“Are you happy with your life?” “Are you in the best shape you want to be?”

While sitting waiting for allergy shots (you have to sit around for 30 minutes after you get them waiting to see if there is a reaction) these two questions were posed to me by the very “fit” woman next to me (I’m sure she has six pack abs which she can keep by the way). I turned to her and said “excuse me?” and could feel the sales pitch coming on. She went on to tell me how she was a life coach and wondered if I felt I could use her services.

First off don’t get me started on life coaches. There is no qualification to be a life coach…though I am sure nowadays there is an online degree for it somewhere. She didn’t seem to accept my answer that yes I was happy with my life and that while I was not in the best shape I wanted to be I was in the best shape of where I could be today. She piped in with surely there were things I wanted to change and I said of course. But that for right now those things were not changing due to circumstances beyond my control.

So then she went on and on about how everything is in my control, which for the record it is not. What you control is your attitude towards how things happen, but you cannot control many of the things that happen to you. I finally just snapped and let her know that I had zero interest or money in her being my life coach. That I was content with whom I was and that I had no desire to look like her. While I realize that the trend right now is for women to be “fierce” I usually laugh when people over the age of 14 use that word. First off I don’t want to be fierce. Fierce means violently hostile…why do I want to be that? And more importantly is that what I want to be known for?

I quickly became her least favorite person when I said “I don’t want my tombstone to read Peabody had one heck of a six pack and she ran four half marathons.” I went on to say that I wanted to be known for “making people laugh, making food that made people happy and full, and for making people feel loved and valued”. I told her that her tombstone would read “woman who made people feel bad about themselves in order to try and drum up business in a B.S. field of work”. She got up and moved far, far away from me.

This might not make you happy with your life but possibly temporarily . I made it to use up the Birthday Oreo’s that I had on the counter. The milk chocolate layer is just chocolate but the white chocolate layer has Funfetti cake batter in it. Sprinkle on some Birthday Oreo pieces and some sprinkles and you can’t help but smile….well you might not but then you would just be a grumpy person.

Oreo Cake Batter Bark

12 ounces high quality milk chocolate
12 ounces high quality white chocolate
4 TBSP Funfetti Cake Mix (I would start with one TBSP and taste as you go along, every person has their preference as to how cake batter flavor you want it to be)
Sprinkles
About 20 Birthday Oreo’s, broken into pieces

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and spray lightly with baking spray.

Melt milk chocolate. Spread evenly as you can across the baking sheet…try to make a rectangle. Put in fridge to set up for 10 minutes.

Melt white chocolate. Whisk in cake mix slowly, stirring well until no lumps remain. Spread evenly as much as you can across baking sheet. This will not be perfect as the warm white chocolate will start to make the milk chocolate melt a little…. the chocolate police will not come after you.

Sprinkle Oreo pieces and press them into the warm white chocolate to help them stay better. Have fun and add as many sprinkles as you want to the top of the bark while it is still soft.

Move to fridge and let it set up for about 20 minutes. Remove from fridge and cut into pieces.
Inspired by How Sweet It Is

Fourteen came a knocking this week. It’s one of the lesser exciting birthdays for you are already a teenager and can get into PG-13 movies, but the next two birthdays are just waiting time until you get to drive. But all birthdays should be celebrated of course (though some disagree…but I prefer it to the alternative). Their actual birthday was on a school night and so homework and regular activities took over so we decided to wait until this weekend to celebrate it in a proper way.

We went to a place where they pour your food onto a table and you beat it with a mallet. While some other places would have been better food (the food was good though), we were going more for the experience…which we certainly had. Then we came home to this beauty.

I actually saw the cake years ago with a Christmas Kit Kat Cake (just red and green M & M’s) at someone’s holiday party. I saw it again on Pinterest and decided to give it a go. You can use any cake recipe you like but I HIGHLY encourage you to make the fudge frosting to go with it. I love this frosting; it makes me so very happy.

This recipe makes for three mini cakes but I only made one of them a Kit Kat Party Cake. For while it is fun to look at it is a little over the top….though no one had any problems getting it down. This would work just as well with Twix Bars as well for those thinking they don’t really like Kit Kat bars.

Kit Kat Party Cake

Chocolate Cake recipe of your choice (baked using six 4 ½-inch-diameter spring form pans)
1 recipe Ultimate Fudge Frosting
5 ½ Kit Kats for each cake (I only made one, the rest were just frosted but if doing all three you will need 17 Kit Kats)
1 pound bag of M & M’s

Ultimate Fudge Frosting
2 cups unsalted butter, at room temperature
12 ounces semisweet chocolate, melted, slightly cool
4 cups powdered sugar
2 TBSP unsweetened cocoa powder

Using a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, cream butter and 2 cups sugar until fully combined.

Add melted chocolate and cocoa powder, and beat on low speed until fully incorporated.

Add the remaining two cups of sugar. You might need to thin it out, I never had.

This is a fantastic frosting and I don’t even really like chocolate that much…yeah I know, but you could seriously bath in this.

To see how to put it together head over to Recipe Girl.

I’m doing something unlike me. I’m going to host my own telethon, ala PBS style. Well I won’t host, let’s have Crazy Cocker Spaniel host…her eyes are far more convincing.

See…those eyes are hard to resist. I figure I will do this once a year. For some people this is a good time of year and you get some money back for the good old IRS, or sadly some of you like me owe the old IRS.

My ad agency seems to think I can live off of $45, they are wrong. FYI, that’s for the month, not a day or week or anything. A month. And while as a general rule I love writing this blog, after the divorce it’s supposed to be a source of income and not to toot my own horn but I think I do more than $45 worth of work a month.

So if you can spare a dollar, literally a dollar, I would greatly appreciate it (the donate button is on the right hand side there where it says Donate). If not I don’t really care either, I still love you anyway. But it never hurts to ask. So if I have ever made you laugh or you made a recipe you really liked on here flash out the fat George Washington (I should have made something with cherries) and say so. If not just comment and say you wish you could.

Enough with that. After making the yummy caramels and the Oreo RKT I had left over Funfetti and a desire to see if I could make Funfetti caramels. I cannot. About half way through I got to realizing that once I added the cake mix it was probably going to end up with something more like boiled fudge and I was right. It reminds me of my old neighbor’s boiled fudge…except it taste like cake batter and it has sprinkles so by default it is better. As usually my pants hate me for making something that I can’t really seem to stop eating. Luckily the others around me can’t seem to stop sweeping through the kitchen and doing a drive by Funfetti fudge pick up. All will be fine until the death match for the last one.

Funfetti Boiled Fudge

1 ¾ cup granulated sugar
¼ cup light corn syrup
1 cup heavy cream
¼ cup unsalted butter, chopped in cubes
½ tsp. salt
1 tsp. vanilla extract
2/3 cup Funfetti Cake Mix
Sprinkles for garnish

In a heavy saucepan over low heat, combine all the ingredients (except the cake batter and sprinkles), stirring until the sugar has completely dissolved.

Clip on a candy thermometer, stop stirring, and heat the mixture to 236-240F. This is going to take a while and where the patience I talked about comes in handy. Mine probably took almost a half hour to make it to that temperature with the pan on low heat. Do not be tempted to speed up the process by turning heat up. Also how good of pan you have will greatly affect how long you stare at the pot.

The minute it reaches between 236-240F, remove from heat and whisk in cake batter, if it clumps don’t panic to much a nice little nugget of cake batter will probably be yummy.
Immediately pour the candy into a parchment lined pan (I use an 8-by-8-inch pan). Add sprinkles and press down slightly to make sure they stay put. You are going to want to cut it while it is still a little warm. As it cools down it will want to flake more.

Once cut allow to cool completely in a cool, dry space.

Adapted from Sugar Baby by Gesine Bullock-Prado

If you are on Pinterest then you have probably seen either the motivational poster or the tattoo that wraps down someone’s back or side reading that every recently divorced or woman with a midlife crisis’s seems to be pinning that reads “just when the caterpillar thought the world was over, it became a butterfly”. They claim it’s a proverb of what I don’t know. But my question is what’s wrong with being the caterpillar?

I have many a fond memory as a kid searching for and playing with caterpillars, the fuzzier the better. They were what I went searching for on the leaves of the bushes (well that and lady bugs). Butterflies were far too hard for me to catch and when we did we usually accidently ripped off its wings, some meaner kids not accidently ripping them off. Caterpillars were far sturdier. It’s just another example of society going for the colorful and flashy over the more common.

I know it’s not a literal translation and it’s supposed to be representing their new metamorphosis into whatever it is they are now. But why not just put “I was a crappy person and I’m trying to be less of that now” or “I was fat and now I’m not and so instead I just annoy people by telling them how many times I’ve been to the TRX or boot camp this week”. Yes, I know I am getting hate mail on this one, it’s been awhile.

These caramels I guess are like butterflies, well really more like silicone breast in that they start soft but harden over time. So yeah, no, they are nothing like butterflies. Oh well. But what they are is good. They receptionist at my Physical Therapist place is super nice and more importantly super grateful anytime I bring food. We were talking about what I should bring next and got to discussing salted caramel. And that prompted talking about sea salt caramels from a local restaurant and I told her I could make her some. Candy scares people, I get that. But you only get good at it one way…by making candy. A heavy pot, a candy thermometer, and patience are really only what you need to make candy…and the smarts not to touch the boiling sugar. If you don’t have vanilla beans you can just add a couple tablespoons of vanilla extract.

Salted Vanilla Bean Caramels

1 ¾ cup granulated sugar
¼ cup Lyle’s Golden Syrup (or corn syrup)
1 cup heavy cream
¼ cup unsalted butter, chopped in cubes
½ tsp. salt
3 vanilla beans, seeds scraped and pods discarded (though save them for making vanilla sugar)
Sea Salt for sprinkling

In a heavy saucepan over low heat, combine all the ingredients (except the sea salt), stirring until the sugar has completely dissolved.

Clip on a candy thermometer, stop stirring, and heat the mixture to 250F. This is going to take a while and where the patience I talked about comes in handy. Mine probably took almost a half hour to make it to that temperature with the pan on low heat. Do not be tempted to speed up the process by turning heat up. Also how good of pan you have will greatly effect how long you stare at the pot.

Immediately pour the caramel into a parchment lined pan (I use an 8-by-8-inch pan) or a silicone mold coated with nonstick spray.

Allow to cool completely in a cool, dry space. Sprinkle with sea salt.

If using a mold, invert the mold onto a piece of parchment paper and gently release the caramels. If using a pan, cut the caramels with a very sharp knife sprayed with nonstick spray. (I actually use a pizza cutter).
Wrap the candies in a piece of wax paper. Do yourself a favor and precut all they pieces of wax paper or else large amounts of swearing will happen as you try to cut then wrap, cut then wrap…you get the idea. Store in an a airtight container in a cool, dry place for up to a week.

Adapted from Sugar Baby by Gesine Bullock-Prado