One of the weird things about raising a child these days is feeding them. When I was growing up, it was: “Eat what’s on your plate or you go hungry.” If that didn’t work, I was made to feel both hungry and ungrateful because, after all, “Children are starving in China.”

Not so anymore: Every child has some dietary restriction that must be honored by everyone who comes into contact with them. Usually it’s an allergy or intolerance – gluten, or more frequently, peanuts. Sometimes it’s self-inflicted, as with The Child, who pronounced herself pescatarian at the age of 10 and never looked back.

I have no problem with most of this by itself, but try adding it all together and then figuring out what to put into a child’s lunchbox.

• No PB&J (peanuts are completely banned at the school).
• Tuna is OK, but only once a week (mercury, you know).
• A bagel with cream cheese? Okay, but only sometimes.
• And so on, et cetera.

I won’t bore you with the list of things I can’t put in the lunchbox with the sandwich. I don’t know who buys all that stuff in the snack aisle at Safeway, that’s all I’m saying.

Then we discovered the Wonder Food: Nutella.

It doesn’t violate any food rules. The Child will eat it – often. And you can add healthy things like bananas to a sandwich and they suddenly seem awesome, too.

So now our pantry is filled with giant Costco jars of Nutella, which raise the inevitable question: What else can we do with this Wonder Food?

I was thrilled when I discovered this recipe for Nutella Pound Cake on Yumsugar. Sounds like a wonderful thing to make on a Sunday afternoon, then slice up and toss into a week’s worth of lunches. If it lasts that long, because – seriously – Nutella Pound Cake? Like that’s going to last a week in our house.

So I made it. It started off well enough:

But then I put it in the oven, which it didn’t like, and tried to escape:

And after I baked it about a half hour longer than I was supposed to, due to its refusal to be done, I gave up and removed it, salvaging what I could.

It tasted kind of like brownies, but not quite. It was sort of tasty, but needed … something.

No, we didn’t love it. But yes, we did eat it. It wasn’t possible to actually slice it, so we just kind of nibbled at it for a couple of days.

I’m not sure what went wrong, but re-reading the directions, I think the pan I used was too small. I didn’t like it enough to re-try it in another pan.

We haven’t given up on Nutella, though. We’re convinced there are many joys that await us with the Wonder Food.  How could there not be?

This is my contribution to Weekend Cooking, hosted by Beth Fish Reads. Maybe someone else had a better recipe this week – why not cruise on over and find out?