Baking for my Boy

December 18, 2011

I DON”T bake… I hate to bake.  I am not good at baking… I am an awesome cook. You can ask anyone who knows me- and I know this is going to sound a bit self inflated- I rarely ever have a miss on an actual meal…but give me a recipe for cakes, cookies, pies…etc…I rarely have a success.

Today is my son’s 19^th birthday…while at the grocery store…I decided that I would bake David a pumpkin pie…He loves pumpkin pies… Then my ADD/Mudgie Syndrome (I know most of you don’t know what the Mudgie syndrome is…it is an explanation for another day…) and I remembered when he was two and his grandma and I were eating cheesecake at a “girlie” restaurant, and we decided to share with him…he LOVED it! He actually would take his fork and use it to push our forks out of the way when we were going for a bite.  It was so funny!  I am sure that my mother-in-law would agree with me that it was a priceless memory…

So, as I decided that I could make the boy pumkin’ pie (mostly stuff from a can, and frozen crust… surely I could do that…) I started remembering the 2 year old boy stabbing and poking and pushing his way for every bite of cheesecake… thinking of his happy face filled me with “Super Mom Mentality”- a lethal hormone issue (if you have never experienced it, beware- it actually makes you think you can do anything for your child- FALSE)

At Thanksgiving, Katie Schindler, my “niece”, (who is one of the best bakers I know) made a Pumpkin Cheesecake…It was literally a work of art…and the taste??? Slap yourself silly SUPER DELICIOUS! So… me, in the grocery store with no actual plan in hand and my ADD/Mudgie Syndrome kicking in, I had no defense against the “Super Mom Mentality”. I began making irrational choices and decisions… I would make both!! PUMPKIN PIE and PUMPKIN CHEESECAKE!! Now is probably a good time to tell you that I did not have the recipe to the Pumpkin Cheesecake, so I was winging it on the ingredients. (Cody did have to make a trip to the Dollar General afterwards)

Now, I am sure that you are all thinking the end result was disaster… but it was not a complete failure.  I found the recipe for the awesome cake Katie made on Thanksgiving, but it called for 4 packages of cream cheese, I had 3 packages; so I looked at one from Paula Deen that called for 3 packages of cream cheese. But then upon further investigation, the one from Paula called for a 15 oz. can of pureed pumpkin; I only had 29 oz. cans. But the one Katie used called for 1 ½ cups. As I did the math, I knew that 1 ½ cups was not exactly 15 ozs. (I hope I am right on this one???) so I simply “eyeballed” a little more than half of the can of pumpkin. I did not have enough time for my cream cheese to actually get to room temp, so I just worked with it.  I did not have dark Karo for the “Pecan Pie Glazed Pecans” that went on top, so I just used brown sugar and light Karo… by the time I got to the point of putting the Praline Sauce and the glazed pecans on my cheesecake, I had pretty much lost interest in the whole project…Who knew it would take 5 hours to bake the freaking thing, and most of that time was spent waiting for the next step!!! So…while my cake was tasty (ish).  It was not a work of art, it was not even “cute”.

I felt like my Pecan Pies were a hit- even though I still have one whole pie left…hmmm… maybe they weren’t that great either. 

But armed with “Super Mom Syndrome”, I worked hard to make my 19 year old baby boy, David’s, birthday special, because he is so special to me!! He makes me laugh, think, and want to be a better person.  I am proud of you Dave Man!!! Happy Birthday! I love you!!