I Could Totally Be On Food Network

In honor of Angela’s recent posts about cooking with her girls, I decided I was going to share a baking experience, recipe and all.

First, here’s the recipe for the Rocky Road No-Bake Cheesecake I made.

It says prep time is 15 minutes. But I quickly found out that Kraft, as awesome as they are, obviously didn’t calculate for toddlers. I think it took me an hour to make two of them.

Here's how it went.

1. Decide to use chocolate chips instead of Baker’s Chocolate and figure out how much is in one square of Baker’s Chocolate. It involved Google and some fancy math with the serving size amounts on the back of the chocolate chip package.

2. Wash mine and C’s hands. Get the chopper out and let C help me chop the chocolate chips and peanuts. He loved it, by the way, even though his little arms weren’t strong enough to actually chop anything.3. Help my sous chef up and down about 73 times while being careful not to drop any chocolate on the floor and tell Oz to take a hike because he’s getting no crumbs today.4. Get abandoned by sous chef and help him go outside to play. Wash hands.

5. Tell former sous chef to take his stick back outside. And not to poke the dog with it.6. Continue with the melting of the chocolate and the mixing of the cream cheese.

7. Remind former sous chef that sticks belong outside, assist his exit. And that as much as he thinks he’s helping Oz by fanning him, the dog does not appreciate the waving of the stick over his head. Wash hands. Go back to recipe for approximately 3.2 seconds.8. At the behest of former sous chef, open sand box so he can do his own mixing. Tell him not to “feed” sand to Oz. Wash hands.

9. Open the fridge to get Cool Whip out, realize the recipe only calls for 2 cups. Incidentally, it’s a little less than a small bowl of Cool Whip. Wonder why they didn’t just use the whole bowl.

10. Contemplate whether to add the extra Cool Whip or eat it with a spoon.

11. Decide to split the difference and add a little extra, eat the rest.

12. Discover that former sous chef is dumping sand out of the sandbox and tell him he’ll have to get out if he does it again. Remind him once again that Oz does not need to eat sand. Wash hands, pick up spatula.

13. Remove the sand-dumping offender from the “box” and observe a full-fledged hissy fit. Wash hands. 14. Mix in the chocolate chunks, peanuts, and marshmallows.15. Prepare crust to receive rocky road goodness.

16. Discover former sous chef has found the pooper scooper, contemplate how serious the offense is.17. Decide that since there was no poop being scooped, the play could continue.

18. Make mental note to wash the boy thoroughly before allowing him to touch anything in the house. Wash hands for good measure.

19. Dump creamy rocky road mixture into crust. 20. Cover, slide into the fridge. Done.

21. Repeat.

I was about worn out by the time I finished these things. And the kitchen towel I’d been drying my hands with? Was no longer useful for drying anything. But oh. my. word. those cheesecakes were good.

I’d love to see a TV chef cook while supervising a toddler and puppy. They’re welcome to come to my house to give it a shot. I’ll even be the sous chef.