Disaster Zone!

You see that big banner up there? It says Baking and Mistaking. But I haven't exactly been living up to that lately. I've been holding back on all the mistaking. I've been mistaking, of course, I just haven't been  blogging about it, mostly because it makes me sad. But I'm over it now, so get ready, for an all out, play-by-play, no-holds barred, tale of disasters.
 

1. Peanut Butter Pie


The recipe for this peanut butter pie came from a Good Housekeeping cookbook. It wasn't...awful, it was just kind of strange. It is basically a pie shell with a peanut butter custard filling. To start with, there was just way too much filling. Simply cutting the amount in half would have vastly improved this dessert, but it still wouldn't have been great. Obviously some chocolate would be nice, but I'm not sure how I would incorporate it. I think I'd like to try a more mousse-type peanut butter tart in the future. 



2. Lemon Coconut Bars

I like lemon. I like coconut. I should have liked these bars. I think their biggest problem was the vast gap between my expectations and reality. The recipe for these bars came from a blog, which had these beautiful photos of a crisp, coconut layer, then the lemon, and a cookie crust at the bottom. But my coconut and lemon layers completely melded into one, with none of the crispness I was looking for. The flavors were pretty good, so I'll just have to find other coconut lemon things. Although these cookies are kind of the best thing ever.

3. Fruit Pie


This pie is probably the most disastrous thing on this list. The recipe was ripped out of a magazine - which one I can't remember - and it was truly awful. I'm not sure why I even attempted this, since I have such amazing pies in my repertoire, but it looks quick and easy, so I gave it a shot. It is basically a store bought pie crust, filled with peaches and raspberries, with a custard-y mixture poured on top. Well, despite cooking it much longer than the recipe indicated, it was still runny and soggy and truly gross. Refrigerating it to try to get it to firm up just made it cold and soggy, which was not much of an improvement. Blech.

4. Chocolate Filled Scones

I've never made scones before. I've always thought of scones as dry and tasteless - and it turns out I was right! At least for this recipe. Part of the fault lies with me - I definitely didn't use enough chocolate in the middle of the scones, but I still felt like they weren't great. The drop off was also significant on day two, which I guess is par for the course with scones, but not everything in my house is really eaten day 1. I'm not quite giving up on scones in general - I'll have to re-imagine these, and make sure they're all eaten quick!






Anyway, that's what's been going on in my kitchen after hours. None of these really eclipses my top disasters though: for sheer inedibility - babke attempt 1; for biggest mess - exploding ice cream and for sheer frustration: complete meltdown.
Have you had any major disasters lately? Let me know so we can all feel bad together!