My husband was down to bring cake into work. Enough for at least 30 people. I’d agreed to help. Crazy, I know.

 Some people would be stressed, and cursing, and reaching for the painkillers. Some people would be ordering a ready-made cake. Some people would even be telling the husband where he could stick his cake while they packed his suitcase.

Not me. I LOVE baking! (and my husband, so I’m not gonna send him packing just yet.) Rather than be stressed or daunted I took a whole day off to get down with my bad self in the kitchen. Rather than just bake three cakes, all the same kind, I thought let’s change this shit up. I got out my Thug Kitchen cookbooks and decided to make 5 different types of baked goods. Mostly cookies and muffins.

Don’t applaud me just yet. This was for entirely selfish and calculated reasons. It’s much easier to sneak a few muffins than try to steal a whole slice of cake.

People tend to notice that something is missing when you bring them cake that looks like this:

I figured, after much selfless deliberation, that it was very important that I sampled all the baked goods first, in case any of them tasted….uh….wrong. That’s the sort of person I am. Always thinking of others.

*clears throat and quickly moves on*

So. I decided to make:

• Carrot cake cookies  (p.194 TK1)
• Shredded carrot and apple muffins (p.198 TK1)
• Peanut butter and banana nut muffins (p.199 TK1)
• Banana chocolate chip cookies (p.165 TK3)
• Almond cake with peach caramel. (p.162 TK3)

The day started out with a migraine. That’s always fun.

I was literally lying on the bathroom floor on the bath mat using my towel as a pillow, trying to talk myself into taking a shower because the hot water would help.

I’m not sure what it was that finally motivated me to get up. Perhaps it was the promise of coffee brewing nearby, or perhaps it was my toddler coming in to perform his morning poop. Either way I hauled myself off the floor and moved on.

Later I’d got my shit together and I was ready to do some baking.

I started by putting on an apron and then promptly knocking a big bowl of flour over onto the floor. Fifteen minutes, some cursing, some sneezing a whole bunch of sweeping and mopping later, I began the carrot and apple muffins. Take a look at these glorious fuckers:

Once they were in the oven  doing their thing I whipped up the almond cake with plum caramel. Yes, you heard me. Plums, not peaches. I couldn’t find peaches and figured these were like a close enough cousin that we could sub them in without it being like a whole other cake. A close cousin is better than some distant great-grandfather you know? What I’m sayin’ is I wouldn’t throw in a wrinkly avocado, when I could throw in some juicy plums. You know what I mean?

So I blended the fuck outta the plums, made the caramel sauce, and worked my magic on the rest of the ingredients, and ended up with this magical creation. If the sugar-plum fairy and a bag of sugared almonds had a love child, this what the cute little brat would look like. Oh yeah, don’t be fooled, it would be a total brat with all the second-hand sugar it was ingesting from its parents crazy irresponsible habits. It would be a hyper little fucker. But a fucking adorable, irresistibly cute little fucker nonetheless.

I had originally been flicking through the pages of the new Thug Kitchen cookbook: Fast as Fuck, when I saw this recipe. I nearly skipped past it when I read the headline: ‘Are you a terrible baker but wanna dazzle motherfuckers with dessert? You’ve flipped to the right page. Welcome to “that one dessert you do really well” from this day forward.’

That made me laugh. With a headline like that you’ve just gotta try making it, right? It’s like a dare. And I laugh in the face of dares. Especially when under the influence of migraine meds.

So I moved on to the banana chocolate chip cookies.

I cannot even begin to describe the amazing smells coming from my oven while these bad boys were baking. I burnt myself a little on one of the melted chocolate chunks while scarfing one of these straight from the oven. But it was worth the pain. Almost. Sadistic cookie fuckers. These cookies are better than crack. (Not that I have crack experience. I’m not that sort of cook. But these cookies were as addictive as checking your messages on social media.)

On to the carrot cake cookies.

I grated the shit outta the carrots, chopped up some walnuts, whisked up the oil and milk, threw some raisins around the place and hoped for the best. They turned out damn fine. Like daaaaaaaamn fine.

I’m suppressing some drool right now, just remembering these cookies. I have occasional taste flash backs of different depths and layers of brown sugar, cinnamon and ginger. I might need these cookies in my life again soon. Very soon.

Lastly, I threw together the peanut butter banana nut muffins. Though they ended up being less nut-muffins and more chocolate-muffins, because I followed the Thugs advice and subbed the walnuts for chocolate chips.

I love the line the Thugs use to describe this muffin: This is the Elvis of muffins. So bow the fuck down to the king and his great taste.

Tell me you’re not salivating right now, and make me believe it.

So, the day started out crazy with migraine and flour all over the floor, but by the end of the day my home smelled like a cookie factory, which I guess for a few hours it sort of was. I stashed a few cookies and muffins to share with my nearest and dearest and then sent the rest away so we weren’t spending the next couple of days gorging ourselves and then yoyo-ing from sugar highs.

Needless to say my husband was very popular at work the next day.

What are your favourite cookie recipes? Which have you tried from the thug Kitchen cookbooks or blogs?