Disasters
So after I made the beautiful batch of White Chocolate Cashew Blondies with 1/2 cup of packed light brown sugar, I realized that the recipe called for 1 1/2 cups of packed light brown sugar. Allow me to clarify the magnitude of this mistake: I, purveyor and promotor of all things sweet (ahem, check out the […]
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I am usually unflappable when I make baking mistakes (maybe because I make them on a sadly regular basis, or maybe because I’m a naively wide-eyed optimist and find ways to make lemon cornmeal shortbread tarts out of lemons and such). But some screw-ups have the ability to seriously flap me, if that’s even a word. […]
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Hm. This was my first take on the Healthy Peanut Butter Balls, which should have been the world’s easiest treat to make (other than the Rocky Road Chunks, maybe, since they don’t require baking either. Nope- these PB Balls are even easier than the Rocky Road Chunks, because you have to actually melt chocolate for […]
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Lesson learned: sprinkling turbinado sugar overtop an egg-washed puffed pastry crust is an invitation for a bit of char. (Particularly when you’re not paying attention to how long the Strawberry Jam & Cream Cheese Pastry Bars have been in the oven, like a good little baker should.) It’s amazing what an extra four minutes in […]
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What’s with me and s’mores? Please recall an earlier recipe for disaster- the “Absolutely Hideous N’More S’mores” post where I revealed my ability to screw up the country’s most basic campfire dessert (because I tried to get fancy). So this time, while making S’mores Pie for the 4th of July! (yes, with an exclamation point!) I […]
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There is nothing worse than cracking the pristine chocolate-and-almond-covered surface of your dessert with the knife as you cut into it. (Okay, finding your cat eating the almonds off the top of the dessert or being diagnosed with irritable bowel syndrome would be worse, but you get my drift.) This crack started as a hairline fracture in the Healthy […]
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Word to the wise: don’t pour your excess batter from the absolutely wonderfully spectacular Crazy-Good Raspberry Cake into a cake pan that you might actually want to remove it from, in one piece at least.
As apparent in the photo, this cake (intended to be an impossibly cute mini bundt cake- yes, I was even going to pour a little swoon-worthy glaze over top of it if… sigh) ended up as a monstrosity of crumbs. Monstrosities of crumbs do not make for attractive desserts.
(What went wrong, you might ask? This time, I swear it wasn’t a me thing. Yes, I buttered the cake pan. Yes, I made sure the berries weren’t stuck to the bottom of the pan. Sure, I might have overfilled it a touch, but the issue at hand was the temperamental batter, I’m sure of it. The real recipe asks for it to be baked in a pie pan, so that the pieces can be easily removed without creating a crumbly crumby mess. Baking the batter in a pan that you want to remove it from in its entirety? Forget about it.)
(Oh- ten points for The Husband, who ate the crumbly crumby cake mess for breakfast anyway. What a saint.)
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All I have to say to Martha Stewart is this:
Damn you.
(It’s kind of hard to serve a Lemon Cornmeal Shortbread Tart for The Husband’s birthday dessert when the candles won’t stand upright into the lemon filling. That’s right- candles don’t stand upright into things that are the consistency of soup. Martha’s recipe, the one I used for inspiration, had the wrong proportion of gelatin going on. I know it’s blasphemous to damn the queen of all things baking, but really. Lemon Birthday Tart Soup just wasn’t what I had in mind.)
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These brownies don’t look that horrific in this picture, do they? Trust me, they are. “The are quite possibly the worst brownies you’ve ever made”, said The Husband after trying my new Cinco de Mayo Brownie, fresh from the oven. (I don’t know why he had to specify ‘brownies’, as though there’s a “Worst of” list […]
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Word to the wise: don’t ignore your kitchen timer when it goes off. Don’t be all brazen and think “oh, I’ll get the scones out of the oven in a second” and then do what I do, which is not get the scones out of the oven in a second.
However many minutes after the timer sounded (5? 15?), I remembered the scones, and not because I was responsible and thought “oh yes, the scones”, but because I could smell them. Not that wonderful ‘butter baking’ smell that you know I love… but rather that ‘carbon’ smell I have grown to know all too well.
(FYI: scones aren’t like toast. You can’t scrape the burned parts off them and try and make a go of it anyway. You have to wait for your failure to cool down enough to throw out and not melt the plastic garbage bag, so your disaster gets to sit and look at you up until that point. Mocking you.)
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Okay, so here is what a slaved-over batch of hot cross buns looks like when you misinterpret a recipe and add an extra egg by mistake (see picture): not so hot. Not so bun-like.
However, they smelled wondiferous. And other than the oddly-shellacked shell on top, the texture was like a hot cross bun- albeit a sturdy one. So I didn’t waste three hours of baking (okay, that includes rising time)… I immediately thought “toast”. If you’re interested in a hot cross bun recipe that does work, click here.
And don’t add an extra egg.
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Baking involves all five senses, for sure. I enjoy baking in large part because of the smells that butter, sugar and other wonderful things create after baking together for 20 minutes or so. You know what I’m talking about: the dessert-in-the-oven-smell.
I don’t enjoy the smell of burning saran wrap, however, and I don’t recommend that you recreate this recipe for disaster, either. So learn from my mistake: when letting dough rise in a “nice warm place”, don’t get all smart and put your bowl on the stovetop of a hot oven (hot from baking something like Butterscotch Blondies with Caramel Icing, for example).
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I was planning to add pecans to my festive Bailey’s Irish Cream Fudge Brownies, but for some reason I changed my mind at the last minute. It might be because they looked like this when I took them out of the oven (see picture). (Cringe.)
“I thought I smelled something burning”, said The Husband. (A little late, mind you.)
Lesson learned: leave the timer on when “lightly toasting” nuts in the oven. Rookie move, rookie move.
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Pies are usually baked in a wonderfully warm oven, and they are usually baked to completion in said oven. Pies don’t normally “finish” baking in a frying pan, as a rule of thumb. Except in my house.
Sometimes things don’t happen the way they are supposed to in the kitchen (as I know all to well), and sometimes when an urge strikes to bake miniature pies for a dinner party, they take a swerve off course.
Take for example these sweet little pecan pies…
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This Recipe for Disaster cracks me up, because bark is notoriously easy to make, and yet I managed to screw it up.
I have successfully made bark about 3,000 times in my life (give or take), and so I might have been cocky in my attempt to get creative this time. While making a few versions to properly celebrate National Chocolate Mint Day (I need very few excuses to make the minty-chocolate medly, let me tell you), I ended up with a bark-gone-wrong.
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was so looking forward to the Blueberries & Cream Pound Cake, so much so that I decided to make a massive double batch (à la “more is better” philosophy). This Recipe for Disaster was born in that moment of gluttony, I am certain.
All you need to do is look at the picture of the crust to figure out why this gem is classified as a Disaster. After an hour of baking (filling the house with a glorious blueberry and lemon and sugar smell), this crust went rogue and decided to separate itself from the perfectly-baked cakey glory housed beneath it. (When I say “separate itself”, I mean that the crust was fully committed to its evil act of separation. The entire top of the cake peeled off as it cooled- into an almost-amusing detachable roof.) You typically don’t want to serve a cake that looks like it has been scalped.
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Sometimes I think I’m so smart, and then I’m promptly brought back down to earth.
I had what I thought was a brilliant idea to make miniature s’mores in little silver cupcake holders (yes, it does sound cute, doesn’t it?), and it somehow turned out to be a hideous disappointment.
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