Failburgers

Recently I've not been cooking for myself very much. I'm not quite sure why. I think it has to do with the ungodly heat in Georgia.

Or the fun I've been having outside my apartment. Or the fantastic restaurants that my foodie friends have been introducing me to.

Anyway, a friend demanded a blog post, so I scrounged up ye olde memory card, looking for something from the past that was fabulous but unblogged.

I found nothing.

That's not true. I found things, they just weren't good. But... I feel like blogging, so you guys can enjoy these failburgers from days gone by.

This muffin...


was cobbled together and ended up being a bland, whole wheat, lemon, lime, sour cream muffin. Like Mountain Dew... as a hearty breakfast food. Gross.

These handmade peirogi...


were so blah I tossed them out.

This mustardy potato, sausage, spinach salad...


was just that. And I didn't even think about the fact that I don't like two of those things until I tried to eat it.

This... this...


I have no idea what this is. But I think I remember it was good. I fell into a one pot place for a few weeks and everything looked kinda like this. But it all tasted fab. (Because I threw jalapenos in every pot.)

These egg-free banana chocolate chip cookies...


somehow sent some folks running for the loo. They were amazingly tasty. But... apparently the egg-free, dairy-free substitutions I made were... too much all at once?

Finally, these beautiful pancakes...


tasted like a salt lick.

So... I'm hoping that by showing you the seedy underbelly of food blogging, I'll inspire myself to get back in that kitchen and turn out something mouth-watering and delicious. Until then, loves, don't make my mistakes.

If at first you don't quite fail, try, try again

If you follow me on Twitter, you probably saw this post coming.

February 14th, 11:11am: And I just ruined three cupcakes (no biggie) and a cupcake tin (biggie! Who does that?!?!?! THIS GIRL!!!). Dust off the ol' "disaster" tag.

Consider the disaster tag dusted, polished, and bronzed for the occasion.

Ugh. Observe.


Here are four of the recent cherry spice cake cupcakes. Notice how the one in the foreground is fine... nearly textbook. The three in the background? Charred. As in black. Let's... just...


Yeah... you can't smell the smoke and you can't tap on that rock hard cupcake bottom, but you can tell how epically burned those three cupcakes are, right?

Hmm... I can see some of you are still unconvinced. "Look at those golden tops," you might say. "Are you sure it isn't just a funky liner issue?" Well... I see your counterargument, but I'm going to quickly draw your attention back to the evidence.


Bam.

Conclusion reached.

Soo... I've overbaked cupcakes before. I'll admit it. It happens. But... overbaked cupcakes don't look like this. No no, dear friends. This kind of disaster requires special skill and an extra step.


An extra step that I didn't realize I was taking until it was too late...

Since it was Valentine's Day and I was feeling festive, I made myself a decadent breakfast once the cupcakes were in the oven. And for once in my kitchen experience, my timing was perfect. My egg sandwich came together just a minute before the cupcakes needed to come out of the oven, and I was surprised and even pleased with myself. All smug, I pulled the perfect cupcakes out of the oven, set them on the stove (as I always do), and sat down to that amazing sandwich.

While three of my cupcakes continued to cook. (-_-)

Oh, but don't worry... the smell of smoke and failure alerted me to the disaster before the smoke alarm took notice.


**insert dramatic eye roll here**

So... di-sas-ter. To add insult to injury, I don't have a back-up cupcake tin, meaning that I don't actually have a horse to get back on.

Hmmm... any suggestions for how I should I bounce back? Any comfort recipes I've been missing all my life?

Chinese New Year Cupcakes!

or, "Valentine's Day is Nothing to Blog About"


This post is going to be a little bit out of keeping from my usual shtick. You see... the product I created this morning was not amazing. From the Cherry "Five Spice" Cake to the blue cinnamon cream cheese icing, nothing went quite right for me. Was it tasty? Not really. Is it something people will want to duplicate? Nah, gurl.

So why bore you with the play-by-play?

Exactly my conclusion.

I will say that the fortune cookie recipe (and procedure) is one you should definitely try. If you have... a lot of time... an excess of patience... and an obsessive compulsive desire to do the same thing many times in a row until you create five serviceable cookies that are maybe tasty. If that sounds like you, then hop over to Cheeky Kitchen's fortune cookie post. Heck... you'll probably want to check it out anyway... she makes it look easy.

If you're still with me, then I'm going to answer the age old question: How do I eat a cupcake with fortune cookie on top?

Come on, don't pretend like you haven't tossed and turned over this question. So many things to consider...

Anyway... I'm going to do the heavy lifting for you, because... well, I care about you. Here's what you should do:


1. Undress that sucker. Treat her like a lady, but like a lady you'd like better naked.


2. Careful not to disturb the cookie, take a bite of the cupcake. (If it's my cupcake, then take a moment to be disappointed in the lack of cherry-ness to the cake. Note the sad blah-ness of the icing, while you're at it.)


3. Gingerly (yeah... ginger was one of my five spices... It was actually a play on Chinese Five-Spice and not actually the spice called "Five-Spice." The fails just keep coming, don't they?) pluck the fortune cookie from it's icing bed.


4. Break open the cookie and behold thy fortune!

"Conditions are perfect"???

Hopefully I have at least one reader who caught the Flight of the Concords reference. But if you didn't catch it this time, you will next time. Enjoy...

(possibly NSFW if you work with children or stuffy people)


Wait a minute... I've objectified a baked good. I've failed to live up to expectations. I've mentioned feelings. I've quoted a love song (kinda?).

Dammit. This is totally a Valentine's Day post.

How NOT to Prepare for Guests

With Thanksgiving just around the corner, I'm sure many of you are getting ready to welcome friends and family into your homes. I know what you're up against. You're anxious about the timing of dinner, the comfort of your guests, and the random statements that will come flying out of your grandfather's mouth. So, dear reader, let me calm you down a bit. Sit back, relax, and learn from my (not terribly) recent experience.

Here's what not to do mere minutes before guests show up at your door.

The morning of your guests arrival, do not fondly remember the ambitious (but delicious) zombie cupcakes of a few weeks back.


Do not let the zombie remembrance remind you of the giant two layer Chocolate Cake with Turtle filling in your freezer.


Do not let the memory of cupcakes gone by encourage you to pull the two cakes from their frozen safety and thaw them. The day of your guests arrival.


And once the cakes are thawed, you might not want to take a picture of the mammoth cakes just to show your friends later that yes, you could in fact lift a giant two layer Paula Deen cake full of caramel, chocolate, and nuts.

Okay... you might want to take the pic, because even once things really hit the fan, you'll at least have a goofy shot of yourself that might just one day turn into a blog header... or something.

Anyway... back to it.


Oh... it's getting more obvious, isn't it.

Please don't decide that one hour is plenty of time in which to make and pour the chocolate icing over the cake before your guests knock on your door.

And... ugh... this really getting hard to talk about... I think it's still too fresh.

Please, please don't answer the phone when your guests call you from 20 minutes out and say, "20 minutes? That's actually perfect. I'm just pouring an icing on my cake real quick and then I'll head up to the coffee shop. I'll sit outside and wait for you there."


Because you just had to know that the 1/2 inch lip you left around the giant cake on the biggest plate you have was not going to hold that icing. And you should have seen it coming when the icing started pouring over the sides without covering and your (silly) response was to add more to the top.


So, yes, if you've gotten this far and done this much this wrong, then you will just have to suck it up, pick up your guests, and welcome them into your home, now complete with chocolate icing dripping down the counter, drawer pull, cabinet, and well onto the floor.

Even your Kitchen Aid will be embarrassed to be seen like this.

But... even if everything goes as wrong for you as it did for me, it doesn't mean your guests' visit is doomed. We had fun. Didn't we, Kira?

The almond butter that just... wasn't.

Cupcake Hero's November ingredient is Nut Butter.

Hmm... nut butter. Nut. Butter.

I didn't want to do peanut butter, because I just have to assume that any peanut butter combination I come up with will be done (and probably done better) in the round-up by someone else.

Since I <3 almond, I decided that an almond butter would be the best, sneakiest, inventive-iest ingredient on which to base my November Cupcake Hero entry. But... as you might have guessed... this is NOT the post in which I unveil my November Cupcake Hero cupcake.

I think you'll see just what kind of post this is in just a minute.

My quest to procure almond butter started in all the usual places: grocery stores, health food stores, the Saturday farmer's market. I was soundly and swiftly disappointed at each place.

Refusing to give up, I researched the process of creating almond butter. Oh, it's so simple. (They said.) Just blanch, peel, roast, and process. (They said.)

It's just a list of steps. I can handle steps, right?


1. Blanche: Bring pot of water to a boil, remove from heat, add almonds, let sit for 15 to 20 minutes.


2. Drain mucky brown water off the almonds and pop the nuts out of their wrinkly skins.

This process made me a little angsty. In a giggly way. So you guys get a video.

(I know you care. I was just in a bad place.)


3. Place nuts in food processor and let her rip. Nuts should (should) become a meal, release oils, become a ball, and finally smooth out to a butter.


Umm... this is as far as I got. Almond meal.

So... almond butter didn't happen for me. But that's okay because now I have over two cups of amazingly fine almond meal. Any recipes I should try?

Farmer's Market, Schmarmer's Market

In my small town, there is not much in way of activities, so when I was invited to brunch and the farmer's market on Saturday with a couple of colleagues, I quickly accepted.

Brunch was fab. We went to our favorite local bakery, Sugar Magnolia (could it be more sweetly Southern?) and we had sausage, egg, and cheese biscuits. The biscuit they put that egg and sausage on... was wickedly buttery. I should have known that the bakery would really shine when it came to the biscuit. Unngh. I'm drooling.

Anyway... The farmer's market was cute... but very (almost disappointingly) small. I did, however, get my blood pressure checked by a nursing student. And I found a mother and son team selling fresh herbs with little recipe cards attached.

Note to farmer's market sellers: Attached recipes are a brilliant idea.

I picked up some basil and rosemary, and, a day or so later, I set out to make the recipes.

WARNING: This blogpost is not for the feint of heart. It almost ruined me. I'd call it a comedy of errors if I were stable enough to be laughing at it.


I started out by assembling the ingredients for the Garden Vegetable Pesto. I had to make a trip to the store for tomatoes... but it was going to be worth it for some delish garden pesto.

Or was it?


It wasn't.

I forgot that my food processor is too small to handle life. Let me rephrase that... it's too small to handle one tomato. And this recipe calls for two tomatoes, one zucchini, cheese, basil, oil, blah blah blah.

So I dumped the tomato. And pulled out the recipe and ingredients for Rosemary Pasta Sauce. I didn't take a picture of the ingredients or the recipe because... well... I don't remember what happened exactly... but I think you can consider this moment the beginning of the end.


By this point, I was crazy hungry. At 7:23pm, I busted out the pita chips and hummus.


And while I enjoyed my appetizer, I melted 1/4 cup of butter over low heat and added onion. Do you know what happens to onions in butter over low heat? I'll tell you... nothing.


So... at 7:52pm, warm onions still warming, I made coffee and this happened to my new creamer. Really? REALLY?!


Ugh... so... no... I didn't wait for the onions to get "dark brown" before I tossed in the garlic, rosemary, and water (didn't have chicken stock, of course).


The sauce smelled good... but looked small. I followed the rest of the directions though and tossed the lb. of spaghetti with another 2 tbsp of butter and 1/4 cup of parmesan.

It was... okay. The sauce is very light in flavor but heavy in greasy butter.

And... it was about 9pm by the time I got to eat it.

So... much like I am right now, I was tired of the whole thing. Perhaps I'll invest in a food processor equal to the task of a tomato-filled pesto. But until then, I'll just stroll the farmer's market with friends, hit the nurses tent, try the "best pound cake ever" (sorry, kids, but it wasn't), and leave the cooking to someone else.

Peaches (and an Announcement)

Here are the peaches:


and here is the announcement:

My attempt at Peach Cupcakes was an EPIC FAIL.

(There is another announcement coming, but bear with me for the moment, k?)

I don't even understand what went so wrong with this cupcake.

I split the recipe in half, but I do that all the time so I don't blame that. I even rechecked my maths when things went south. I cross-checked the recipe on a couple of different blogs to make sure all the measurements agreed. They did.


But I knew something was not right when my batter was looking more peach soup than batter-with-peaches-folded-in.

Still I had faith... until I pulled those suckers out of the oven.


They were kind of bubbly and very much not cake.


Nevertheless, I dressed homegirl up like a true Southern Lady, and she really doesn't look half bad.


As far as taste goes, the verdict is still out for me. What I seem to have made is more of an eggy custard than a cake. Is it tasty? It is... if you like peach custards. However, a true cupcake, it is not. I would love to hear from anyone who has successfully made this cupcake in the form that God intended.

Now... for the real announcement...

I'm moving again.

I've accepted a position teaching writing at a school in Georgia, y'all.

(I want to leave the "y'all" for all the Southern reasons, but I shuddered a bit just typing it. If you ever notice the dreaded "y'all" showing up in my normal speech, please feel free to slap me. Even in public.)

So that's that. I'm moving very soon so there may or may not be posts happening over the next few weeks. But know that when I do get settled, I'll continue to bring you all the ridiculousness you've come to expect from this blog, but this time the posts will just come to you from Georgia.

And you better believe I'll be hunting down Paula Deen to guest blog.

Trial Runs and Why I'll Stop Doing Them

Trial Run:



Reality:



hmph. (-_-)

Red, White, and Blue(berry) Cheesecake

Disclaimer: This post gets a full on "Disaster" tag. Not that "Near Disaster" tag that I've been giving recipes that almost worked or that worked but not how I expected them to. Here's why.


Yeah... let's just start with the visual. We'll go ahead and let the cheesecake stand in for white, but do you see anything that even a little bit resembles red or blue?

Nah. Me neither. I forgot how unblue blueberries really are. I thought about enhancing the fillings with red and blue coloring but quickly threw that option out the window. And then I threw something else.

See that area at about 8:45 where the crust kind of blends into the cheesecake? Yeah... I had a little water bath issue and ended up flooding my cheesecake at that very point. I tried to remedy the situation by throwing a paper towel on my cheesecake to soak up the water before it absorbed. I don't know either.

So my colors are off, and I flooded the cheesecake, but... the polka dot technique will still wow people.

No... no, I'm afraid it won't. You see, there is a reason I couldn't find any examples of people polka-dotting cheesecakes with fruit flavors. The polka dot cheesecake technique is done with cocoa because cocoa thickens the cheesecake filling rather than thinning it.

Do you see polka dots in my cheesecake?


Perhaps here?


No. The thin fruit fillings mostly showed up on top of the cheesecake even though they were piped into the cheesecake. I don't know how it happened; that's why it's a disaster.


This is about as close as we got to polka dots. A mushroom-shaped blueberry blob. And... it makes sense that it be mushroom-shaped because my sister thought the uncut cheesecake resembled some type of poisonous mold. If the rest of the cheesecake were successful, I'd have covered the top with... something... but this disaster didn't even merit that much effort.


My sister found and photographed this dot. It's getting there but still not right. I now know for a fact that fruit polka dots do not hold up in cheesecake like cocoa polka dots do. Fair enough. Lesson learned.

How did it taste? (you might ask.)

Good! I used the cheesecake recipe from the Daring Bakers April challenge and it came through again. I chose iced oatmeal cookies for the crust this time and I would highly recommend that. It got rave reviews from my testers. Also, if you use the iced cookies you can omit the sugar called for in the crust. I did and no one missed it.

In conclusion: Cheesecake with random pockets of raspberry flavor (the blueberry, for some reason was barely discernable --- again, disaster) and an oatmeal crust - very tasty. Fruit polka dots - very unsuccessful.

Any questions?

Daring Bakers: Apple Strudel

The May Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Linda of make life sweeter! and Courtney of Coco Cooks. They chose Apple Strudel from the recipe book Kaffeehaus: Exquisite Desserts from the Classic Cafés of Vienna, Budapest and Prague by Rick Rodgers.

I guess I didn't really know what a strudel was when I first read about the May challenge.


A strudel is made with a basic dough of water, oil, cider vinegar, flour, and salt


rolled thin enough to read a newspaper through


wrapped around a mixture of apple, rum raisins, cinnamon, sugar, walnuts, and bread crumbs,


buttered,


and baked for about 30 minutes in a 400 degree oven.


Mine looks okay, but I did a lot of things that I'm not proud of to achieve this mediocre result.

1. I forgot to put the salt in the dough. And did nothing to fix that.

2. I dumped the cinnamon on the apples before mixing it with the sugar. The cinnamon stuck to exactly two apples and made my life harder in the mixing process.

3. I used prefab bread crumbs. In texture and flavor, they resemble sawdust.

4. I pilfered the raisins (and craisins) from our cereal cabinet. Total, to be exact.

5. In preparation for this photoshoot, I gave myself a classic "Mommy, I cut my bangs" haircut. If you didn't notice, go ahead and scroll back up. I know you want to.

In conclusion, the strudel was fine... but definitely improved with ice cream.

If you want to make your own strudel, follow the link for the hosts' blogs at the top of this post. You certainly don't want to repeat anything I did. :)

So here's my question:

What is the last thing you phoned in?

I want details.