Grappling with feelings of baking inadequacy
Lately I've produced a number of flops in the kitchen. After watching my family suffer through this succession of embarrassing culinary failures, I decided to root out a few "trusted" recipes - the kind that are supposed to guarantee success - and see whether I wouldn't also reduce them to smoldering masses of carbon.
One morning my grandma called to tell me that the Paula Zahn show (which has already been cancelled, and with apparent good reason) was featuring famous chefs and foodies. Zanne Stewart of Gourmet was present to plug the magazine's new cookbook. I have my issues with Gourmet, but Zanne (who was, oddly enough, named after my grandma) mentioned a certain flourless chocolate cake that has gone down in history as the most-requested, most-beloved Gourmet recipe ever. EVER. I figured even I might be able to produce something resembling edibility with this one.
I know now you're waiting for the devastating punch line, the chronicling of my abject failure to bake the easy-peasy Gourmet Flourless Chocolate Cake, but it actually turned out quite well. See?
The recipe was fast, easy and produced an incredibly decadent result. I used the Valrhona cocoa that was left over from my brownie experiment of a few weeks prior; I just love its slightly intimidating jet black box and its scarlet text. Delicious, sophisticated desserts are sure to emerge from such packaging, methinks.
A few days later, I made the worst batch of cookies ever. EVER. They were called Ultimate Oatmeal Cookies (from the May/June 2005 issue of Cook's Illustrated), but to me they stood for ultimate frustration and ultimate humiliation. I should mention a few things here in my defense, as well as that of Cook's Illustrated:
1) My parents' cookie sheets were manufactured circa 1935
2) We had no parchment paper, which the recipe requires. I tried to substitute wax paper (after reading on the box that it was "suitable for baking") with disastrous results that had to be thrown away
3) I then substituted Pam in place of the parchment paper
This was not a good decision. The bottoms burned immediately, and the cookies grew ever more scorched and rock hard as I watched helplessly through the oven window. They were gross. No pictures, thankfully, are available.
I was mad at myself. They were supposed to be The Ultimate! How could I be so talentless as to produce something so far off target, especially with a Cook's Illustrated recipe? I sank into gloom.
When I emerged from hiding a few days later, I decided to try again. This time, I purchased new insulated cookie sheets and parchment. I measured the oven temperature (which turned out to be accurate) and then reduced the cooking time. The results, pictured below, were scrumptious:
Made with pecans, chocolate, oatmeal and dried cranberries, these cookies are crispy on the outside, chewy on the inside and chock-full of textures and flavors. Highly recommended. Just don't use waxed paper. Or Pam. Or Depression-era cookie sheets.
My confidence, shaky at the best of times, may have been restored.
One morning my grandma called to tell me that the Paula Zahn show (which has already been cancelled, and with apparent good reason) was featuring famous chefs and foodies. Zanne Stewart of Gourmet was present to plug the magazine's new cookbook. I have my issues with Gourmet, but Zanne (who was, oddly enough, named after my grandma) mentioned a certain flourless chocolate cake that has gone down in history as the most-requested, most-beloved Gourmet recipe ever. EVER. I figured even I might be able to produce something resembling edibility with this one.
I know now you're waiting for the devastating punch line, the chronicling of my abject failure to bake the easy-peasy Gourmet Flourless Chocolate Cake, but it actually turned out quite well. See?
The recipe was fast, easy and produced an incredibly decadent result. I used the Valrhona cocoa that was left over from my brownie experiment of a few weeks prior; I just love its slightly intimidating jet black box and its scarlet text. Delicious, sophisticated desserts are sure to emerge from such packaging, methinks.
A few days later, I made the worst batch of cookies ever. EVER. They were called Ultimate Oatmeal Cookies (from the May/June 2005 issue of Cook's Illustrated), but to me they stood for ultimate frustration and ultimate humiliation. I should mention a few things here in my defense, as well as that of Cook's Illustrated:
1) My parents' cookie sheets were manufactured circa 1935
2) We had no parchment paper, which the recipe requires. I tried to substitute wax paper (after reading on the box that it was "suitable for baking") with disastrous results that had to be thrown away
3) I then substituted Pam in place of the parchment paper
This was not a good decision. The bottoms burned immediately, and the cookies grew ever more scorched and rock hard as I watched helplessly through the oven window. They were gross. No pictures, thankfully, are available.
I was mad at myself. They were supposed to be The Ultimate! How could I be so talentless as to produce something so far off target, especially with a Cook's Illustrated recipe? I sank into gloom.
When I emerged from hiding a few days later, I decided to try again. This time, I purchased new insulated cookie sheets and parchment. I measured the oven temperature (which turned out to be accurate) and then reduced the cooking time. The results, pictured below, were scrumptious:
Made with pecans, chocolate, oatmeal and dried cranberries, these cookies are crispy on the outside, chewy on the inside and chock-full of textures and flavors. Highly recommended. Just don't use waxed paper. Or Pam. Or Depression-era cookie sheets.
My confidence, shaky at the best of times, may have been restored.
posted by cindym at 10:26 AM
5 Comments:
Yay! You are back! Not that I'm doing any better over @ my blog, but I just enjoy your writing so much. And I adored reading about your travels and food finds - when are we going to get some Mexican food re-creations?
I totally feel you, Food Migrant. The only cookie sheet I have - though not from the dustbowl-carnivale-era, pretty much works and looks like one.
I had this awful, awful f'ing subletter this past summer, who would watch Fox News every day, all day - LITERALLY - and cook three times a day. Nothing specifically wrong with cooking three times a day, mind you, but he always used my damn cookie sheet to make his chicken and his meat, and after using it so often and always just leaving it there for hours uncleaned afterward, it is a crusty, rusty, shell of its former self.
And thus it be that my plans to learn how to bake the simplest, no-possible-f'ing-way it-could-go wrong Betty Crocker add water and an egg or something like that chocolate chip cookies...thus it be, I say, that those plans have been on hold for months.
thanks folkie! good to hear from you. i've realized that it's rather hard to travel and food-blog at the same time. i can eat, i can travel, i can post to my blog ...but not all at once. something has to give.
you're right, i need to revisit sopa de lima. how quickly we forget! thanks for reminding me.
Melvin! You gotta screen those subletters more carefully. Sweet jesus!
I highly recommend newish cookie sheets. They don't have to be super fancy, but scraping through layers of fossilized chicken remains just to uncover the metal below isn't fun.
I made these cookies last night, they are awesome (see here).
Enjoying reading your journal.
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