Normally this blog is full of all the wonderful things I whip up in my kitchen on the regular; delectable treats and meals that I hope make readers hungry, inspire them to cook at home more, or to do one better and improve upon the recipes! This is not that blog. Every once in awhile I hit a major cooking slump where nothing quite turns out right. I don’t know if Jupiter was in retrograde or there were active sun flares, or if I was only reading every third line of the recipe, but this blog is full of failure after failure. Grab a cocktail, this is gonna be rough!
Let’s start with the most recent disaster, shall we? I am down to a grand total of SIX recipes remaining in The Pioneer Woman Cooks, so as you can imagine, I’m at the point of “I don’t really have much interest in these recipes.” For some it’s the expense (beef tenderloin), for some it’s the food itself is unappealing (sugar cookies – booooooringggg), for recipe #57: Cinnamon Rolls, it was the mess and time commitment. Plus I already have a fool-proof (or at least ME-proof) recipe that is successful 100% of the time, so why mess with perfection? Because I am incapable of walking away from a challenge, that’s why, so new cinnamon roll recipe, here I come! Ok, first thing you need to know is this recipe makes FIFTY rolls. That’s 5-0. Seriously, no one needs that! I thought perhaps they were mini, but nope, they are pretty full-sized! Mine were even bigger…more on that later. Next; in the “pro” column is the fact that this called for FAR less yeast-rising time than my go-to recipe, which demands a full two days of proper preparation for the various rises. (Another reason I dragged my feet to make this.) Also in the “con” column: this required far less yeast-rising time! They had an hour to rise after the initial dough mixing, but I’m used to a big, beautiful puffball of dough which I joyfully punch down, but this never quite achieved those heights. There was a secondary rising of about twenty minutes after it was rolled, but that didn’t amount to much either. Another “con”, this dough was S-T-I-C-K-Y! I had to add a lot more flour to keep it together and from gluing to my hands and roller, and it already called for nine cups! My tried and true recipe? Not a problem. I can pretend I’m Chef Boy-R-Dee and flip that dough through the air like a pizza round if I wanted, because it is nicely cohesive. How about another positive? There was a metric ton of cinnamon and sugar and butter for the filling! Make that a partial positive… the first batch called for so much butter it actually made a mini-flood on the counter which had to be cleaned, so that’s annoying. Now here is where the fault is likely mine, not to be blamed on the recipe. I may or may not have adhered to the 1 1/2 inch slicing size, based on my desire to keep the total down to no more than a couple dozen total rolls. While they filled the pan nicely and looked beautiful out of the oven, the center roll was a gooey, uncooked mess that I gladly tossed in the trash. The baked parts of the rolls (and the delectable icing!) were quite delicious, but the undercooked parts were awful. Long story short, I’m sticking with my recipe which works! (Oh, and I have two more pans of frozen dough which I will bake at least ten minutes longer next time I try!)
,Speaking of undercooked… I was actually looking forward to #41: Huevos Hyacinth, so named for Ree’s BFF, but when it finally happened I could barely choke it down. The problem here is likely that I went overboard with my favorite ingredients, a frequent issue of mine. The premise for these eggs is simple: meat (such as deli ham or turkey), tomatoes or salsa, an egg, then top with cheese, season, and bake. I was excited to get to pull out my adorable tiny cast iron skillets (the picture doesn’t indicate, but these are about four inches across) which had never been used, AND I was getting the bonus of using up the last of the lunch meat and sliced ‘maters from the fridge. I love a good use for odds and ends in the crisper drawer! The recipe went south (my fault) when I used TWO eggs instead of one, a rather excessive amount of tomato (which is 99% water – don’t fact-check me, just go with it!), and I topped it with too much cheese. Too much cheese?? Is that even possible?! In a word, yes. Due to the high water content and the additional egg, I needed less cheese on top in order to get the whites fully cooked. Better yet, I could have just cooked the eggs cheese-less first, then when they were mostly done, added it at the end. Sadly this is Monday morning quarterbacking, and I didn’t do those things. My cheese was starting to blacken, so I had to take it out of the oven before the eggs were even poached. Another one for the “Fail” category, but I’m willing to give this another shot with some adjustments!
Ugh… Yet another meatloaf! Why does every cookbook author feel the need to include this?? I just don’t really care whose recipe it is, #42: Meatloaf will never be a favorite. This one had good flavor; it was wrapped in bacon (yay for taste, boo for inevitably floppy bacon.) It had a sweet, ketchup-based sauce brushed on during and after baking, so that tasted fine but also contributed to the aforementioned bacon-flop. Additionally, there was an abnormally large quantity of liquid in this recipe! A full cup of milk PLUS four beaten eggs and the meat/bread crumb mixture didn’t stand a chance of holding together properly. To be fair, I compared my result with the picture from the cookbook, and hers is also only roughly loaf-shaped and mostly resembles a melting log of dough. I don’t think I used too much; I think the recipe calls for too much. ‘Nuff said, I’m not making this again!
The final humiliation… #44: Flat Apple Pie. Ohhhhh, was I TICKED when I pulled this from the oven!! Finally, I can blame sub-standard equipment for my screw-up, instead of faulting the recipe or my own errors. I don’t much like apple pie or apple desserts in general, but this was actually looking and smelling pretty good as I mixed the warm spices and the juicy, tart apples together with sweet brown sugar. I dutifully filled a (store-bought) crust with my filling and folded the edges up around the apples for a galette-style dessert. I placed it in the oven and went to get ready for a Mother’s Day celebration, where this was to be served. Yeah; it had the nerve to go awry on MOTHER’S DAY! When the timer went off I opened the oven door to find… dry apples and what looked like the contents of the La Brea Tar Pits flooding one side of the pan. The stupid, cheap, crappy sheet pan I baked it on had buckled when it heated up, and the entire quantity of wet filling slowly leaked out and solidified into a blackened mess unfit for human consumption. I have no idea how this imposter pan made it into my kitchen which is stocked with Pampered Chef, well-made, quality cookware, but rest assured no one will ever find the body of THIS pan again! Needless to say, Mother’s Day dessert came from a bakery instead.
With any luck these are the worst of the worst from an otherwise much-loved cookbook. So the next time your soufflé falls flat or your Mac and cheese gums up…blame it on Jupiter in retrograde and order a pizza!
Have Book, Will Cook 