Yesterday afforded me two precedential baking opportunities. The first was miniature chocolate peanut butter cheesecakes, made in preparation for a little soirée on Sunday. The second was mashed-up avocado—virgin guacamole, if you will—for Edward’s first-ever “solid” meal.
Both were failures, I regret to report.
The cheesecake I had considered inspired from the beginning: who, I ask, doesn’t love cheesecake? And who doesn’t love peanut butter? And chocolate? All together?! Besides which, cheesecake is naturally flour-free. (Joseph's latest Dietary Thing is that we must not partake of gluten. Back to the drawing board with all of my tried and true recipes we go...)
The avocado was the result of weeks’ worth of deliberation. Choosing baby’s first solid is not a trifling matter, after all. This particular selection won out for several reasons: it involves no cooking (with the resulting leakage of nutrients), is chock-full of healthy vitamins and fats, and is among my favorite fruits. “The food of the gods,” my mother sagely calls it. So how could it all go so terribly wrong?
Well, my cheesecaking efforts were doomed from the start. I did not leave the ingredients out long enough for them to reach room temperature before beginning; Edward was unwilling to watch from the sidelines and apparently making cheesecake with one hand is not my forté; the Orkin man showed up in medias res; I ended up with too much batter and not enough crust; and to add the final touch of incompetence, I left the little cakes-to-be in the oven too long, which is the death knell of any good cheesecake. A master chef I so am not. I was soon to discover that my incompetence could not even be blamed on the difficulty of the recipe, as Edward’s meal was easy-peasy. It contained one ingredient and no cooking. The only preparation required was mashing up a small piece of avocado in a bowl. Judging from Edward’s reaction, I left out one important ingredient: palatability.
To add insult to injury, the baking gods further sneered at my lachrymose efforts this afternoon by contriving to upend a can of opened olives all over the cooling cheesecakes. I was not amused, though one would think the briny addition could only improve the taste. *sigh*
