More Kitchen Capers

/ Diane Henders

I’m generally a competent cook and baker, but lately the culinary cockups have come thick and fast. As I noted in my previous post, it’s unclear whether my gastronomic gaffes are most frequently caused by:

  1. Following directions exactly;
  2. Not following directions exactly; or
  3. Completely ignoring the need for directions.

Example 1: Mozzarella cheese. I’ve never made cheese before, so I used my digital thermometer to keep the solution at precisely the correct temperature for exactly the times the recipe specified. And after several hours of hovering and stirring, submerging and manipulating as directed, my so-called “mozzarella” fell apart into little rubbery curds instead of stretching into the lovely elastic ball shown by the recipe. Clearly, the Cheese Gods weren’t smiling that day. (So I chucked the curds into a cheese mold and squished them together into a block. They tasted fine, but the texture was definitely not as advertised.)

Example 2: Soy Nuts. The recipe said to soak the soybeans overnight and then bake them at 350°F for twenty to forty minutes. At the forty-minute mark, I had a pan of hot squishy soybeans, not the crunchy brown goodies I wanted. After another hour in the oven, I had a weird mixture of crunchy brown goodies and pale leathery nuggets. They turned out okay after a stint in the dehydrator; but the recipe needed quite a bit of *ahem* adaptation.

Example 3: Raspberry Cream Cake. I admit it: There was no recipe. But it shouldn’t have been complicated: White cake, raspberry purée, buttercream frosting, whipped cream, and fresh raspberries. All I had to do was assemble it.

But my purée was a bit too thin, and the confectioner’s sugar that the internet recommended as a stabilizer actually liquified the whipped cream.

Hubby passed through the kitchen halfway through the doomed assembly process and recoiled at what was apparently the scene of a particularly messy murder. Crimson droplets seeped from the pale flesh of the decapitated cake-victim. Dismembered cake layers lay beside it, oozing raspberry blood. Globs of buttercream and splatters of runny whipped cream covered everything in the vicinity, including the floor and me.

Hubby hesitated. Then, diplomatic as always, he inquired, “Should I go out and buy more whipping cream?”

Ego-bruised but not beaten, I replied, “Nope. I have a plan!”

He shook his head with what I prefer to think of as respect (ha, ha) and wisely retreated.

Somewhat to my surprise, my plan actually worked. The cake turned out both pretty and delicious, although it was nothing like I had originally envisioned.

The final product. No crime-scene tape required.

And hey, despite my recent struggles, I have proof that the culinary gods do occasionally shower us with their grace. Remember my whining about Army-Surplus Smarties®? Well, either it’s sheer coincidence, or somebody was listening. I bought another batch of Smarties® and guess what?

They’ve fixed the colours! No more dismal army-surplus green, woohoo!

So I’m going to conveniently avoid the question of whether my latest escapades have been successes (they were tasty, after all) or failures (because nothing went as planned). Instead, I’ll simply classify the whole shebang as “miraculous”.

Any miracles in your world lately?

P.S. Sorry if the photos are gigantic. I set them to be medium-sized and WordPress complied. Then, about five minutes before I was ready to publish, it suddenly started displaying both photos full-sized, while still insisting they’re “medium”. *throws up hands*

Book 18 update: I’m on Chapter 8 and Aydan is chasing ghosts: One from the present and one from her past.

31 thoughts on “More Kitchen Capers”

  1. Your cake looks absolutely wonderful. I imagine it tasted wonderful too. You tackle stuff most people would not. Mozzarella cheese???
    Tanya is such a good cook, I don’t get to do much, supervise a roast now and then. And she experiments with new recipes from the internet.
    I make baking powder biscuits once in a while. My staples are homemade pork and beans and homemade chili. Tanya won’t eat them anyhow. I have recipes used as guidelines so not two batches are exactly the same.

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    • My chili, soup, and stew recipes are similar to yours — no two batches are exactly the same. We have “Tilt Soup” fairly regularly: Tilt the fridge, and whatever comes out goes into the soup.

      The mozzarella cheese was definitely a new experiment for me. I love cheese and I’ve always been fascinated by the process of making it, but this was my first attempt. Subsequent reading suggests that homogenized milk doesn’t work well for mozzarella; so if I’m going to try it again, I’ll get whole milk. But it’s really only an interesting experiment — it costs the same whether I buy the milk and make the cheese or just skip the work and buy the cheese. I guess if it made sense it wouldn’t be a hobby. 😉

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  2. I applaud your fortitude. I’m am anything but a cook, but I respect what cooks go through and in this particular case how you pulled an end of story success from what sounded like a chaotic process (mess?)!! LOL

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  3. Your hubby always seems to pass through your kitchen at the most entertaining time, Diane. Do you send a subtle signal, or is he just attuned to that exact moment? 😀

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  4. The other day I had a “Smarties” attack and asked my husband to pick up a box while grocery shopping.

    he cam home with this

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  5. You know, I think it’s more important that something tastes good than that it looks good. If you had to choose between the two, what would you pick? When something doesn’t come out well in our tiny kitchen, my remark is often “at least it tastes good.” (Unless it doesn’t.)

    Do you incorporate cooking or kitchen stories into your novels?

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    • Yes, there’s lots of food in my novels — my main character loves her food (and beer)! There’s a bit of cooking in my stories; but the slower pace of cooking doesn’t really lend itself to thrillers. Maybe I need to write a few cozy mysteries so I can use some of my kitchen stories. 😉

      And you’re right, I’d definitely choose “tasty” over “pretty”. But that question made me think of the ‘potato-and-egg’ dish you were served in your travels, and I laughed. That dish didn’t sound very tasty, and it definitely wasn’t pretty!

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      • Haha. Good point! That egg and potato dish was a riot. After the facts.

        We recently cooked an uninspiring dinner at home (involving boiled eggs, since that was the only protein we had left) and even though it didn’t look or taste great, we had to admit it was better than that infamous boiled potato and egg dish. So, now that “dish” serves as a very low standard to compare our own cooking to! 🙂 

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  6. That cake is very pretty! I’d buy it if I saw it in a shop. And no miracles for me lately, unless you’d consider my house not collapsing under the strain of unfinished projects to be a miracle, because then I’ve totally got one, lol! 

    And ooooh, I loooooove a good ghost story! Go Aydan! 

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    • I think I have the same kind of miracle as you. I try not to think about all the unfinished projects piling up. And if I do, I remind myself, “At least I’ll never be wandering around the house bored and wondering what to do. There will always be something! 😉

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  7. Well, that cake looks pretty darn good, if you ask me! I hope your hubby apologized for that head shake 🙂

    Regarding your P.S. on photo sizes, the first time I opened this page, the photos showed up medium-sized. I refreshed to see if I could get it to accept my “likes” on a couple of the comments, and it then showed the photos as much larger.

    I’m convinced that 95 percent of the problems on all social media platforms start with some kid on the programming side saying, “hey, ya know what would really make this good?!” Yeah, no, buddy. lol

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    • Hahaha!!! I’m sure you’re right about the programmer-kids. And “hey, ya know what would really make this good?!” is followed by, “Ya think we should test it?” “Nah. It’s all good.” Yeah, no, buddy to that, too.

      And I’m going to let Hubby get away with that headshake. Heaven knows there have been enough of my escapades that did justify a headshake, and he tactfully refrained. 😉

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  8. The first half got sent before I finished; don’t know how that happened. Anyhow, how are you feeling? Get the medical care you needed?
    Hope you had a chance to re-acquaint yourself with Freddy, Jinx, Mre. Wiggins and the gang.

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    • Thanks for asking, Dave! I’m still chugging along as best I can; unfortunately with no new diagnosis, or even any hope of seeing a doctor in the near future. I’m a year and a half into the supposed 2-year wait to see a neurosurgeon, and a few months ago I was referred to a rheumatologist whose website shows 18 – 24 months wait. I guess our current medical care model consists of “If you make patients wait long enough, they’ll either quietly die or quietly get better; but either way they won’t bother you”.

      Sadly, I still haven’t had a chance to revisit Freddy et. al. Life has been a bit too crazy for me lately; but they’re still on my reading list! 🙂

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      • The waiting times are incredible. I’m on a list for a bunch of things and doubt I will live long enough to get them. And MRI? Forget it. We could do three times as many as are now done in a day but the government will not pay for them.

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        • Yeah; and all the while the provincial governments are whining to the Feds about how they need more medical budget. BC just got a big infusion of health-care money, and you can bet it’ll all quietly disappear into various government pockets without affecting health services or wait times one whit. (Oh, wait; did that sound cynical? Maybe it’s because I am.)

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  9. I’ve pretty much given up on cooking, excepting a few basics; bacon and eggs, sausage and grits, burgers and hot dogs. Sustenance when I don’t fel like going somewhere to eat. Cooking for one isn’t particularly rewarding for me and the assorted snorts and gurgles from the pets when they are allowed to partake in my culinary attempts don’t provide any meaningful feedback. Thinking back on it, the last few friends for whom I cooked sounded pretty much the same , so maybe I shouldn’t discount the comments from the pets?

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    • LOL! When a friend is good enough, verbal communication doesn’t matter. I accept snorts and gurgles as compliments to the chef (as long as the snorting and gurgling isn’t accompanied by seizures and/or death). Hey, that gives me a whole new way to evaluate my food results: “Excellent”, “Good”, “Nobody Died” and “Oops”. 😉

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  10. You are a MUCH more ambitious kitcheniere than I can manage at the moment. Hooray for the successes. At the moment WP is only deigning to show a tiny sliver of photos to me. I refresh and a sliver more appears. And repeat. And repeat.

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    • Argh! I’m sorry you’ve been having problems. I’m using WordPress.com and it’s been EXTREMELY flaky lately. Today it decided to make it impossible for me to update my Books page. I think I’ll switch to a self-hosted page — at least then I can make it do what I want instead of waiting/hoping for WordPress to fix its problems.

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