A few days ago, Chaz was reading some blogs after work and stumbled upon something interesting. "Hey, come look at this!" he said, and then he followed up with, "...I'm going to email you something, because it's amazing."

Within a few seconds, my phone buzzed and I got an email containing a link to this. That's right. It's a giant peanut butter cup. After looking at the picture I could have started drooling, but I restrained myself and instead swore that I'd make it soon.

Fast-forward to yesterday. Work had been a constant ~~stream~~ ~~flood~~ avalanche of finish-one-thing-to-find-10-more-things, and baking, at least for me, is the perfect de-stressor activity. Actually, to quote the best movie (Julie and Julia - don't argue), "You know what I love about cooking? I love that after a day when nothing is sure and when I say nothing, I mean nothing, you can come home and absolutely know that if you add egg yolks to chocolate and sugar and milk, it will get thick. It’s such a comfort." She's talking about chocolate cream pie, but I say the principal applies to baking in general. And so I found myself at 8pm breaking out my tart pan, crushing up chocolate wafer cookies, stirring peanut butter into honey, and melting chocolate to pour on top. It was heavenly, until the reality of having a fresh pile of PB-covered dishes happened once it was finished.

Regardless of the dishes, it was 100% worth it. I mean, take a look!

When you get an outcome like that, the dirty dishes are secondary. We haven't sampled it yet - that's on tonight's to-do list - but it served its purpose yesterday. The stress of the day melted along with the chocolate in the double boiler. Too cheesy an analogy?

Woodstock Writings