This ridiculous baked good nearly didn’t happen. For those of you that didn’t grow up in the malls of the U.S. in the 1990’s, this is a copy-cat recipe of Mrs. Field’s Chocolate Chip Cookie Cake, thanks to The Kitchn. Their picture is much more appealing, for what it’s worth.

I’ve been trying to bake this since Saturday when I got a delivery of chocolate chips. But life just isn’t really going according to any kind of plan right now, is it?

So I baked the cookie base today when I should have been writing software requirements, but needed a brain break. Then M’s Google Hangout was happening at 6 pm, instead of 7 pm, so I found myself trying to make the icing at 9 pm after watching the first few episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer again (it’s a 90’s kind of night I guess) and there was a very predictable issue with cocoa powder exploding all over the counters when I forgot that the “low” setting on my hand mixer is really quite high. So I swore a BUNCH and then M stepped in and finished making the icing and finished the cake. Because he is wonderful. He also got to lick the beater.

I feel like this confection is a small victory in a world that feels like one failure after another. So I ate a slice. And then licked the frosting from the knife.

Take your victories where you can find them. You’re really doing better than you think you are.

There’s even a Buffy quote for this. “The hardest thing in this world is to live in it.”