This isn't so much of a cooking disaster, but more of a long term fail on my part. The problem is powdered sugar. Specifically, I have this mental dysfunction such that whenever I walk into a grocery store, I suddenly find myself thinking "Hmm... I think we are out of powdered sugar. I better get some more."
Never mind the fact that I had that same thought last week and we have plenty of powdered sugar as result. This process continues until we have 3-4 pounds of the stuff stock-piled in the pantry and Amy is threatening to start sifting the stuff into my laptop if I don't stop.
And the thing is, I hardly ever use powdered sugar in the first place. It's not like flour and regular sugar, where I can reliably go through a bag in a couple weeks. I use powdered sugar a couple of times in a YEAR.
I don't know if there is a cure for this disease. But if you need to borrow some powdered sugar, let me know.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Roasted Brussel Sprouts
When removing a pan of brussel sprouts from the oven, do not accidentally grab the rack and tilt backwards. If you do so, the pan of brussel sprouts will slide towards the back of the oven and flip over. If you're lucky (like me), a few delicious, roasted brussel sprouts will remain in the pan for future consumption.
Ironically, this happened about 2 minutes after I told Tommy how his awesome wife had made an awesome dinner. Roasted brussel sprouts -- fail (although the ones we were able to eat were excellent). Corn bread muffins -- pass. BBQ ribs -- pass.
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Doomed Macaroons
After a few weeks of sustaining ourselves on sugary cookies and large amounts of alcohol, we decided to institute a "health week" of sorts. I've was searching on the internet for creative recipes that are still healthy when I came across this one for Coconut Macaroons that seemed pretty straight forward and sans all the fatty (read: delicious) ingredients. It also only made four macaroons - so snacking on the remainder of a two dozen batch for the next week wouldn't be an option. And, of course, in the picture they were quite attractive.
My Mistakes, in Order:
1. Thinking that a tasty AND healthy version of macaroons exists
2. Not greasing the pan
3. Obviously something went WAY wrong with the chocolate drizzle. Im guessing we need to use the double boiler method instead of the microwave method.
4. Serving these ugly little wads of coconut and chocolate anyway. Even with only four in the recipe, we still had leftovers - and they went in the trash!
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Caramel
It's been a while since anyone has sucked at cooking, but as we find ourselves in the middle of the holiday season, opportunities abound for kitchen disaster. I am no exception.
I made a ton of food for Thanksgiving (four types of gravy!) and most of it turned out just fine. Except for the Cranberry Pecan Tart.
Usually I am a pie man, but I figured I'd try to broaden my horizons this year beyond the standard Karo syrup pecan pie recipe (classic though it may be). I found a recipe for a Cranberry Pecan Tart in an old issue of Cooks Illustrated, so I decided to give it a shot. The recipe requires you to caramelize some sugar. I remember making caramel corn all by myself back in middle school, so I figured how hard could it be?
Hard. Solid, crysalized-sugar stalagmites hard, to be specific. Caramel fail.
In fact, it took me three tries to make this recipe. On the first shot, I wasn't really paying attention and the next thing I know my pan of slow bubbling caramel sugar had turned into concrete-hard crystalized sugar rock candy. That was on Thanksgiving day and seeing as how I was running late and already had enough food to feed a small army, I vowed to try another day.
On the second shot, I did a little better, but I still had crystalized sugar problems:
On the third shot, I was extra careful and got the desired result:
It remains to be seen if the finished product actually tastes good, as it's still in the oven. However, I can offer the following advice:
I made a ton of food for Thanksgiving (four types of gravy!) and most of it turned out just fine. Except for the Cranberry Pecan Tart.
Usually I am a pie man, but I figured I'd try to broaden my horizons this year beyond the standard Karo syrup pecan pie recipe (classic though it may be). I found a recipe for a Cranberry Pecan Tart in an old issue of Cooks Illustrated, so I decided to give it a shot. The recipe requires you to caramelize some sugar. I remember making caramel corn all by myself back in middle school, so I figured how hard could it be?
Hard. Solid, crysalized-sugar stalagmites hard, to be specific. Caramel fail.
In fact, it took me three tries to make this recipe. On the first shot, I wasn't really paying attention and the next thing I know my pan of slow bubbling caramel sugar had turned into concrete-hard crystalized sugar rock candy. That was on Thanksgiving day and seeing as how I was running late and already had enough food to feed a small army, I vowed to try another day.
On the second shot, I did a little better, but I still had crystalized sugar problems:
On the third shot, I was extra careful and got the desired result:
It remains to be seen if the finished product actually tastes good, as it's still in the oven. However, I can offer the following advice:
- It's a good idea to stir your water and sugar together pretty well before you start, but also be sure wipe any stray sugar crystals down from the sides of the pot.
- Apply lots of heat to your best pan to make sure the sugar cooks hot and evenly.
- Do not stir at all until your sugar reaches 300º / light golden color. Even then, only gently swishing of the pot is advised, no actual stiring.
- When you are boiling the sugar, if you can see lots of sugar crystals forming on the top of the bubbles of the boiling water, you have already failed.
Monday, October 6, 2008
Three Pie Crusts, One Sad Afternoon
On Saturday, I decided that I wanted to make a pie for a cookout Martin and I were going to on Sunday. What inspired me was a video of Martha Stewart making pate brisee. "Easy!" she said in the video. "Use that food processor, make that pie crust!"
"I have a food processor,"I thought. "And I like pie!" Surely these two would combine together. However, to echo the sentiments of my mother after she attempted a Martha recipe and spectacularly failed, "Well. Shit."
(I apologize to all G-rated viewers for my mother's eloquence).
I faithfully followed the "cold rules!" rule of pie crust making and stuck everything in the freezer, to get it nice and chilled. My water was iced. Heck, my salt was iced.
I halved the recipe, because I wanted a pre-baked shell for a cream pie. I stuck it all in my 3-cup food processor, pressed pulse and woah! Why am I covered with flour? Oh, right, I forgot to cover the feed tube.
I forge on. I should have taken that for the sign it was and run. I added a bit of water, pulsed and coarse-meal sized pieces stuck together when pinched. I took it out and tried to form it into a disk. It would not. :( So I put it all back in the food processor and added yet more water. And now ... it's sticky. That's bad. But I was mad. I didn't care. I formed my disc and stuck it in the fridge overnight.
Rolling it out wasn't so hard. Baking it, easy peasy. Eating it? Not so great. It tasted wonderful and had some awesome flavor going for it - a stick of butter will do that. But it was crispy and definitely not flaky the way I wanted.
So I decided to try again but this time, using a whole new recipe. I don't know why I decided I had to shake things up, but I did. My favorite blog used this recipe. Surely it would work for me!
Because I'm getting depressed all over again, thinking of the three pie crusts I made yesterday, I will summarize:
Made an all-shortening crust instead of all butter. Destroyed the second crust when it baked wrong in the oven (shriveled up and collapsed). Rolled out a third crust, which collapsed when I attempted to move it to the pie plate. Burst into tears. Martin made me re-roll out the third crust again, even though I just knew (KNEW!) it would not work. It worked. Damn him for being right all the time. Made a chocolate cream filling, which did not taste so good. So, in the end, I had two ruined pie crusts and one decent pie crust filled with an overly-sweet chocolate filling. It was not a good Sunday morning.
"I have a food processor,"I thought. "And I like pie!" Surely these two would combine together. However, to echo the sentiments of my mother after she attempted a Martha recipe and spectacularly failed, "Well. Shit."
(I apologize to all G-rated viewers for my mother's eloquence).
I faithfully followed the "cold rules!" rule of pie crust making and stuck everything in the freezer, to get it nice and chilled. My water was iced. Heck, my salt was iced.
I halved the recipe, because I wanted a pre-baked shell for a cream pie. I stuck it all in my 3-cup food processor, pressed pulse and woah! Why am I covered with flour? Oh, right, I forgot to cover the feed tube.
I forge on. I should have taken that for the sign it was and run. I added a bit of water, pulsed and coarse-meal sized pieces stuck together when pinched. I took it out and tried to form it into a disk. It would not. :( So I put it all back in the food processor and added yet more water. And now ... it's sticky. That's bad. But I was mad. I didn't care. I formed my disc and stuck it in the fridge overnight.
Rolling it out wasn't so hard. Baking it, easy peasy. Eating it? Not so great. It tasted wonderful and had some awesome flavor going for it - a stick of butter will do that. But it was crispy and definitely not flaky the way I wanted.
So I decided to try again but this time, using a whole new recipe. I don't know why I decided I had to shake things up, but I did. My favorite blog used this recipe. Surely it would work for me!
Because I'm getting depressed all over again, thinking of the three pie crusts I made yesterday, I will summarize:
Made an all-shortening crust instead of all butter. Destroyed the second crust when it baked wrong in the oven (shriveled up and collapsed). Rolled out a third crust, which collapsed when I attempted to move it to the pie plate. Burst into tears. Martin made me re-roll out the third crust again, even though I just knew (KNEW!) it would not work. It worked. Damn him for being right all the time. Made a chocolate cream filling, which did not taste so good. So, in the end, I had two ruined pie crusts and one decent pie crust filled with an overly-sweet chocolate filling. It was not a good Sunday morning.
Friday, August 15, 2008
Not So Fast!
Just when you thought it was safe to get back in the kitchen...
After watching the cupcake episode of Good Eats, I decided to try my hand at Alton's chiffon cupcakes. Sure, the recipe called for separating five eggs, but what's so hard about that? I've made angel food the required separating a full dozen. I jumped right in.
About nine eggs later, I had finally managed to separate five egg whites from their yolks without any contamination. I guess it could have been worse, but man I sucked at separating eggs today. This used up all the eggs I had, btw.
A little annoyed, I proceeded with recipe and immediately proceeded to whip the eggs whites with the 5 oz of sugar... but OH CRAP that was the egg yolks I was supposed to combine with the sugar. Fail.
At this point, I'm out of eggs, but I don't give up so easily. I race down to the grocery, grab a fresh dozen eggs, and race back home. Where are my keys? I don't have my keys. Ok no biggie. We keep a spare hidden by the door. Where is the spare? OH CRAP it's not there. Ok I'll just call Amy but wait Amy left her cell phone at home today. In fact, I could probably hear it ringing through the locked door as I try to call her.
It's actually pretty warm in Seattle today (90º... ok not that warm by NC standards, but whatever). Both me and the eggs are sweating at this point so I make an executive decision to break into the house. This involves diving head first through the bedroom window and basically doing a belly-flop onto the bed. I execute this about as gracefully as you might imagine.
All this for cupcakes. They'd better be tasty.
After watching the cupcake episode of Good Eats, I decided to try my hand at Alton's chiffon cupcakes. Sure, the recipe called for separating five eggs, but what's so hard about that? I've made angel food the required separating a full dozen. I jumped right in.
About nine eggs later, I had finally managed to separate five egg whites from their yolks without any contamination. I guess it could have been worse, but man I sucked at separating eggs today. This used up all the eggs I had, btw.
A little annoyed, I proceeded with recipe and immediately proceeded to whip the eggs whites with the 5 oz of sugar... but OH CRAP that was the egg yolks I was supposed to combine with the sugar. Fail.
At this point, I'm out of eggs, but I don't give up so easily. I race down to the grocery, grab a fresh dozen eggs, and race back home. Where are my keys? I don't have my keys. Ok no biggie. We keep a spare hidden by the door. Where is the spare? OH CRAP it's not there. Ok I'll just call Amy but wait Amy left her cell phone at home today. In fact, I could probably hear it ringing through the locked door as I try to call her.
It's actually pretty warm in Seattle today (90º... ok not that warm by NC standards, but whatever). Both me and the eggs are sweating at this point so I make an executive decision to break into the house. This involves diving head first through the bedroom window and basically doing a belly-flop onto the bed. I execute this about as gracefully as you might imagine.
All this for cupcakes. They'd better be tasty.
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
