Sweet Equations

My youngest son, Thom, has autism and OCD. He’ll be 17 in April.



I mention his autism only because you hear so many negative, heart-wrenching things about children growing up with this. We never skipped a beat after his diagnosis. We were actually relieved. We now knew what we were dealing with and could research it and find out how to accommodate it. We had a gorgeous, plump, blue eyed boy to raise. We were still determined to get him to the goal every parent should have: get him out of our house.



And I found that if we set out expectations, he rose to them.



He’s the rather handy, lanky guy pictured in a lot of the demolition pictures. He likes to sledge hammer walls, strip wallpaper, take up vinyl floors, pry up bad parquet floors, knock out drywall, and disassemble gazebos. I never have to remind him to put on safety gear first, it’s reflexive. He also designs websites, video games, computer art, and writes amazing fiction.



And he makes seriously killer desserts.



We sit down for dinner every night, but with me being a Southerner, Sunday is special. Dinner needs to be traditional, topped off with a fresh, homemade dessert. Since baking is essentially science and instructions, and Thom is a math and science whiz, I paired the task with the skills. I’d like to share the results with you each week, starting this Sunday, in a segment called Sweet Equations. I will include photos provided by my talented daughter, Savannah, full recipes, instructions, and a little commentary from the chef himself. I hope you’ll read it, enjoy it, and by all means make it. Because cooking is, as they say, a piece of cake.