I’m so bad at being an adult.
But… I’m super great at pretending to be a reasonable grown-up. I mean, seriously. I somehow pay my taxes and have car insurance… but I eat brownies for dinner and write a blog for a living. Most days I need adult supervision.
Grown-ups get in pickles. Sticky situations. I know. I’ve been in my fair share.. Luckily I know how to bake my way out. It’s a skill and a gift… and I’m sharing.
Note: perhaps the following examples are based on personal experiences. Perhaps.
Double Note: Hot Fudge Sundae Cupcakes are bomb.
What to bake for your parents when you stop by their house, unannounced, with a truckload of dirty laundry to wash in their machine: Oatmeal Chocolate Pecan Cookies.
You get away with such blatant laundry abuse because your mom used to do the same thing to her mother. Tell Mom it’s the circle of life if she tries to give you a hard time. Circle of Life…. there’s no fighting The Lion King.
What to bake for your brother when you forget his wife’s name: Dark Chocolate Brownies.
Actually… you should feel extra bad because his wife’s name is basically the same as your own mother’s name. How could you forget that!? Tacky.
What to bake after a night of drunk texting people you shouldn’t even be sober texting… and your mom: Brown Sugar Bacon Waffles.
I mean…. I’m just guessing here. It’s not like this has ever happened to me. Except that one time… and then maybe that other time too.
Ugh.
What to bake when you’re matched with your ex-boyfriends best friend on an Internet dating site.
Oh Lordy. You’re gonna need some Rice Pudding.
Pudding soothes the awkward.
To avoid writing out bills, I always find that whipping up some yeasted sweet bread fills up my time. You might consider it.
Pan Dulce. Time consuming and delicious.
But bills must be payed eventually. Adulthood is annoying like that.
85 Responses
My mouth is watering; amazing post with fabulous pictures…you are so talented! Have a great day….and keep up the yummy bloggin’ and bakin’!
I love your posts they are entertaining
this is a seriously funny post! as always, but I mean really joy, the dating site predicament is sounding so familiar. hmmm. time for some dulce de leche. dulce cures all. not cancer, or even hunger, but everything else…i swear ;)
I have several of those “adult”-type things calling my name!! Ugh!! Makes me want to call for my Mommy!! Maybe I’ll just bake instead and continue to avoid.
I agree with everyone who says adulthood is over-rated.
I do like having brownies for breakfast though .. or drinking Coke instead of coffee on a hot morning. ( I grew up in the South, I am allowed !!) I also get to take my dog to lunch and have a Bloody Mary instead of eating. So I guess I will continue to do the Adult thing.
About your brother.. he married a girl with the same name as his mom ?
Why should you feel bad, you don’t call your mom by her first name do you? Unless his wife’s name is Mom, you are forgiven :D
Adulthood is highly overrated… dark chocolate brownies, oatmeal chocolate pecan cookies (and everything else on this page) on the other hand can never be overrated. Yum. Thanks for continuing to inspire us to indulge.
Hahaha this cracks me up! Sometimes I wish I was a kid again. :) Boo on adulthood!
I live in Buenos Aires, Argentina, it’s 10 pm here, and I’m having brownies for dinner right now!
I heard of a “friend” who would visit his parents 400 miles away from where he was living and he’d sometimes (or always) put his dirty clothes in the trunk of the car just in case he had a moment or two to do some laundry. I mean, in my “friend’s” defence, the washer/dryer was right there and it didn’t need tokens!
it’s ok if you still do your laundry at your parents’ house. i do. duuuh. also. i have exactly zero intention of stopping.
Perhaps I’ll print it out and keep it within instant reach, for emergency cases. :)
brownies! mmmm…
super cute post. i love your humor, joy..and everything looks like it exactly fits the occasion. :-)
I agree that when you’re a grown up you can have brownies for breakfast AND dinner if you want to! And actually, I’d love to have ine of these cupcakes for dinner!
Smile!!!
Joy,
I go to your blog whenever I need a food-ogling fix or a down-to-earth reminder with a sense of humor that I am not the only one with foibles and flaws. I currently live in South Korea where ovens are a rarity, so I mostly just drool over the pictures and bookmark them for when I am back in the US with a proper oven. Your posting about being an adult made me think of this cartoon:
https://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/06/this-is-why-ill-never-be-adult.html
Keep up the good work!
I love that cartoon (and blog in general). Allie somehow crawled into my brain.
were you seriously matched with an ex-boyfriends best friend online? geeezzz. i would say ‘awkward’ for sure!
I unfortunately don’t have that kind of relationship with my mom. And I don’t have a brother who’s married… but I have two boys, a husband and lots and lots of friends and I love to bake for them ! A couple of your awesome recipes will be happily welcomed around my house ! Thanks for the recipes and the life experience on your blog site ! :)
Love the post! I haven’t done any of those things, either. and I recommend cake for breakfast after drunken texting. I mean, I would, if I had any experience in it.
As always, can’t wait to try your recipes!
As an adult, I have a job. That job is teaching little children things like letters and colors and sharing and whatnot. I’d like to try cooking with them this winter when we can’t get outside. Any thoughts, ideas or suggestions? The kids cookbooks I find are just way to boring and everyday for my tastes.
(no allergies to worry about, though we do have some kids that are allergic to peanuts/nuts, eggs and wheat if you’d have any ideas I could pass on)
Thanks!
Everything looks freaking amazing. AMAZING! Those brownies are definitely being made asap.
I really needed a good laugh today! I love your website and have tried many of your recipes. I am glad that you blog for a living.
What about when your mom gives you her washer/dryer and then asks to come over and use it? Yeah…it was weird for me too.
I don’t know too many grown-ups who bake like this… but wouldn’t the world would be a much happier place if they did! I’m intrigued by the Pan Dulce… yum.
I am PMS’ing right now and I need one of EVERYTHING on this page. Like, now. Do you deliver?
The good thing about being a grown up is that you CAN have brownies for dinner (and/or breakfast or lunch) and there’s no one to scold or stop you. The rest is not as glamourous as we thought it would be as children. Love your recipes and sense of humor. Keep it coming!
this made me laugh :) the hot fudge sundae cupcakes look amazing!
I wish I could forget my brother’s wife’s name…did I just type that? LOL! Everyting looks divine!
So so true! Very clever post.
YOU CRACK ME UP. And your pictures are always drool-worthy.
Hey, I did the drunk texting thing the other night! But it was worse! I was drunk calling. And drinking cosmos. Alone. At a bar. Your post has made me feel much better. Thank you for that! : )
giiiirl. i gotyou.
I like to be an adult in evenings – nobody tells me: Wash yourself and go to bed. Oh! Maybe sometimes :) Joy, have I told you I love your sense of humor? Yes, yes, one million times (at least!).
I can see that I’m not the only one that uses baking for therapy/bribery. Thanks for the good laugh. I needed that.
THANK YOU for giving me a good laugh during my lunch break! I definitely needed this to power me through the rest of a Friday afternoon :)
I just got me a spanking new KitchenAid today, one I’ve been saving for for ages *beams* (it’s mighty pricey where I live in Europe) So I come to your site and tell myself Imma use the KA to make the very thing that you would have posted on your latest post and now I’m flustered! You put a few recipes up. How do I choooooooose? Tell me Joy, just tell me ONE recipe I should try to inaugurate Lola. Yes I’ve named my mixer. I await with bated breath.
Does it make me less of a grown up if I make the Pan Dulce look like pandas?
This is to perfect. Too too perfect! :)
I once baked a batch of cupcakes for co-workers flavoured with “remorse” as an apology. I had ditched out sick the day before because I was too hungover to function…and we had all been drinking the night before so I know everyone else was in pretty much the same condition as me.
They helped make things better :)
These all look amazing and very grown-up!! I was wondering if you had ever tried your hand a caramel apples? Your thoughts on how to keep caramel from sticking to plastic bags when you give as a gift??
Love your blog!!
Marianne
Joy, I was once matched with roommates. ROOMMATES. Out of eHarmony’s 91,276 matching criteria, they didn’t once think about addresses. Awkward once I realized what had happened. Too bad I didn’t have the rice pudding recipe then.
What? Drunk texting? Never! The worse is it’s all there in mind blowing detail to review the next morning…definitely need to keep that waffle recipe on hand for those instances.
Hi Joy.
So. I’ve seen your page listed on countless “Blogs I Love/Follow/Worship” lists on other people’s blogs so it’s been on my mental checklist for a while now. I finally got around to making my first visit yesterday…and man. I really like it here. It’s not so much the pictures (incredible, btw) or the recipes (all nom-worthy, of course) – it just “feels” nice here. Very chill. It’s the type of blog that don’t want to start reading until I’m perfectly situated in my computer chair, wearing my comfy after-work pants and with a Belgian ale in a tulip glass in my free hand.
Brown sugar bacon waffles would make a great hangover breakfast for the day after my husband’s birthday next week.
Nice. Didn’t realize that yummy baked goods=get out of jail free card.
I’ll have to try it!
You crack me up!
Matched with your ex-bf’s best friend? Wow! You can’t make stuff like that up!
I seriously loved this post, but the stand out was the awesome Lion King reference! Kudos on excellent use of a Disney movie to drive your point home.. oh, and on this blog, because it rules.
Those cupcakes and waffles look amazing! This post just made my Friday morning… thanks for sharing!
Brown sugar bacon waffles….if only my father could see that photo now!
Those cupcakes look amazing. And if I’d known oatmeal chocolate pecan cookies would’ve done the trick… well, I would’ve been a much cleaner 20-something post-college. Just sayin’…
Brown sugar bacon waffles? Yes please!
i love these categories. when i finally stopped showing up at my mom’s house with the truckload of laundry, i knew i’d finally grown up
high five to you. i’m not sure i’ll ever be a grownup.
I love Pan Dulce! Its a tradition in my culture. I’ve never tried baking it before… but I bet it would be time consuming. Yours looks delicious!
I didn’t know you wrote this blog for a living! I guess that explains why it’s laid out so well. I’m so glad you do it though – new posts make me a happy girl.
oh my gosh i am cracking up out loud – at 5:30 in the morning! thanks for the great start to a Friday!
Love it…so many grown up situations can only be remedied with baked goods. We firmly believe that too. Everything looks amazing!
Would you believe me if I said I literally baked some Oatmeal Chocolate Pecan Cookies LAST NIGHT to bring home to my parents today?? I guess great minds think alike.. weird! :) However, all my laundry is clean. Hopefully that counts for something.
wait… what’s the point of going to your parents’ house if you don’t have dirty laundry!? i’m not sure i understand this.
Nice list! I know that when I was a kid, I didn’t get to just decide to make waffles. Being a grown-up can be all right sometimes ;)
i totally agree, sometimes being an adult kind of sucks, but these are good remedies:-)
Um. Wow. Those pictures are amazing and totally make me want to bake. And I’m not even much of a baker!
am avoiding adult, to the best of my abilities. will pay bills when necessary, but refuse to act like a full out grown up. I teeter somewhere between middle school and high school.
everything looks dlish!
friend of a friend got matched with her ex husband. truth. i bet she wishes she knew about your rice pudding trick…
ugh!
Who wants to be an adult anyway?
The one that got me was being matched with the ex’s bff. (Hey, maybe you were in the right neighborhood and just at the wrong address?) Although I realize, this may not have been about you but about another person. ;)
Seriously? That stuff happens to me too. Ack.
Okay, I’m hooked on your blog. It’s 8AM here in good ol’ England, my little ones & I woke up 30 min. ago, I’ve changed their nappies, made ’em some toast, plopped them in front of the tv (bad mummy! good cbeebies progs so I don’t feel that bad), and here I am on your blog. Love your style and your grub. Now, would you mind sending your cupcakes over the pond?
those waffles look great, might try making them with vegetarian bacon one day
I loved that post! Lol! I am also an adult who’s great at pretending to be a grownup!!!
Those a delicious treats!
Cheers,
Rosa
Adulthood is overrated. I mean, so many kids just want to grow up, and I just want to go back to being a kid. That said, I’m still not sure what I want to be when I grow up.
I should make pan dulce. Wasting time with baking is one of my favorite things!
Pan dulce! And the waffles aren’t exactly baking, but heh. It counts.
haha at drunk texting. Thank god i’ve never done that. Oh wait …..
I am so hungry right now, I would love some baked goods. I will have to get off my lazy bum and make something now!
Your life sounds so interesting and hilarious… with just a dash of awkward. Or two! :-) All appear to be delicious and effective ways to deal with the stress of “adult” life. Bleh!
If only baking would make the bills disappear. I’m with you. I refuse to grow up….ever.
Do you really just write on your blog for a living?
The pan dulce remind me of Rotiboys. They are a Mexican bun with a coffee topping. These buns are sooo good. You should try them out one day. :) The Hot Fudge Sundae Cupcakes are so cute.
You. crack. me. up.
The waffles are amazing. I’ve made them multiple times!
Those cupcakes. I am drooling. And thinking in gibberish.
Joy, you never fail for a late night chuckle…Thank you.