Minor Setbacks in Confectionary Comestibles

I’m still trying to figure out this whole food thing.  It’s not like we’re going completely vegan or gluten-free or flourless or anything really hard.  It’s just that I’m still learning about additives, preservatives, chemicals with really long names, generally unpronounceable items in the foods I used to buy, and I’m learning to navigate a whole new world of products that don’t have that stuff in them.  It’s like going into a grocery store for the very first time; everything is new to me.  Trying to figure out if this brand of Stevia is better than that brand; should I buy from the bulk bin or the package; am I really expected to lay down $7 on a package of fair trade chocolate chips?  (The answer is not no, but HECK no.  We will keep shopping; keep your golden chocolate chips, Native Sun.)

I’m also cooking more from scratch than I ever did before.  Usually some part of what I’d cook would involve a pre-packaged something.  A can of beans, a spice packet, a can of condensed soup, a cake mix.  Now I’m learning to put all those things in a recipe in their original forms.  It’s daunting but it’s also kinda fun, and Dallas keeps asking me, “Are you sure this isn’t too much?  Are you sure this isn’t too overwhelming?  I really appreciate it and all, but I don’t want you to feel chained to the stove.”  And I appreciate that, because you know Dallas, he’s awesome.  And he’s mine, so go get your own.  But no, I’m starting to have a good friendly relationship with Mr. Stove, and Mr. Pantry, and Ms. Cookbook.  Till Ms. Cookbook threw herself a rod and left me stranded in the ditch.  Rotten wench.

Last week I tried to make a “Chocolate Brownie Cake” out of a recipe book (which shall remain nameless in order to protect the righteously stupid).  All I can say is that Betty must have been asleep at the blender or deep into the cooking sherry when that recipe was written, because it is an utter crock of …. sugar.  (Keepin’ it family friendly, folks.)  My friends Tad and Monica can attest to the fact that when I deviate from anything other than The Exact Printed Recipe, disaster will ensue.  Case in point, the Brownie Debacle of 2002.  Or 2003.  I was attempting to “defatten” the recipe for a boxed brownie mix by replacing some of the oil with applesauce.  I’d read several recipes that solemnly SWEARED this was not only possible, but the brownies would be just as delicious as their normal fat-laden artery-clogging counterparts.  Let me tell you folks, that is a big fat lie.  God put oil on this planet in order for us to bake our brownies with it, and if he had not intended for us to put oil in our brownies he would have given us Wesson Golden Delicious and Crisco Granny Smith.  But He, in His infinite wisdom, intended that if you’re going to make a dessert, you might as well just make it the way it was supposed to be made and have done with it.  And then go run a mile or two or have half of what you’d normally have if you’re worried about gaining weight.  Or just lick the spoon.

This recipe called for you to make a batter, then mix a cup of boiling water with some cocoa and sugar and pour that water mixture on top of the batter, then bake it.  Now I should have gone running in the other direction when I saw this, but I have (okay, had) a great deal of faith in people who print cookbooks, and the Insufferable Optimist was right there, saying this could work, you don’t know.  I mean, don’t they vet this stuff before they get it to final print?  Doesn’t somebody have to test it out and prove it’s a wonderful recipe before idiots like me will waste organic unbleached flour and half a stick of pasture-fed cow butter on it?  So I pressed on, and long story short, pouring water over batter, however chocolaty that water is, in effect means you are boiling a cake in the oven.  So when I pull this boiled-cake thing out of the oven, looking like something one might step in, the IO is still not giving up, saying, Hm, maybe you should let it sit there and let the chocolate sludge on the bottom kind of seep into the cake on top.  Maybe that’s what you’re supposed to do.  I consult the recipe and it says nothing of the kind, but the IO has a point, it’s got to cool anyway and maybe it’ll work.  So I go on about my business of cooking dinner and I hide the brownies under a pan lest Dallas see them and get all excited over nothing.  Because nothing disappoints this boy more than a chocolate dessert that is not for him.  When I make desserts to take to peoples’ houses I make two; one to take and one for him.  It keeps him in a soft sugar-induced haze, so that when I say things like, “Dear, I really need you to paint the kitchen for the third time because the color we picked the first time is a rather puke green and it’s making me ill,” he says “yes dear” and is not bothered by my unreasonableness.

But back to my brownies, which have not absorbed the sludge one iota in 20 minutes of marinating in it.  The IO slinks off, her pom-poms dragging the ground, her hopeful contribution to this fiasco negated.   So I taste a tiny corner, and it is foul.  Much like the texture of a kitchen sponge that has not had cocoa added, but rather has been shown a picture of cocoa.  Or a picture of a memory of cocoa.  I think, this will not do, and I go back to the recipe to make sure I didn’t forget or misunderstand something vital to brownie-making.  Nope, what I did is what was there.  I taste a little bit more just make sure I’m not being overly critical of a recipe that I’m not all that familiar with, and yet again the texture and flavor of this abomination is on the level of eating watered-down chocolate sponge.  So of course I toss it and Dallas asks me later about the brownies, which he has seen after all, despite my attempts to hide their brief existence, and I have to tell him that I have saved him from a fate worse than death.  (Tad and Monica will be thrilled to know that this time I tasted the brownies before I served them, saving my loved ones the uncomfortable position of having to say, “Mm, these are so, mph, good,” while looking surreptitiously for the nearest trash can, the sooner to divest themselves of this unfortunate, vile concoction I’ve foisted upon them.  I’ve learned.)

I’m annoyed, folks.  I just wasted an hour of my life on some unholy craptastic brownies.  AND I have no dessert and that means Dallas is going to be stuck putting canned chocolate frosting that he found in the back of the refrigerator on soda crackers out of desperation.  The boy NEEDS his dessert, people.  This is not some take-it-or-leave-it thing; dessert is an integral part of his life, and I enjoy being able to provide that for him occasionally.  Don’t they check these recipes out before they send them out into the wild?  Don’t they have somebody in the Crocker Kitchen saying, “Yeah, that recipe is gross.  Nobody in their right mind is going to want to eat chocolate-flavored O-Cello sponge boiled in cocoa sludge.  Let’s jettison that joker.”  Apparently not.

So, as I warned my family going into this, there are going to be some hiccups, some bumps in the road, and some full-on WHAT FRESH HELL IS THIS moments.  I have not failed, though, I’ve merely learned to trust my instincts when I see something that doesn’t sound quite right, and I plan to give that Insufferable Optimist a good poke in the eye when she pops up next.  Dimwit.