Category: On Baking

Cooking for my Grandmother or why I will never ever use a Silicone pan again!

By Ms. Cherryspoon | July 15, 2009

Sliced Cake

This is my save! the cake disaster is below. There’s a little story first!

My Grandmother is an amazing cook and the hardest sell you will ever meet, no restaurant or catered event has ever served anything good enough for this tough lady. I am crazy about her, snark and all!

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When life gives you lemons.

By Ms. Cherryspoon | May 20, 2009

Failed Frosting.

Or, when when your frosting fails and your cake doesn’t rise.

How do you, dear reader, deal with baking failure? Of course if it’s inedible we all throw it out, but what if it’s salvageable? Do you salvage? Do you have backup plans? Do you drop a cute little fondant flower on it and sigh “oh, well”?

We all know baking is a very exact science. I spoon and level my dry ingredients, have a an oven thermometer, I make sure all my ingredients are room temperature, measure all of my ingredients and lay them out around me before hand, never over beat anything and yet still sometimes the frosting just curdles on me and your cake has an identity crisis in the oven and finally realizes that it’s actually a door stop and not a cake.

I always have back up plans, it might be because I’ve been working with technology since my teens and computers can be fickle. My projects were always turned in on a burnt cd, while also having an online backup and carrying it in a zipdrive (this was a while back) in my bag just in case.

This approach spilled over to my life, I usually bake things early enough so that there is time to do over whatever fails, and I’ve been pretty good about stocking my pantry. Sometimes however there’s no way out of the flop and while I try to be non chalant about them, I really can’t. I’d love to know what you guys do.

(Oh, and the cupcake above was one of the Lost cupcakes, that ended up flat.)