completely my "creation" per se because I used a recipe from a book of fun kids' food. But I did create it all myself. Except make the cookie dough and the frosting and the dry cake mix.... OK fine, I mixed, baked, piled and enjoyed. Happy now?

On yet another completely unrelated note, I had another exciting day with SB at the park on Sunday. Looking at the photo, I'm seeing a trend here. I think I'm a little too hands-on for SB's own good. I honestly think that I need to back off. I tend to hover. She needs to learn to play on her own and I need to not worry so much about...blah.....blah......blah......oh, whatever, just look at the photo.