Kitchen F#!% Ups

Sheri, 0; Pumpkin Pie, 8.

I have tried to make pumpkin pie on many occasions. I hate pumpkin pie – so gross. But Larry loves it and I know homemade must be better than purchased. So I keep trying. Every time something goes horribly wrong.

This time, it was the crust. How many times have I made a blind-baked pie crust that turns out just perfect? A lot. So why did this one shrink from a lovely unbaked crust into a tough, tiny shrunken crust? I don’t know, but it barely took half of the filling. The rest went into ramekins.

Larry tried a piece, just in case. Sometimes things will seem horrible, but in the end they turn out fine. The only good thing about this pie crust is the outside crust. The rest was tough and chewy. The filling is allegedly good but I wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot pole.

• Bourbon-Vanilla Bean Pumpkin Pie (Fine Cooking #88, November 2007 online extra)

I made a lovely little chocolate stout cake today, except it came out looking like there was a brain embedded in the middle of it. Or warts, take your pick. The disaster continued when I attempted to cut the 9″ round of cake in half (crooked), then tried to frost it with ganache that had been refrigerated too long. I popped it in the microwave, but for too long. Then had to refrigerate it again. It was messy, frosting the cake, because the ganache was still kind of gooey, and by the time it finished it looked like a chocolate grenade had exploded in my hands. Luckily there was lots of it to cover up the Cake Brain, and it ended up tasting pretty good.

• Chocolate Stout Cake (King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking, p. 422)

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)

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)

This was my first attempt at making naan. It was not easy to make – the dough was really hard to handle. I got better at it the more I made, but this first one looks like *ahem* male genitalia.

• Homestyle Indian Naan (Fine Cooking #47, November 2001, p. 47)

I tested this lemon buttermilk poundcake with a toothpick and I swear the toothpick came out clean. But as it cooled on the rack for 10 minutes, the middle sank like a tank. Inside the hole it was soggy and wet. I turned the oven back on and threw it in, knowing that it wouldn’t rise, but hoping that it would at least finish baking.

Larry asked for waffles for breakfast, and I thought it was a good idea since I had some fresh berries to go with them. I’m not a good breakfast maker. Pancakes, waffles – just not something I’m good at. Today was no exception. I was out of buttermilk. No problem, I can just use powdered, which I always have on hand. Except my powdered buttermilk was really hard, so I used a knife to break it up.
Here’s where I should have stuck the chunks of dried buttermilk into the food processor to turn it back into a powder. SHOULD have, but I didn’t. Instead I just added it to the dry mix, added the appropriate amount of water to the wet ingredients, and mixed it all together. I guess I was thinking it would dissolve.
It didn’t. We ended up with inedible waffles that had chunks of dried buttermilk dispersed throughout. Ick!

• Buttermilk Waffles (American Classics, p. 40)

I’ve been wanting to make this delicious-sounding poundcake that Sweetnicks kindly posted on her blog.

It smelled delicious as it was baking. Mmm, the aroma of butter and bananas. And burnt cake mix – it started leaking out of the bottom of my tube pan, which has a removable bottom. I knew I was going to have problems removing the cake from the pan, but I had a plan.

Once the cake was a lovely golden color, I removed it from the oven and left it to cool on a rack in the pan for ten minutes. When I went to remove the cake from the pan, boy was the pan hot. My initial instinct was to leave it in the pan longer, but I was tired and wanted to get things moving along.

I should have just trusted myself – impatience is rarely a good thing when it comes to baking. I used a small, thin knife to loosen the cake where it had leaked out. Most of the cake dropped nicely onto my plate, but one big chunk was still stuck to the pan.

Banana Pound Cake (Sweetnicks, January 16, 2006)

I’ve made this cake twice with few issues. So why did it turn out so weird tonight? It cooked for an hour, after which it looked set in the middle. I took it out to cool in the pan, on a rack, for fifteen minutes before I turned it out onto the rack.
As soon as I turned it out, I could tell it wasn’t cooked all the way through. It was cooked more than a molten chocolate cake, but definitely not enough to hold up to frosting. I stuck a spoon into the side and it practically melted.
In the end, I served it without frosting or glaze, in bowls. It was still delicious. Just ugly.

• Chocolate-Amaretto Heart

As chiles go, poblanos are fairly mild. Still, it’s generally not recommended that you rub your eye after you’ve been seeding and slicing them.