A Birthday Equation

My beloved Mama asked me to make her a coconut cream pie for her birthday. The recipe I make requires rolling out a homemade pie crust, making a coconut custard, and crowning the whole thing with a meringue which may or may not survive an overnight holding pattern

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The day I would need to make the pie is also the day of the children's Christmas program at church. Both my girls are in the program, I'm a reader, and I have been charged with feeding 50 shepherds, angels, et al., prior to the presentation. A full-on coconut cream pie will not be coming out of my kitchen this day.

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Coconut Cream Pie Delight That's Better Than Robert Redford*

*As to the name of this dessert: in creating this recipe, I drew inspiration from a standard layered pastry/pudding concoction known, variously, as Pudding Delight, Almost-as-Good-as-Robert Redford, and Better Than ____________ (fill in the blank with whatever pleasure you suppose a dessert might surpass). I cobbled these together and came up with this name.

Coconut Cream Pie Delight That's Better Than Robert Redford

1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup butter, melted
1/2 cup flaked coconut, toasted, plus additional for serving

8 oz. regular or 1/3-less-fat cream cheese, softened
1 cup confectioner's sugar
1 cup thawed regular or reduced-fat whipped topping 

1 package (4-serving size) instant coconut cream pudding
1 package (4-serving size) instant white chocolate pudding (vanilla or French vanilla can be substituted)
3 cups 2% milk
1-2 cups thawed regular or reduced-fat whipped topping
additional toasted coconut, for garnish

For the crust: combine the flour, melted butter, and 1/2 cup toasted coconut in a small bowl with a fork. Press into the bottom of a 9 x 13 baking dish; it will be a thin layer. Not to worry: plenty more good stuff is going on top of it. Bake at 350 degrees for 10-12 minutes until it looks dry in the middle and is starting to brown a little at the edges. It does not need to be brown all over. Cool completely on a wire rack.

For the middle layer: Beat the cream cheese until smooth (a wooden spoon works fine for this if it's soft to begin with). Mix in the confectioner's sugar just until incorporated. (Reduced-fat cream cheese tends to rebel and turn runny if beaten too much.) Spread evenly over cooled crust. Chill for about 10 minutes to set slightly.

For the pudding layer: Whisk together both pudding mixes and the milk until the mixture starts to thicken. Pour or spoon gently and evenly over the cream cheese layer and spread out evenly. Chill to set (at least 15 minutes) before topping with additional whipped topping in a thin, thick, or somewhere-in-between layer, depending on your preference. Chill until ready to serve. At serving time (but not before), top with additional toasted coconut. Cut into squares and serve. (Alternatively, stand at the kitchen counter with the pan and a spoon and dig in. I did this with the sampler I made for myself along with my mom's birthday batch...but only for quality assurance testing purposes, of course.)

Rebellion Cupcakes (Chocolate Peanut-Butter Cupcakes)

Okay, so the original name for these cupcakes is "Chocolate Cupcakes with Peanut-Butter Marshmallow Frosting." But after reading yet another headline about the evils of sugar, "Rebellion Cupcakes" seemed more fitting. These cupcakes, which my little family declared "maybe the best cupcakes you've ever made," break every current food rule, but they sure taste delicious while they're doing it. 

According to Facebook/magazines/newspapers/the Internet, I am not supposed to eat nor drink nor feed my family:

• dairy
• sugar of any kind/form
• wheat
• corn
• nuts (too many allergies)
• meat/chicken/fish of any kind unless possibly I kill it in the wild and/or make sure it's sustainable and/or make sure it doesn't have any mercury and/or make sure it has never been given growth hormones and/or make sure it had plenty of room to run around during its livelier days
• eggs (allergies again)
• non-organic anything but most especially not strawberries
• tap water if my pipes are old
• bottled water
• M&Ms
• anything from Subway--or any other restaurant unless all the food comes from the certified organic garden they've got growing in their back yard or on their roof
• salt

I know we need to be careful about what "foreign substances" we put in our bodies, and I know some people must observe special dietary restrictions in order to be healthy. I believe that our bodies are gifts from God and, and we should treat them as precious vessels. But I personally believe that the spirits in these bodies are what God is most concerned about, and our spirits are the only parts of our bodies that aren't going to die anyway. I want to feed my family as healthfully as I can given constraints of time, budget, accessibility, personal preferences (gardening makes me want to cry...more on that in another post), individual tastes, and scheduling challenges. But eating one of these cupcakes is not going to desecrate my holy temple, and NOT eating one isn't going to prolong my life on this earth. So we'll have broccoli with dinner (non-organic, but cruciferous nonetheless) while we work on memorizing Bible verses for Sunday School (read: feed our eternal souls). Then, we'll enjoy a Rebellion Cupcake for dessert, and in the relative blink of an eye, we'll be in heaven and won't have to worry about any of this.

Rebellion Cupcakes

(Chocolate Cupcakes with Peanut-Butter Marshmallow Frosting) 

Cupcakes:
1 standard-sized box (2-layer) chocolate cake mix WITHOUT pudding in the mix
1 package (4-serving size) instant chocolate pudding mix
2/3 cup water
1/3 cup reduced-fat or regular sour cream 
4 egg whites or 2 whole eggs
2 tablespoons vegetable oil

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line 24 standard-sized muffin tins with paper liners and lightly coat each liner with nonstick cooking spray. 

With a hand mixer, beat together all the above cupcake ingredients on low speed until moistened. Stop mixer, scrape down sides of bowl with rubber spatula, and beat 2 minutes longer on medium speed. The batter will be thick. This is a good thing. Spoon into prepared muffin cups. Bake 18-24 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out with just a few moist crumbs clinging to it. Cool in pans for 10 minutes, then remove from pans and cool completely on a wire rack.

Frosting
1 cup peanut butter (I like smooth)
1 cup marshmallow creme
1/4 cup milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 cup powdered sugar
For garnish: 4-5 full-sized peanut butter cups, coarsely chopped

By hand (don't use a mixer here unless you want PB sauce instead of frosting), gently fold together the peanut butter, marshmallow creme, milk, and vanilla. Gently fold in the powdered sugar. Frost each cupcake, then top with chopped peanut butter cups. Store cool and airtight for a few days.

Grumpy Gardener Girl

I hate gardening. 

I know, I know: in a current culture that encourages, “Eat local, seasonal, organic food of your own producing, and if possible, keep a cow so you can legally consume raw milk, and also please keep some chickens,” this sentiment puts me on the fringe of decent society. 

And no, “hate” is not too strong a word.

I'm so sorry, but gardening makes me grumpy. Of course, as a melancholy, dysthemic introvert, most things make me grumpy. (Cue chorus of "amens" from my family and all my college roommates.) 

But gardening takes me to a new level of grumpiness. That this has not escaped my children’s notice became clear one summer when my then-6-year-old daughter said, “I’ll tell you how much you hate gardening. Once you start, you’re already at the end of your rope.” And all I was doing at the time of her comment was walking toward the garden.

I hate gardening because my garden is just one more thing that needs to be taken care of, one more thing that can go wrong. I have children and a 100-year-old farmhouse to build character and encourage selfless living. What do I need a garden for?

I want to establish for the record that while I hate gardening, I love several gardeners. 

I am crazy about my mom, who tends five gardens (Vegetable By the Stream, Vegetable By the Barn, Butterfly, Perennial, and Wildflower) and dreams of things like raised beds and electric fencing. My dear aunt lovingly nurtures beautiful roses. Another amazing woman in my life, with whom I share a love of music but not, clearly, of gardening, pours over seed catalogs in winter as an affirmation that God always brings spring. One of my most treasured friends “gets” me in so many ways no one else does but cannot possibly be expected to comprehend my hatred of gardening while she anticipates the sprouting of her 500 (!) seeds of corn. I love these wonderful women in spite of their passion for gardening just as they love me in spite of my abhorrence of it.

The best thing about gardening?
Getting to wear my beloved mud boots.

There are, however, some chasms between the pro- and anti-gardening camps that cannot be bridged. I once had a birthday twin at our church, a fellow mom relatively close to me in age who shared my April 20^th birthday. When I asked her one year if she had any special plans for our birthday, she replied, eyes shining, “The greenhouse opens that day, so I can go and spend my birthday money there.” That’s when I knew we couldn't be friends.

This is my kind of gardening:
I do nothing. Pretty stuff shows up in my yard.

Gardening proponents tout the unmatched pleasure of biting into a home-grown, perfectly ripe tomato whilst still standing in the garden. To this sentiment, I offer one retort: weeds. 

Also, the aforementioned tomato, which is supposed to make all this work and worry “worth it,” may never materialize at all due to various factors including but not limited to black spots, poor soil, deer, flood, drought, hail, heatwaves, and frost.

All of this, I know, begs the question, “So why do it?” For one thing, there is the guilt. Guilt is my modus operandi, my reason for doing almost everything except eating chocolate. We live on a quiet country road in an old farmhouse on 10 acres with a barn and a stone milk house, and it just seems we should have a garden. 

Also, I come from a long line of die-hard gardeners (see my mom, above), and I cannot escape the weight of my horticultural heritage. Plus, I love to eat. Pessimistic as I am about that perfect tomato, I would be thrilled to eat such a specimen produced in my own personal backyard. I could (should?) join a CSI or frequent local farmers’ markets, but our family is trying to survive on one income and such trendy practices feel a little indulgent on our budget.

So, I have a garden, but I hate it. In her excellent children’s book, More Perfect Than the Moon, Patricia MacLachlan tells the story of Cassie, who is about to be displaced as the youngest child in her family by the baby her mother is expecting. In her journal, Cassie takes to referring to her coming sibling as The Terrible Baby, and, in a nod to this wonderful book—and because I love reading so much more than gardening—I have begun calling my little patch of weeds and woe “The Terrible Garden.” 

It helps, a little.