My daughter likes candy. Like, a LOT.
Here, as an example, is a photograph of her trick-or-treating at 2 years old. That's what you call "laser focus."
The Willy Wonka Candyland Rainbow Surprise Cake
SWEETS
I Made the Disneyland Churro Tots!
I would like to announce that I am really leaning into this Quarantine Cooking thing. (Sidenote: Are we still under quarantine? To what extent, precisely? What are the rules, and where are the grownups who are supposed to be telling us what the rules are at any given moment? And WILL SOMEBODY TELL US WORKING HUMANS HOW TO HANDLE THE TOTAL AND COMPLETE ABSENCE OF DAY CARE FOR THE FORESEEABLE FUTURE THX.)
But food, right.
I'm not ordinarily a huge kitchen-experimenter, but I'm actually having a lot of fun (fun! remember that?!) trying out new techniques these days. I've made a big batch of homemade ramen every single weekend for the past month - this weekend the plan is to try to achieve a tonkotsu-style broth - and have whipped up rainbow cakes, pancake cereal, and banana breads for days (obvi). So when my friend texted me that Disney had released their "secret" churro recipe and that the ingredients were all things I happened to have laying around, I was on that within minutes.
Strongly Suggest You Try Making Peepshi
Such a fun weekend project!
Hahahahahahahaha remember when weekends existed? It's Tuesday; seems like as good of a day as any for a ludicrous, labor-intensive edible project involving enormous quantities of sugar.
Okay. Now that we've established that you're making Peepshi, because of course you are, let me tell you how to do it. This geniusness was originally created by Serious Eats, but now that I've made one batch and am thus clearly an expert, I'm going to tell you the little discoveries that I made over the course of the Peepshi-making process that I thought were extra wonderful.
How To Make An Original Cayman Islands Mudslide
Lunch.
I've never been a huge fan of Mudslides. I acknowledge this is an unpopular opinion, it's just...you know, if I want ice cream, I want ice cream. If I want a cocktail, I don't want to add hundreds of calories to it; I'd rather have the cocktail...and then, maybe later on, have ice cream that doesn't taste like alcohol. You know?
But apparently real Mudslides - by which I mean the ones made where the drink was invented, The Wreck on Grand Cayman's Rum Point - don't have any ice cream in them at all. As the story goes, they were created in the 1970s when a customer came in wanting a White Russian (vodka, Kahlua, and cream), but since the bar was out of cream, the bartender substituted Bailey's Irish Cream. He threw it all in a blender, and ta da: A drink that's milkshake-level delicious, but not saturated in sweetness. (So you can have two. Just proceed with caution; these may not taste like anything but wonderfulness, but they're deceptively strong.)
“Cave Of Wonders” Birthday Cake (With Rainbow Interior)
I want to be humble about this one, but it took me five hours, so I'm not going to be. (Granted, the creation process might have been slowed down ever-so-slightly by the fact that I was catching up on the 2-part season finale of The Bachelorette while fondant-ing, but STILL.)
So. To recap, the make-an-impossibly-fancy-birthday-cake-for-my-child tradition started with the Mermaid Cake (a process that began with my friend Alisa taking pity on me and teaching me how to make a cake that did not turn out like this).
Then came the Spooky Ghost Cake, the Moana Cake, the Bloodshot Eyeball Cake, and the Tie-Dye Rainbow Cake. This year my daughter suggested a "Moana Rainbow Unicorn Mermaid Cake," but I gently steered her in the direction of something a) new, and b) not that, because the chances of me executing that extremely specific vision were zero, and?
