From Failure Comes Success…

If it’s true that you learn from your failures, then I practically got a degree this weekend.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that I am not a master baker, but am a huge fan of “The Great British Bake-off,” and always watch the Master Classes with Paul Hollywood and Mary Berry. Though I’ve learned a lot, apparently I still have a long way to go before I even reach amateur status.

Friday afternoon I decided to bake some chocolate chip cookies for my church’s prison ministry (Kairos). This is something I’ve done from time to time – always with mixed results, which is why I don’t volunteer for it every time.

Here’s what happened this time…

We have a small oven, one which is built into the wall (like the Brady’s had) so we can only fit in two trays at a time (vertically). I was also cooking a pan of scalloped potatoes for our dinner, so I placed that on the bottom rack while rotating trays of cookies on the top rack. None of the trays of cookies ever got completely baked (though they were soft and lovely!) as you could tell from a lack of a bottom layer on each cookie. My husband, Andrew, who definitely knows his way around the kitchen and usually has far better luck than me with most things culinary, figured the tray of scalloped potatoes absorbed all the heat and I would have been far better off putting that on the top rack. Also, I burned the bottom layer of my potatoes since they were in the oven far too long (2 hours + last hour on low).

Final result: kept the cookies since trying to keep 2 dozen soft cookies from forming one giant lump of a cookie seemed futile. Most of the scalloped potatoes were still edible, and I extend my gratitude to Andrew for cleaning the burnt pan for me (which we soaked overnight).

The apple tart dilemma…

In early/mid September Andrew and I went apple picking at a local farm. After making several containers of apple sauce, and eating an apple or two occasionally, we still have an entire drawer (and then some) leftover. I borrowed my sister’s Kitchen Aid blender to assist with making an apple tart in the ceramic tart pan I bought many, many years ago at a garage sale and have never used.

Sunday morning I got on my laptop to look up baking instructions since my tart pan was ceramic and not metal like most of them. It was while doing that, that I learned what I actually have is a quiche pan. I acknowledged that, shrugged, then carried on with making my recipe for the crust (copied directly from a Master Class episode). Since the dough was so sticky (as it was supposed to be) and apparently I was over-flouring it, my husband stepped in and rolled it out for me. Once he did that and then looked at the size of the quiche pan, we both determined that was going to be a no go in terms of fitting properly. His circle would adequately fit the bottom, but there wasn’t enough dough to reach up to the sides. Rather than make more dough, we just decided to carry on and use a pie tin instead, so we did the blind bake and then added our apples. The crust got a little overdone so Andrew covered it with tin foil to allow the apples to bake properly. The end result – a sad little pie that tasted alright, but a lot of work for just a mediocre result. However, the crust (even though over baked) didn’t stick like it normally does because of using a different recipe (and doing a blind bake, etc.).

At least I got good results after making some cupcakes to donate to the food pantry tomorrow (though I still have to make the frosting using a dry powder mix). Fingers crossed!