Baking Woes

Snow days make perfect baking days.  They're lazy, and you're stuck in your house with nothing to do, and you can imagine the smell that would permeate your kitchen, and you know you have the time to do it...

I like to bake. Wait, I L-O-V-E to bake, but you know what I'm gonna say next.  It is such a huge temptation to eat everything I bake that I have a rule against doing it unless I know I can give all the goodies away.

Today I broke my rule.

I desperately wanted a snow day today.  Teaching makes a great job, but it is such a busy career and paired with motherhood sometimes I become physically exhausted.  I wanted to lay around my house and do nothing, burn no calories and just relax.

As afternoon set in, though, the kitchen was calling my name.   So was the chocolate in the pantry.  So was my daughter, begging me to don our matching aprons, like we're wearing six months ago here:

I went to a blog my dear little friend Frances told me about called Smitten Kitchen .  I have my standard recipe blogs, but I enjoyed this blog today because there are just so many selections, and the narrative that goes with each is well-written.

Now, I am recommending this blog, and the recipe I made, as long as you keep in mind that the recipes are not necessarily created for the healthful.  I absolutely recognized that.

I told myself I could wrap each individual cupcake up really tight and put them all in the freezer, eating one every other day (which actually can be a really good solution when baking).  I told myself I don't even like cheesecake.  I told myself I'd been sick, and my appetite hadn't come back quite yet.

When I smelled the cupcakes cooking in the oven, I knew I was done for.  My stomach starting making little hungry noises.  It expected me to eat one of those cupcakes.  It wasn't my fault.

The recipe was called black-bottom cupcakes .  That sounded innocent enough.  It doesn't even sound the slightest bit tempting, honestly.

The problem is, whoever named the cupcakes, was an idiot.  Naming these cupcakes black-bottom would be like calling a chocolate covered cherry a cherry.  Or cotton candy, cotton.  The moniker chooser left out the most important part, which is, of course, the tops of the cupcakes, which are like cheesecakes with tiny hunks of melted chocolate dispersed throughout.  Black-bottom cupcakes. Hmmph.

Needless to say, I ate two cupcakes today.  After my second one I kind of felt like my daughter looked:

Like I had just eaten like a pig.

I've done pretty well with my eating this week, not including today, and I could let these two innocent, little cupcakes ruin my diet.  But I'm not going to do it.

Instead of giving up for the day, I tried to look at the positive.  I mean, you do burn about 150 calories an hour or more cooking.  So that might be about half of one of my cupcakes right there.  Then I did spend about 15 minutes sweeping the kitchen floor afterward, which accounts for at least 50 calories.

My second coping strategy was making something I don't enjoy eating for dinner.  To some that may sound sort of sick and wrong, strategically planning not to eat much for dinner.  To me it sounded like a dang good idea.

I made sausage and potato soup.  I loathe nothing in the world more than potatoes, and in soup form nothing could be worse.

Therefore, I believe I ended my lazy day with no net weight gain.  See, it is completely possible to stay on your eating plan and bake little decadent, chocolate cheesecakes in cups.  Or at least it is until tomorrow.