Well, At Least the Puppies Ate Good...

OK, I would have totally won the "How Martha Were You" prize yesterday morning had I called the Martha Stewart morning show.

Totally.

I decorated the Christmas tree and the house, made crepes (with Nutella and marscapone cheese), cooked a giant pot of chili with cornbread and Riley's gumbo, made sauce for the tortellini, did a little shopping, and I baked.

Christmas cookies and cakes.

Boy, did I bake!

On Saturday I pulled out the cookie press for some spritz cookies. (I learned from Martha Stewart that spritz is the German word for squirt, which is how you make the cookies.) Trays and trays of cookies. So I set out a sample, kind of for decoration.



Having finished my last task of the day, I decided to take Riley for his walk.

This is what I returned to.



I asked Billy if he ate all the cookies and got a response of "what cookies?". I looked in Scooter's usual "laying place" in the kitchen and found the napkin.

(Not to fear, Billy did get plenty of cookies. The tray was only a sampling.)

So, Sunday rolls around and it is time for the big project.

Cakes.






I had seen this cake on another blog and wanted to try it. One for work and one for us.

This cake requires 3 boxes of cake mix. I only have two cake pans so this was an all-afternoon process.

Mix, tint, bake the batter.

Repeat.

Twice.

While the cake is baking I'm decorating and have the Christmas music going and all is well in my world.

I get the last two layers out and they are cooling.

Decorating is not far off now!

I walked upstairs to tell Billy something. Gone two minutes, max.

Yep.

You guessed it.

Patches ate the last two layers.

Not completely, but I think he only stopped because they were still burning hot out of the oven.

I walked back upstairs, tears in my eyes. All I could say was "Patches ate my cakes. Patches ate my cakes."

Billy's response - "All of them?" (I think he would have been secretly impressed had one dog eaten 6 cakes layers in that amount of time but wouldn't have said so.)

I pulled myself together and went to further survey the damage. Patches had munched about a third from each layer so I thought I'd just cut that part off and see what I could do.

This monstrosity was the result.




You can't really tell, I couldn't bring myself to photograph any more of it, but the layers split and it wouldn't stand up and it was just a huge disaster of a cake.

Fortunately, Billy is big believer in the adage that the food is all going to the same place and it doesn't matter what it looks like. He has been eating on this mound for a couple of days.

(He has a good soul, don't you think?)

Anyway, I took the good cake to work yesterday and it was oohhed and aaahhhed over and generally well received.

And my lesson - either get higher counters or smaller dogs....