Another cooking disaster averted

I don't know why people think I'm can cook decently. If they saw all the behind the scenes flubs, that thought would fly right out of their head. Bill likes Peanut Butter pie, so it seemed like a sign to make one when Patricia posted a recipe for one on her blog last week. Her pie was beautiful, little circles of hot fudge around the edges, but then she got distracted and just went crazy - still it looked mighty pretty.

I showed it to Bill and he agreed that a Peanut Butter pie would be a great dessert for Father's Day. So while he and Jacob were at Boy Scout camp this weekend, sweltering out in the 95 degree heat, the little guys and I made the pie.

As as side note, Jacob was SO excited about eating in the "mess hall" at camp. Such a bitter, bitter disappointment. Breakfast was cold cereal (which he does not like), lunch was stale sandwiches (which he does not like) and dinner was hamburgers "so thin that if you picked them up they fell apart." It's a good thing he had a lot of fun doing the activities or he might not want to go back next year.

Anyway - back to the pie. Here's the recipe:

Peanut Butter Pie
A large graham cracker crust (it’ll say “2 extra servings”)
12 oz cream cheese at room temperature
1 ½ cups smooth peanut butter
2 cups powdered sugar
12 oz cool whip, thawed

With an electric mixer, thoroughly combine the cream cheese and peanut butter. Add the powdered sugar and mix until thoroughly combined. It will be very thick. Mix in a cup or so of the cool whip with a spoonula type utensil to lighten the mixture a bit and then fold in the remaining cool whip just until combined. Do NOT use the electric mixer to add the cool whip or it will turn watery. Pour into the crust, spread out and swirl hot fudge or chocolate or caramel or your favorite sauce on top if desired. Cover with the lid that came with the crust and refrigerate for at least 4 hours.

Everything was going along just wonderfully, till I got to the topping part. I had an amazing idea - oh the creative juices were flowing. I thought I would take the hot fudge, heat it till it was very thin, put it in a shaker like you use for cinnamon sugar or such and then turn it upside down over paper till it started flowing and then go quickly back and forth over the pie making the most artful design. Amazing idea - total flop. I ended up picking off a bunch of little globs of hot fudge and smoothing the pie out again.

Idea #2 was not nearly as brilliant - but in the end it had the same result. Streaming it with a knife did no better and I picked it off again.

Idea #3 was to forget the hot fudge and just eat it later with a spoon and move on to chocolate syrup. Turns out - I can not make chocolate syrup swirls a bit more than Andi and I could make polka dots for Sophie's nursery letters last year. By the time I had scraped chocolate off of the peanut butter for the third time, the pie had taken on a sort of nasty color.

Idea #4 solved all my problems with how the top looked.


Yep, glob Kool-Whip over the entire thing, shave a bit of Hershey bar over it and it's ready to go. Everyone loved it! It was so simple to make and I have requests from three kids to have this pie instead of birthday cake on their next birthday. Works for me and now that I know what I'm going to do with it, it'll be a lot quicker to do.

Bill is off to shop right now for his Father's Day gift. The kids wanted him to get a bike. Well - not Jacob so much as he is his mother's child in the bike riding department - but the other kids were wild about the idea. Bill has been riding with them on a borrowed bike and so we gave him a card with money and a picture of a bike. I thought about picking one out for him but then decided that was a personal thing - he might not like the one I chose and then there would be the whole return thing to go through. This will be better.

My part in the bike riding is to sit by the phone and wait. Just in case someone gets hurt or needs water or is to tired to go on...I can go to the rescue. This was my idea. Bill's idea was to buy me a bike, too or a bicycle built for two. Sometimes he has some really bad ideas. This would be one of those times. It's a good thing I recognize a bad idea when I hear one.

If there was any doubt about how Jacob feels about bike riding, I think he put those to rest the other night when he was begging "somebody, anybody, just break my leg!" Nobody did and he ended up riding almost 5 miles........while I waited by the phone in the air conditioning.

Happy Father's Day to all you dads out there!

Here's Billski with his new bike, ready to head off to the splash park with the kids.

My kids are blessed with a dad who gets better at being a dad every day.