So cooking is just not my thing. My family likes to tease me about the time I tried to boil an egg with no water. For some reason I thought you just threw the egg in the pan and turned on the heat. This incident tonight got Chuck laughing as he brought up several other incidents of my cooking mishaps. Like the fact that I made cookies not once but twice for various church functions using a recipe where I had written down 1 Tablespoon salt instead of 1 teaspoon salt. Yes, both times the cookies were really nasty. And the time I signed up to make a specific dessert for the ward Christmas party and when the party was over I went to retrieve my dish and noticed that they hadn't served mine because they were unable to scrap the crust off the bottom of the pan. When Chuck saw this he told me to grab the pan and run before anyone noticed it was mine. Too bad the kitchen staff had already read our last name scrawled across the side of the pan.
But still I just keep wondering why every time I need to make something to take somewhere it is a disaster. It can be the simplest thing and somehow I'll mess it up! And tonight was just another chapter to add to my cooking disaster book.
Chuck told me last night he needed me to make something for a pot luck dinner tonight. There was no way I was going to take the 4 kids grocery shopping and I didn't really have anything just laying around to make so I broke out the food storage brownie mix. I should have realized this could go horribly wrong when I read the directions.
It says to preheat the oven to 325, then later it says to cook the brownies at 350. Now I'm not a cook, but why would you preheat at a different temperature than you cook? I read the rest of the directions and followed them. I mean how hard is this all you add is water, oil and the powder - anyone can do this - WRONG!
I added all the ingredients and it was extremely dry. So I read the directions several more times trying to decide what I had done wrong. I finally convinced myself that instead of 3 and 1/2 cups of powder it really meant 3, 1/2 cups (1 & 1/2 cups total). So I figured no problem I would increase the water and oil to match the amount of powder I had already added then split the batter and bake. Well, the end result was not that great. The brownies were extremely thin and tasted a little weird so I made some of my new favorite peppermint frosting hoping to mask the taste. At least the frosting tasted good!
The sorry looking brownies!
In the end we pulled up to the pot luck dinner at the park and there were a ton of people there so Chuck and I decided we would leave the slightly iffy brownies in the car and hope no one noticed we didn't contribute anything! Let's just say this is not the first time we have decided to leave my not so appetizing contribution in the car. And I'm still not sure about those directions!
5 comments:
Don't feel too bad, I am not good at baking either and I usually screw things up. I just go buy stuff from the store because I am too tired to even try, so see, at least you try :) I love the "tough" look Sam is giving the camera in his uniform, and yes their game was FREEZING! I am glad they have some 5:30 games after this next Tues. Your little Jenna's smile is so adorable! She is such a doll! And I love that red shirt she has on, I can't wait to dress up my little girl in cute girl clothes! (I still have the task of washing everything though, ugh)
=D You are too cute! Don't worry... you are so talented at everything else, that cooking just doesn't matter!
I have moments like this too, and I never understand why I mess stuff up when it is for a really big crowd? Maybe it is the pressure :) (This Lori Borrowman by the way) I love your cute blog!!
Don't blame yourself for that one- those are crazy directions!! I guess they expect you to be desperate when you're using Food Storage brownies.
Yep! You pulled a me! And it makes me smile!
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