Prompt for December 17: Make: What did you make this year that you’re proud of? Was it a success, or did it flop and you learned something about how to make it better next time? Do you have any special handmade projects planned for next year?
As part of my snap out of it strategy, I invited Courtney over for a afternoon of baking. Both of us are more than competent cooks and I figured with both of our brains available, we'd be able to tackle some of the more challenging recipes we'd bookmarked.
After a really good burger, we headed back to my apartment to finalize recipe choices and did a quick grocery store run.
The one thing that took the longest and came out the best is what I don't have pictorial evidence of. I made RR Macadamia Chocolate Tart except I used hazelnuts. It came out really good. Super rich, my sweet tooth was surrendering with a maybe 10* wedge, let alone anything near traditional pie slice size. It also took 85 years to bake. The recipe calls for 30 minutes of baking time, I left it in at least 50 before taking it out. In between the dough making, the dough chilling, the sauce making and chilling, the molding and rechilling and the final baking (no 30 minute meal tart here), I attempted my first bread.
Now, I totally bunted and didn't do anything requiring yeast, because I am a weenie and because my apartment is so cold, the yeast would just shrivel up and die (still haven't turned the heat on!). When I worked at a catering company, we had a recipe for caramelized onion beer bread that was beyond delicious. I'm constantly on the hunt for a similar recipe and thought this one might have similar flavor notes.
Definitely easy to make, pita to mix together. I had all these bits of half mixed flour in the bottom of my bowl. When I first pulled it out of the oven and we tried it, I was rather meh. Alright but nothing fabulous. Then I started taking slices to work to eat with my soup and does this bread age well. Toasted with a bit of butter? YUM.
C made some tasty citrusy cranberry cookies that also seemed to take a year and a half to come together. Tilly seemed to think so too as she not only jumped up and started trying to lick the mixer but jumped on the table after everything was done and grabbed the two cookies C had left for me. Coal for you, puppy!
Farewell cookies!
And then. There was a gingerbread cake I had bookmarked on pinterest that I wanted to try and it was served with either a lemon or caramel sauce. While at C's and flipping through cookbooks, I came upon a recipe for a brown sugar caramel sauce. Sold! Figured I could make the caramel sauce while I also had C with me and then whip the cake up later in the week. People on the internet keep telling me that caramel is not that difficult to make but I've been skeptical. But fine, lets give it a whirl.
Now. If you see in the recipe, it says stir till the sugar dissolves STOP stirring and boil for 10 minutes, yes? I read it multiple times, I had C check it to make sure I hadn't forgotten how to process the English language and we both concurred, it said stop stirring and did not say to start back up. Fine. When it came to a boil, I stopped stirring and set the timer for 10 minutes. We were still around but cleaning things up and after 6 or 7 minutes, I noticed a fair amount of smoke coming from the pot. Turned on the fan, opened the door to try and prevent the smoke detector from going off (farewell heat from the oven!) and we peered into the pot to what had been very dark brown now turning black bubbling boiling sugar. This can't be right. Pulled the pot off the heat, whisked and figured what the heck and poured in the cream. And the entire thing seized into a blob like it had suddenly become sentient. Instead of caramel sauce, I had created the La Brea tar pits in my kitchen.
We were both cracking up because my stars, what an epically epic fail. Stirring! I failed at stirring! I still blame the recipe :)
Overall I think I'm 1.75 for 3.
I will conquer you, caramel sauce. Just you wait.
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