(WARNING: The following blog post is mostly about French pastry, but it’s a little bit about sexually suggestive humor. If either French pastry or sexually suggestive humor offends you, stop reading right now. I mean it. Stop. I said, STOP. If you’re still reading despite being easily offended, then you’re about to get what you deserve. So there. You were warned. Now don’t go filling up the comments with your shocked dismay. I told you so.)

This weekend my husband decided to make me a Valentine’s day gift. No, no, not construction paper hearts or a red and white tea cozy. He decided he would make me chocolate eclairs. Now in his defense, my husband makes a mean chicken stir fry. He fixes his own sandwiches, pours his own cereal and can follow all the directions on the back of the boxed macaroni and cheese. But this is eclairs we’re talking about. A puff pastry that needs to, you know, puff. There’s a chocolate glaze and vanilla custard involved. This is the NBA of pastry. This is where sane people drive to the bakery and plunk down their ten bucks. But God bless him, not my husband. No French-y dessert is going to whoop him.

And in my own defense, I appreciate the gesture. I do. The attempted romance was not lost on me. But this was damn funny.

The first sign that things were sliding off the rails was a holler from the kitchen. “Okay, there’s brown bits in the yellow pudding-y stuff. But don’t worry. It’s just burned vanilla, and you can’t even taste it.”

The second sign was when I opened the hall door and smoke billowed into the room. I sprinted into the kitchen where a thick haze had descended.

Me: What happened?
Him: Don’t worry. It’s okay. At first, I thought maybe it was smog.
Me: You thought there was smog in our apartment?
(Contrary to L.A. jokes, smog has never once actually filled any indoor space.)
Him: Yeah, but it turns out wax paper can catch on fire in the oven. It’s okay though, I turned on a fan. It won’t be much longer anyway. The recipe says to bake it another 25 minutes, but they look done to me.

That last part was sign number three.

In case you were wondering what happens when eclairs come out of the oven 25 minutes before they’re suppose to, they fall. They fall into flat little squishy bits of dough. Not that my husband was deterred.

Him: Umm, okay, some of them are a little mushy on the inside, but it’s okay.
Me: You mean raw?
Him: (indignant tone) NO. I mean mushy.

He picked one up off the cookie sheet holding it by the end. And, I swear to God, the whole thing drooped over in a remarkably good imitation of a flaccid penis. That’s when I started to giggle.

Him: No, it’s okay. I’ll put the custard stuff inside, and it’ll be fine.

My dear husband then proceeds to shove his pinky finger into the end of the flaccid penis. Having made a hole, he then shoved the end of a pastry bag into it and squirted in the vanilla custard. What happens when you squirt vanilla custard into a pastry penis? It starts to slowly rise and inflate.

That’s when I started to laugh...really, really hard.

But because of the raw i.e. mushy insides, the custard starts to back up and squirts back out the end, through the hole at him. I’m clutching the counter and trying not to pee my pants.

Him: What’s so damn funny?
Me: (Laughing too hard to answer.)

My blessed husband then grabs the pastry penis around the middle and tries to squish the custard back down toward the other end. And that, my friends, is where I lost it. I had to leave the room. That’s just more than any one person can handle.

So happy Valentine’s day guys. I hope yours was as memorable as mine.