Thursday, July 29, 2010

Who's Birthday Is It? & The Cheesecake Cookie

So y'all probably don't know that it was K's birthday yesterday.  He turned 36.  I wanted to plan something nice for him.  But you know, the best of intentions sometimes fail.

K and I are not wealthy in any sense of the word.  We are about as average as you can get.  We have made sacrifices so that I can be a SAHM.  That means we pretty much live paycheck to paycheck.  And that is OK with us.  It isn't like our family has to go without, we just go without the *extras* when it comes to certain things.  Since Little C has been on Nutramigen, things have gotten a bit more tight in the finances department.  She goes through 3 of those big cans of powder every 2 weeks.  At 33 bucks a can plus tax, it is a little over $100.00 every 2 weeks just for her formula.  K gets paid twice a month.  So things get to be a little tight right around payday.  So planning a dinner out, or movies or anything like that was out until Friday.

I take birthdays very seriously.  I mean come on, it is a celebration of the day you were born.  I know how excited I was when my babies were born.  Those were the best days of my life!  So I have to do something on the actual day.  It just so happens that K prefers pie over cake.  So I thought about making him one of his favorite pies.  Then I remembered I used up all but a smattering of the flour when I baked bread last week.  Darn.  I thought about running out and picking some up, but I had an emergency dental appointment looming that afternoon to fix a chipped tooth.  Darn again.

I looked around the kitchen.  Rummaged through the pantry and grabbed the graham cracker crumbs.  Hmm.  The only think K likes as much as pie is cheesecake.  Checked the fridge and there was still cream cheese left from the 6 pack I bought a few weeks ago when I made carrot cream cheese muffins & marble brownies.  Score!  I moved things around looking for it but it was just the one package.  Darn...a third time.  Well...I could half the recipe and everything would be OK.  It would be a small cheesecake, but a cheesecake nonetheless!

Happily, I made my crust and then I realized the smallest pan I had was an 8.5" springform.  You have to be kidding me.  I could have sworn I had a smaller one.  Well crap.  My dental appointment time was creeping up on me.  So I decided in the words of Tim Gunn on Project Runway to "Make it work."  I baked my crust, threw in my filling, popped it in the oven and ran to get ready for my appointment.  Twenty-five minutes later I pulled it out.  It looked beautiful!  I was so excited because it didn't even crack!  Tossing it in the fridge I raced out the door to the car and zoomed off to get this chipped tooth fixed.

After getting home from the dentist, I found K feeding Big C dinner.  I hugged & kissed him, wished him a happy birthday for the 3rd time and ran back to get Little C a bottle and feed her.  It is almost time to put the kids to bed so I head out to the kitchen to get K's cake, sing happy birthday and give cards/gifts.  Big C is sitting with my dad in the living room and I yell out to him, "Come on Dad, it's time to sing 'Happy Birthday'."  To which he answers, "Singing it to who?"  Uh, how long have K & I been married?  You'd think my dad would know his birthday by now.  J gets the fridge door for me and I whip out the cheesecake.  TA DA!!!  K smiles broadly.  After setting it in front of him I flip the spring on the pan and take off the sides and look in horror.

J looks at me and says, "What the heck happened to the cheesecake?"  I almost burst into tears.  Even though the cake was fine, because I didn't have a pan that was smaller in diameter than the 8.5" spring form, my cheese cake looked more like a cookie.  With my lip quivering slightly, I recounted my earlier adventure trying to get everything together to make something.  J laughed.  K laughed.  I felt bad for a few minutes.  Then I laughed too.  Seriously, it was hilarious.  It looked so funny.  However it tasted fabulous!

Not the sharpest picture, but you can see, clearly a Giant. Cheesecake. Cookie.


Later, when K & I climbed into bed, we fell asleep laughing.  Between my dad asking who we were singing to & the cookie that was really a cheesecake, he told me it would be a birthday he would never forget.  Mission accomplished!
 

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