Kitchen Adventures

Well, another season, another kitchen adventure...

It's the Christmas season...time for baking, right? Grandma Bunny, my mom, routinely makes 34 recipes for her annual tea, I must have inherited SOME kind of baking ability, right?

Kraft Foods sends out a free quarterly magazine called Food & Family. Recipes are filled with Kraft products and read as though ANYONE can make them.

Maren LOVES to cook and help in the kitchen. I select a recipe for Chocolate-Peanut Butter Cookie Bars. There are 7 ingredients, what could go wrong?

We gather our ingredients, including Maren grabbing a gallon of milk out of the fridge and hoisting it onto the counter (from birth, she is freakishly strong). Okay, everything is assembled.

At our work station, Maren notices a small rock she found this summer which has been residing on the counter. "Oh, my silver rock! I'm so glad to see it." My assistant grabs her rock and exits the kitchen. That's okay, gives me some time to find my Pampered Chef chopper to cut up the six squares of Baker's semis-sweet chocolate. Finally, a Pampered Chef purchase pays off!

Maren returns. "Where were you?," I ask. "Well...I took my rock, and I put some tape on it, and I put it under the pillow for the tooth fairy." "You did? What does the tooth fairy do?" "Well, the tooth fairy comes in the night and takes teeth from under children's pillows and leaves money for them to buy toys." "But you still have all of your teeth." "I KNOW Mama."

Moving on...

We attempt to chop up the chocolate. Who are these Baker's Chocolate people? These squares could be used to patch roads in Michigan. They are solid and dense. Maren and I take turns using the chopper (all blades safely contained) and all we are able to produce is chocolate dust. The pieces are as big as ever. ARGH. Finally, a few small chunks break off. This is taking forever...I did out the rarely used mini-Cusinart. We load the chocolate into the Cuisinart and take turns pressing the pulse button. ARGH. Again, we produce some chocolate dust and only a few small chunks. What is the deal? Nestle Chocolate Chips must not be owned by Kraft, we will use those if we ever attempt this again.

We are both sweaty and red-faced...but we press on to mixing and spreading the first layer of bars into the pan. I attempt to keep Typhoid Maren (cold, day 4) from coughing directly into the first layer.

Ring, ring - my cell phone. The IT guy from my new job, calling to help me walk through removing my firewall settings.

Now onto the next layer. Wow, it's hard to spread peanut butter on top of unbaked mix and peanuts and chips, don't the Kraft test kitchens well, TEST?...wait, what's that? ACK. We were supposed to bake the first layer for ten minutes and THEN spread the peanut butter...oh no...well, we will press on...We (me, at this point, Maren's attention has dissipated) do our best to spread the second layer of cake mix. Hmmm...very messy looking...sort of resembles the picture.

It all goes into the oven. Maren says "Okay, Mom. When the peanut butter bars are done, call me. You can say 'Maren' or 'Punkin'' or 'Angel' but call me, okay?" "Okay, Punkin."

Total baking time on recipe - 10 minutes for first layer, 15 minutes for completed layers. I put it in for 25 minutes and cross my fingers.

At 20 minutes I check it, VERY mushy. Geez. I put it in another 10. STILL mushy. Huh. The recipe says cool 1 hour and then refrigerate 4 hours before cutting into bars. Maybe they are supposed to be this mushy. Current status - cooling on stove, 15 minutes. Final status and taste - TBD.