Cheats Ice Cream Cake with Bittersweet Fudge and Salty Almond Crust
John and I have been trying to create more productive schedules for ourselves lately, like wake up early, go to be early and have meetings over our makeshift dinners.I'd love to tell you that we're just wildly successful at sticking to what we've written on our calendars but we're not. It's hard because we very much feel pulled in a lot of directions. (Don't we all though?) Me, being the mom (aka the primary care-taker of Myles) leaves me on average 1.5-3 hours a day to do anything I please... and I can't help but think of that meme, "You have the same hours in a day as Beyonce" but I just don't think that's true, I think Beyonce has a slight advantage.
Myles is learning how to be a better napper, but we're still working on the sleep thing and all of it - the tantrums, the gagging when he doesn't want to eat something, poo that's miraculously escaped his diaper while I change him and now suddenly landed on his book - all of it puts a HUGE dent in my expectations for how I'd like our (my) day to go. Sometimes I feel like I'm taking crazy pills instead of prenatals.Because of this madness we (John and I) feel we encounter on the daily, we've both felt a need to create some sort of structure, and productive routines - so we've been turning to lots of books and from these books we've gathered a very common theme to help us make sense of things: "one thing at a time."
So, every day we pick just one thing we want to accomplish. One thing. This means we get a free pass to ignore the dishes in the sink and to just focus on that one thing. I'm not gonna lie, my one thing since last Sunday has been this blog post. (Huge eye roll emoji). See paragraph above.
One thing that's helped us stay on track is to text each other a small outline of what we'd like to accomplish that day to hold each other accountable... and for some reason these daily check-ins feel homey. Like we're not apart and we're in it together. It's easy to feel alone when you've assumed the role of mom you know?Over the years, I seriously think I've read more business + branding + self help books than anyone I know, and I'm lucky that I have a companion in my weirdness because John's the same way. So this is us, trying to truly whack a fraction of what we've read over the years into our every day lives - scheduling things out and holding each other accountable. We do everything pretty loosely though because Myles always has other plans, and we're such yellows that we have to make time for fun too or our work quality goes to the toilet. And confession, I've never been much of a serious planner so the inconsistency Myles creates is sometimes more welcome than frustrating.... but when he refuses to nap or eat, I'm definitely frustrated and find myself being grumpy and annoyed with an adorable toothless face that loves me. Why does being a mom make you feel like the worst person ever sometimes? I don't want to be one of those people that wishes time away - I just want it to pause, so I can get stuff done and make my kid take a nap. Some days I feel like I'm one stop away from crazy town.
We're working hard, but seriously having a kid feels like you have to move through molasses to get anything done, but like I said, this one thing at a time thing has been a good practice for us. I'll list some of the books we've found most helpful in the resources at the end of this post.Anyway, I want to share 3 things with you real quick before you go:1. I've updated the "my story" page if you care to read and John's introduced himself on this space as the video guy. Expect more of this GIF + video stuff on here. We really love it and love the dynamic it brings to the story telling of food.2. The food blog awards are back. Remember when I asked you to vote for me last year too? It would be my honor if you'd like to nominate me again. I totally didn't make the running last year, so this is me being brave and asking again. I hate asking, but pushing a baby out of me has subconsciously turned me into a more confident superwoman. For the awards - there are great categories this year, but I think I'd be a good fit for: "Best Baking and Sweets Blog" or any other category you see fit. Cast your vote here. (ps. You can vote as many times as you want and voting lasts until July 19th). (me hugging you.) THANK YOU x. Really.3. This ice cream cake is re-invented from an old post I did two years ago for mom's birthday. It's still just as amazing. It just got a re-vamp with with the fresh fruit and GIF fudge drip. I'm still just as obsessed now as I was then. It's really the perfect, minimal effort summer dessert and just like Meryl Streep, needs no introduction.Thank you for being apart of Sweetish. We're excited to keep going with this venture. I (we) seriously heart you big time.
Cheat's Ice Cream Cake with Bittersweet Fudge and Salty Almond Crust | Gluten Free
It's called cheats ice cream cake because we don't make the ice cream ourselves. We just buy 4 glorious pints of it, and hand make the bittersweet near-perfect fudge and crust. It's a beautiful, beautiful thing.bakers notes: I used 4 pints of vanilla ice cream, and honestly didn't measure my fruit at all. Just eye ball it. I did a mix of whole blackberries, chopped cherries and whole cherries for appearance sake, all sprinkled on top. You really can't go wrong though, have fun with it. ;) If you want the fudge to stick to the cake, freeze it for a good few hours with the fruit on top before pouring the fudge on. Make sure your cake is freezing cold and the fudge is room temperature and or it will immediately melt your cake.
For the recipe head over to my Ice Cream Cake with Almond Crust recipe.
Resources (or The Books We're Super Into Right Now):
Some of these we've read a couple of times through, they're that good. Essentialism (We adore this book and read it when it first came out. This link is a great summary of the book too.) The One Thing (A tiny bit cheese-sauce, but pretty effective and a fairly quick read.)Will it Fly (Kind of amazing and life changing. Pat really spells it out for you... and maybe we love it so much because we have SO MANY freaking business and branding books under our belts that this one takes that knowledge and really puts it to paper.) 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (I'm pretty sure I first read this book when I was 17, it's a good one.) Big Magic (Huge, ginormous fan of this book and mentioned it in this blog post here.) The Pumpkin Plan (Very similar to Essentialism and The One Thing, but more hyper-business-focused.)
