Cream puffs and kiddos

It's been a while....lots of the same going on in general--working and baking. Christmas was great, lots of support from my parents....it's weird to think I've been single for 6 months, but it's slowly starting to sink in. Dog is getting enormous, haven't taken him to the vet to be weighed but best guess is between 80 and 90 pounds. Cat got a new condo (compliments of carpet remnants, an old basketball hoop pole, and my dad's ability to make anything) and is in kitty-heaven. My neice is in town for a visit...20 months old and so damn cute!

Work is getting....frustrating. I'm excited that one kiddo will be graduating the program at the beginning of February. She was my first ever client and I've been with her family since she started the program 2 years ago. I'm so proud of her for the progress she has made, but I'm also insanely nervous for her to transition out....what if she regresses? What if her parents stop following through? I guess I should have a little more faith in all of them...she finally started sleeping in her own bed again after 4 years of sleeping with mom, so they must have been listening to me at some point over the last 2 years.

On the flip side of things, another of my kiddos is regressing big time, but it's not his fault or his family's. This kiddo has a serious degenerative disease that will eventually be terminal. His seizures have increased and their anatomy is changing....not good signs. As a result of the seizures he is losing some of his recently gained skills and is constantly tired....resulting in him being constantly grumpy and emotional and having a big increase in behaviors. I know that following through when I give him a directive is important to his therapy, but what about what's important for his happiness? I mean, no one knows just how long this kid has, so it makes me feel like a terrible person when I have him engage in non-preffered activities....a big part of me just wants to let him play all day.

Ok. Enough depressing-ness. I have been doing quite a bit of baking lately, from making my own caramel for a 'Twix' torte and Mexican toffe (both from "The Perfect Finish" by Bill Yosses) to general Christamas baking to mini beef wellingtons and mini maragarita cupcakes. But my favorite over the past month has by far been the cream puffs. Frenchie's husband loved the blueberry coffee cake, so she ordered another one at the beginning of December. She didn't request anything for Christmas, but asked for cream puffs for New Years. And, if possible, nougatine or florentinas. After several trials, and one attempt to rip my stove from the wall, I declared the nougatine impossible with my current stove (it's an electric flat-top and the burners don't hold a constant heat, but insead turn on and off--making caramel and candy rather difficult). So I switched to the florentina. Which cannot be cooked on parchment--as I discovered the hard way. I got one useable florentina rolled before my cookie sheets warped and all the batter ran to the centers. Damn. So cream puffs it was! After a slight debacle the morning I was due to deliver the pastries (apparently cream puffs can't be stored in a sealed container....who knew?), I whipped up another batch and they were crazy successful! Unfortuantely I have not been committed enough to look for my camera charger, and I'm sick at the moment and so feeling too lazy to go get the cable to get the pictures from my phone to the blog. But who know, maybe I'll get a burst of energy...but don't count on it.

Today was banana bread (favorite recipe for this is the one from Southern Sideboards) and laundry...generally a lazy, sicky day. Are constant body aches a sign of anything? All I know is tomorrow I go back to work with a school kid who is very.....hands-on. As in, lots of physically blocking him from various objects of obsession and lots of physically aggressive melt downs. And this achy-ness? Yeah, it is so not going to work for me tomorrow.

One potato, two potato, three potato, cupcake!

So far this has been a very productive week in terms of baking. I promised my roomie, Portalnd, peanut butter frosting before she moved to Oregon, so that meant I had to come up with something to go with the peanut butter frosting. Don't get me wrong, in the process I ate about half of the frosting on its own, but I didn't think bringing a bowl of frosting and a bunch of spoons to work was going to go over so well. So after deciding against chocolate cake-ness (too expected and, really, not one of my favorite combos for cake and frosting) I did some research online and came across a bunch of recipes using banana cake. This looked promising, till I realized that it was Saturday....and I had to bake on Sunday....and there was no way that I was going to have over-ripe bananas that quick. So nix the bananas. But it led to a random recipe for applesauce cake...oooh! I like apples and peanut butter. And cinnamon. I like cinnamon. So I modified a favorite recipe and here are the results:

Aren't they cute!!!



...and delicious!

Several people at work were a little hesitant about the cinnamon and peanut butter (till they tried it and lovevd it), but it really added some depth to the frosting and the cake. All in all, absolute success.

Second episode of the week....I was approached today by Lady P (aka: my boss and the co-owner of the company) and asked to bake something for Owl's last day of work tomorrow. I was very excited about the whole conversation actually, basically L.P. offered to finance a fabulous state of the art bakery and pay me for it....and buy me a pony. Ok, not really any of that, but she did say that I had her support if I ever left my job to open a bakery, which is almost as good as that other stuff. Anyway, as a result of her offering to pay for any groceries I needed to bake for Owl, I decided to go with the dark chocolate hazelnut cupcakes I've been plotting lately. I'm totally thriilled with how they taste and look (dark chocolate hazelnut cake topped with Nutella and a piece of dark chocolate with hazelnuts in it), but I kinda misjudged their remove-ability-ness....that is to say, they don't come out of the wrappers so easy. But, messy eating aside, here they are:



It's a whole herd of them!



 I have 6 dozen of these....and 8 mini-loafs. I have a lot of chocolate. But, really, when is that a bad thing?

Why you scream-a like a girl?

So far this being single thing has consisted of many first-experiences too. It started with spending a Friday night sneaking to the nearby fields and stealing mint plants. Then getting a dog, discovering a love for baking miniature things, taking off for an unplanned weekend to visit my sister. Ok....so the mint-stealing-night was probably the biggest first (unless you count the time we stole cactus, but that's a whole nother deal). But regardless, yesterday marked another major first...first crush in two and a half years. I feel very high school-ish, but it's almost unnerving to realize that you are super excited that you have a mini-crush on the cute guy at the toy store. The past 2 weeks have been so stressful that the silly-giddy-self-conscious feeling really threw me off. But in a good way.

In other positively happy news, jury duty has officially been cancelled! This is good for several reasons....or two. 1-I really couldn't afford to miss that much work, and 2-Now there is no chance of me running into Redneck on the day of his sentencing....woo!!!! Plus, my hours with Chatty at work have been reduced, super excited. I also have more hours with Wolfman (dat-a make-a me happy!) and with Whiner (not so happy). However, I am also scheduled to work with one of my favorite kiddos, Banana (that one was for you DonkeyOwl)...which makes me super happy. So all-in-all, not a bad day. Or two.