So night before last (that’d be Sunday night) A. came over and thought she’d utilize my kitchen, mixer, ingredients, and “expertise” to make a coffee cake for my mother’s (belated) birthday. Now, A. is no Martha in the kitchen, and to be honest, she’s lucky to boil eggs without disaster, but everyone’s gotta start somewhere, right?

Well, after searching the internet for ages at work searching for a recipe, she came up with what is probably the world’s only coffee cake recipe that requires one of the few kitchen gadgets I do not have - a pastry cutter. It’s called Brown Sugar Crumb Cake, and you can get this recipe (with its rather unappetizing photo - holy god, could it look any more ick?) here. Now, the last recipe I made from about.com was a complete disaster. Let’s say sugar cookies that tasted like pure flour, okay? So I was skeptical from the start - I mean, bad photo, and About.com ‘certified’.

But, it sounded good. I mean, how can you go wrong with an ingredient list that doesn’t have much more than a lot of brown sugar and butter?

Hahaha.

“How could you go wrong?” is the sort of thoughtless thing Murphy (of the “Murphy’s Law” fame) catches you thinking and giggles madly at. Because what went wrong? Oh, just about everything.

The problems started when it became apparent that A was not exactly sure what “packed” meant in relation to “two cups brown sugar, packed”. She is, granted, a novice baker, and we got that straightened out. Then the lack of a pastry cutter (which we remedied thanks to a trip to my mother’s to borrow hers). Then… well, it’s possibly that A measured out a tablespoon of baking soda and powder, but neither of us think that’s likely. (Well, she denies it vehemently, but she also denied doing anything wrong that time she totally ripped up the directions to the tacos and added like, a lake’s worth too much water, and she also denied doing anything wrong (”You’re just skeptical, Katie!”) the time she dumped two packets of seasoning for our Rice-a-Roni into one dish, which, by the way, tasted like a giant mouthful of salt, and I do give her kudos for choking down several bites in an attempt to prove just how ‘wrong’ I was at being completely sickened at the first bite. So, make what you will of her denial, folks.)

But seriously, I watched the baking soda and baking powder measuring, and I didn’t seem too alarmed by the size of the spoon she was using, so I think she’s telling the truth this time around. Honest. ;-) Well, then… you see, there’s this line in the directions, which I did not read, because hell, A. is an English genius, I didn’t expect to have trouble with her reading them - carrying them out, perhaps, but not reading them, and it says:

Reserve 1 scant cup of crumbs and set aside. Combine remaining ingredients and whisk until smooth; stir into the remaining crumbs in bowl.

She read it line by line. “Reserve 1 scant cup of crumbs and set aside.” And after a minor discussion on what was meant by ’scant’, she removes some crumbs and sets them aside.

Then she reads: “Combine remaining ingredients and whisk until smooth.”

Did you see that? I didn’t, because i didn’t read the instructions. Read like she read it to me, it sounded like they wanted us to add the rest of the damned ingredients and mix it all up until smooth. She thought so, too. So that’s what we did. We did not combine the remaining ingredients separately. We mixed it all up together with the crumbs we had not reserved, and… mixed it smooth. This, ladies and gents, may have been a big problem.

Then she read: “Stir into the remaining crumbs.”

Yep. You bet. We stirred in the remaining - the reserved crumbs, even as we asked: “I thought there should’ve been a topping!” And even as I (and mind you, I’m no master baker either, but I’m not a novice) thought: “Funny that we did all that bloody work with the pastry cutter just to mix it all smooth like this and then add in the rest just like so… what a waste!” Did anyone re-read the instructions? Nope.

Would’ve been too late anyway.

The batter, by the way, tasted great. A. left some in the pan and ate a bunch by the spatula-ful. You think I’m kidding. I kid not.

So, that done, she poured it into a newly greased and floured pan, and popped it in the oven, while I, relieved that it was over, checked my email and told my online pals that we’d just finished mixing up our coffee cake. Thirty minutes later, D-I-S-A-S-T-E-R!!!!

A. opens the oven door to check on the bloody thing, and smoke pours out of the oven, and she starts freaking, going: “K! We have a big big problem!” I was a bit concerned that the oven was on fire, I must admit, but she assured me it wasn’t. Instead, it was…

Yeah. Picture that, in my oven, except worse, because at the time this photo was taken, a whole lot of that goo had spilled all over the damned place. For a couple minutes, we just sat there looking at it, alarmed and baffled and distressed and not at all sure what to do. Finally, A. grabbed my spiffy halloween mitt and another one, and hauled the giant mass to the dump.

And I was left pouring salt all over everything in the oven to quell the smoking. It now looks the Nevada Salt flats have just been hit by a giant asteroid.

And the house? Smelled like burnt coffee cake for hours.

Now… if you want my honest opinion, we farked the whole damned thing up from the start, and I should’ve vetoed the recipe the moment I realized you needed a bleeding pastry cutter, which is usually outside my culinary skillset, or at least read through the directions completely so I’d have a clue what was coming…. But I think the real problem lay in that the directions called for one 8×8 pan, and even all mixed up together wrong, I think it needed TWO 8×8 pans. I think A. filled it too full (I do recall her saying how heavy the pan was, several times, as she put it in the oven.), because after all, it said to only use one 8×8 pan, and we baked away. A, of course, insists she did not fill it too full, but you read the above examples of her denials, yes? Even if she didn’t fill it too full, clearly, it was too full (for whatever reason) by the time we yanked its scary ass from the oven. No denying that.

Well anyway, it could’ve been anything - measuring wrong, or whipping the batter up far too much, or adding the extra crumbs in instead of on top (but honestly, it all had to fit in the same pan anyway, right?), or being too full in the pan and needing two instead of the one it called for, or hell, it could’ve just been a terrible recipe. I don’t know.

But damn it all, I want to try again.

But maybe in A’s kitchen this time, eh?

5 Comments »

1. Is it bad that I laughed? I swear I only did because I’ve been there. One of these days I’ll have to recount “Christine and the fudge from Hell”.

   I’ve never owned a pastry cutter, I’ve always used a fork. My husband sneers and swears we need one, but I’ve never found it to be true (though I’ll admit here and NOT to him that it’d probably make things easier!)

   Comment by Christine — November 14, 2007 @ 8:46 am

2. OH MY GOD — THIS IS REMINISCENT OF SPATULA COOKIES!

   I miss you guys. I wish I could come home for the second trial of the coffee cake. It sounds (not looks) delicious.

   Comment by Janna — November 14, 2007 @ 1:41 pm

3. A. DENIES any of the previous aforementioned denials, and insists that the RECIPE was flawed and not her laborious baking skills.

   Comment by Amber — November 15, 2007 @ 6:38 pm

4. […] http://katia.wild-refuge.net/2007/11/13/overflow/ […]

   Pingback by My Imperfect Life » Blog Archive » a moment of silence, please — November 15, 2007 @ 6:48 pm

5. Somebody is a little defensive about their baking skills…

   Comment by Janna — November 19, 2007 @ 11:46 am

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