The Cake that Almost didn't Make It

If there is one thing I love in this world, it's making beautiful and delicious food. But who can eat a cake every day? Or even every week? Wait. Let me rephrase that. I know that cake is a sometimes food, so I don't make it every week. Plus, I am all about making from scratch and using best quality ingredients. Full fat. Full flavour.
One of my friends is celebrating her birthday today, and I had told her husband a while ago that I was planning on making a cake for her. Because, see above reason. Food. Love. Eat. Love.
But that was a few weeks ago. And I kinda forgot about it until, ohhhhh, yesterday. I know she loves peanut butter buttercream and dark chocolate cake. But I made that last year. And for Sashimi's birthday. And I gave her the leftover cake from his birthday.
So I wanted to tackle a new recipe.
Today. Without pre-reading or whatever. Just OOOOOH! I wanna make that awesome Sweetapolita cake with the peanuts on the side!
I get home from work at 12:30. Quickly look up that nutty recipe on my absolute drooltastic favourite blog Sweetapolita. Look at a bunch of other fantastic looking tasties. Get back to the peanut throwing cake. Figure out what ingredients I need, which fortunately is not much. Eat lunch, get iBean dressed (that's right...she was still hanging out in her birthday suit at 1:00 pm) and head to the store.
She's excited, I'm excited. There will be butter and sugar being creamed together. Whipping cream. Cream cheese. PEANUT BUTTER.
Ooooooooh baby.
Pulling into the parking lot of the store, guess who falls asleep.  And NO, it wasn't me. I figure she just fell asleep, I'll take her out of her carseat and she'll be good to go.
You know what? My arms are the best bed EVER. I hauled iBean in the crook of my left arm, and did all my shopping with my right arm, while also holding my phone, which had a shopping list in it. Open the cooler door with right arm, prop open with right hip, grab dairy products while trying not to bang iBean's head with the door as it slams shut. What else do I need? Oh yeah. FLOUR. That's not at ALL hard to grab with one hand and put into a cart without dropping your snoring 2 year old sleeping in your armpit. Because as strong as I am, my muscles may just give out and my arm may spontaneously fall off.
Oh. But guess what? There's no whipping cream in the entire dairy cooler. The entire rest of the cooler is full. I wonder if they are just putting it out. I go see Tony at the pharmacy and ask him to tell me where I can go to get more whipping cream. He calls someone. Immediately afterward I hear a page for someone, then that person responds with a page for someone else. Snore snore drool drool.
Aaaaaaaaannnnnd 10 minutes later they call back: no whipping cream.
For the love of freaking throwing peanuts. I have to go to ANOTHER store??
I go to the checkout, hear some poor employee get totally ripped into by his "superior". "Where's your handheld" she asks him. He says he doesn't know. She pulls it out from behind her back: "Mmmmmhmmm.  I KNOW you don't know. Because I have it. You are never allowed to blah blah blah humiliate belittle tears and crying into a pillow at night."
iBean is still asleep.
I finally pay, get everything into my cart, wheel out to the car, put the groceries in the back, put iBean in  her carseat.
And THEN she decides to wake up. All smiley and silly.
So we hit another store just for whipping cream and to look at pumpkins -  "Those are BIG ones! And it's a petit one!"
We get home and it's time to get at 'er!
I have to separate some eggs. The first egg I crack has something red in it.  But not just a red dot. I look closer. It was probably 2-3 mm in diameter. It's a freaking embryo. I can tell. It was fleshy, pink chicken-like.
Shudder shudder shriek. Garbage. And then I meticulously inspect each egg afterward to make sure there is no surprise protein. Ughhhhhhhhh.
The rest of the cake is easy. iBean adds ingredients, she tosses the chocolate chips with a pinch of flour when needed, and voilà.
Then we made the peanut butter mousse filling. Cream cheese, icing sugar, peanut butter, vanilla and whipped cream. iBean's words: This TASTEEEE! between mouthfuls of licking the spatula.
I start getting ready to assemble the cake. I grab a serated knife to do some trimming, and there is goo on it. From the cake. Holy. Poo. On. Melba. Toast. The middle is not baked. How the hell did that happen? I toothpick tested it and it came out clean!! Can you actually put a cooled cake back in the oven to finish baking? I dunno, but I'm gonna find out.
Turns out, you can. Sort of. The middle bakes, but the edges get quite, um, crunchy. But there is nothing I hate more than undercooked gooey cake.
This setback totally delays my estimated time of cake.  By a good hour, because now I have to let the thing cool all over again. In the meantime, my friend's hubby texts me: We are patiently waiting.........

By the time I put it together, the cake is not totally cool, but it is well past cake time and it needs to get in people's bellies. So I do my best to get it to stay upright and look pretty.
And thanks to my turn table and expert peanut-throwing skills, it turned out pretty darn good.

Yea!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It was also tasty. Pretty. Tasty.


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And there are a bunch of platters on sale this week at Walmart. I think I'm gonna go grab a bunch. Beacuse seriously? That platter cost me under $5. And it's awesome.