As I've been in the kitchen more and more, I've learned to re-purpose my mistakes. And sometimes re-re-purpose them.
Yesterday, I had a plan to make this cute little individual sized layer-cakes. The cakes baked up fine, but the frosting was giving me issues. I've made it plenty of times before, but yesterday it was just off for some reason. So, when I went to frost my cakes and realized my icing was too soft, I thought "No big deal, I'll just make cake pops." Ohh, Jacob, how naive. So when those, too, were runny and soft, I was at a loss. Until inspiration struck. And inspiration only struck because I was torn between making cake and making ice cream. So, I added a bit of cream and milk and pulled out my ice cream maker, Ol' Reliable. I've never yet made anything in it which wasn't tasty. And Ol' Reliable didn't fail me this time either. After 10 minutes or so of churning I had a thick, creamy, somewhat spongy dessert which reminded me of frozen mousse.
Was this dessert exponentially less healthy than ice cream? Yeah, it definitely was. Was it a great way to use what otherwise would have been garbage? Most assuredly. Would I make it again? Yes, if I had the recipe.
And that's why today's post contains no recipe. By that point, I was just hoping to salvage something edible, not something blog-worthy. But I wanted to share my story anyway, to encourage some of you to think outside the box when things go awry. You could come up with something great.
Do you have a kitchen disaster story you'd like to get off your chest? My comments section is always available for (food-related) therapy.
I promised to bring this Martha Stewart Sweet Potato Cannelloni dish to my first now-husband's family's Thanksgiving dinner:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.marthastewart.com/314723/sweet-potato-cannelloni?backto=true
Only, it turns out that you have to have a REALLY sharp mandolin to get the sweet potato slices thin enough to roll, and frankly, my mandolin is a hair shy of junk. I quickly planned to abandon the project and just make a mashed sweet potato dish... until the mandolin finally succeeded to cut through something... my thumb. Bloody massacre.
We showed up to the dinner empty handed... and bandaged. :(
awesome! i am ALL for reusing and re-re-reusing! i need to start keeping better track of all my kitchen disasters, but i often would just rather pretend they didn't happen...cake balls are a nice way to make yourself feel better after various baking mishaps...now i guess we have a back-up for when even cakeballs fail :p
ReplyDelete@Lwbookeater: Oh ouch. I would have been mortified. And now I think I'll steer clear of my mandolin for a while.
ReplyDelete@Skylar: My thoughts exactly. I think if I ever need to find a back-up for this stuff, it'll be something completely crazy. I may just need to take break from baking if that happens.