Kitchen F#!% Ups

I have all these Meyer lemons from the neighbor's tree, so I've been making lemon desserts for a week now. Larry thought this cake looked really good. I ended up starting it really late in the day, so I made the cake layers and curd one day, then assembled and frosted the cake the next day.

Once the layers were cool, I stuck them on my cake plate with layers of wax paper in between, and just covered it with the dome that goes with the plate. The layers looked okay. One was kind of uneven and I thought they looked a little deflated.

The next evening, when I un-stacked the layers... cake was stuck all over the wax paper. Okay, no matter, it will be covered up anyway. I proceeded to slice each layer in half horizontally so the cake would have four different layers. Following the instructions and the photo, I carefully but firmly set my hand on top of the first layer and used a serrated knife to slice the layer in half.. sort-of. One of the layers broke in several places, and on the top of the layer was an impression of my hand where all of the outside of the cake came off. Repeat with the second layer.

By this time I was cranky and about ready to burst into tears. My lovely cake looked like a mess. I stacked up the layers with lemon curd in between, and shoved the broken parts in there to fill the holes.

Looks great, doesn't it? I was close to just throwing the whole thing in the trash. I mixed up the delicious lemon buttercream frosting anyway and applied a crumb coat, then stuck it in the refrigerator to firm up. Then I applied the rest of the frosting. It turned out not to be a complete disaster. The cake slices weren't as perfectly aligned as I would have liked, but the cake was good and looked decent at the end.

• Triple-Lemon Layer Cake (Fine Cooking #63, September 2004, p. 66)

When I've eaten salmon burgers at restaurants, they've always been so yummy. I was delighted to find a recipe to make my own salmon burgers at home!

I followed all the directions precisely. The patties looked perfect! I was pretty proud of my work by the time the patties were grilling away and looking forward to a tasty salmon burger.

When it came time to flip them, I floundered! Jay tried flipping two and I tried flipping two. As soon as they flipped, they fell apart.

We were able to pile them onto a bun and eat them, but it sure wasn't a true burger.

Looking back, my biggest mistake was not paying more attention while reading the accompanying article. The subtitle, which I had completely skipped, says "Grilled fish burgers can be a welcome alternative to the usual summer fare -- if you can keep them moist and prevent them from falling apart."

Reading further, a paragraph addressed this issue:
There was one more problem to solve: The fish burgers fell apart when I flipped them. Oiling the spatula before flipping the burgers helped, as did oiling the cooking rack and refrigerating the burgers before grilling.

Notice even the author admits that those tips simply "helped", they did not prevent or fix the problem!

• Salmon and Tuna Burgers (Cook's Illustrated, Summer 2006, p. 54)