Hey
Folks,
It
was Bake Sale week again and WOW it was the most successful yet! I
fear my coworkers will go through baked treats withdrawal when these
sales come to an end on the 29th of this month. They are wonderfully
generous, I feel so fortunate!
I
will be truthful here though, and confess I wasn't in a very cheery
frame of mind the evening before the sale. Murphy's law was in full
effect in my tiny little kitchen and though my walls are painted
white they may have had just a tint of blue on them from some of the
language that slipped out a bit as I was dealing with the
consequences of Murphy's influence.
It
actually started the night before when I baked two pans of York
Peppermint Patty brownies from scratch. I followed the recipe from
the book, setting the oven at 425 degrees and baked them for approx.
35 min as instructed. After they were cooled, the instructions said
to refrigerate overnight before cutting. The next evening before
starting my second offering of Carrot Cake cupcakes with Maple/Cream
Cheese frosting, I took them out of the fridge and let them warm to
room temperature (which surprisingly for Oregon was in the 70's with
all the windows open. Really, I hardly knew where I was :-P ). Took a
knife to them and...Drat!...they were as hard as one of our cement
beam blocks in the foundations of our homes. Yeesh! I started having
cake pop flashbacks (see the Feb 27th post), not a good sign. :( I
considered dynamite, but there are all kinds of safety laws regarding
its' use (rightly so) and frankly I wanted to still have a place to
live when I was done. So dynamite was out & so were those two
pans of spendy brownie looking pieces of cement. Out into the trash.
Ugh!
Went
back to the cookbook to see where I had gone wrong (unfortunately,
pretty much always a safe assumption in my kitchen & on the
Habitat site). Compared it to a cream cheese brownie recipe I made
the previous sale and...Drat!...a stupid typo. The peppermint recipe
had the oven temperature 100 degrees too high. That's when the
tinting of the walls began. It was back to the start again with only
enough ingredients for 1 pan. Progressed along ok until I went to
pour in the melted chocolate/butter combination and missed the mixing
bowl and ended up pouring it on the counter. #@*%# Tint. While
trying to clean up the mess on the counter, I bumped the bag of
flour. Yep, you guessed it...more tint.
Finally
got the brownies in the oven without further incident, baking at 325
degrees. On to the cupcakes. That seemed to go along pretty well
until I went to toast the chopped pecans. There's a salad I make for
parties that requires toasted slivered almonds. I can't begin to tell
you how many times I would have to get in the car at some late hour
at night to get another bag because I had once again forgotten about
them and allowed them to burn. After enough of those trips (which
sadly were more numerous than they should have been as I would tell
myself that this time I wouldn't forget them), I would suck it up and
just but two bags. It's become a habit now and of course I don't
seem to burn them much any more. Needless to say, I have quite a
collection now. Don't ask me why I didn't do it with the stupid
pecans. So of course, I burned them big time and this time I refused
to go to the store. There wouldn't be nuts in this cake batter, that
was all there was to it. But wait! I had a stockpile of slivered
almonds, enough to cover me if I burned 5 trays of them. I had to
remember to take them out at the correct time sometime, right? Well
golly, I finally did. Ok that problem solved.
Onward!
With hope for a smooth completion until I dropped the spatula into
the bowl with the mixer running. That's right...the walls were
beginning to look like midnight blue. Cake batter went all over the
place. On my clothes, the wall, counter, floor and even a few feet
away on the oven. *Sigh* Ok then, time to make more cake batter.
Thank goodness I had extra carrots but save me, I had to toast more
chopped nuts. Will this never end? :(
Finally
everything was done. My kitchen was a wreck & I had dirty bowls &
pans coming out my eyeballs, But all the baked goods were safely in
the refrigerator. The bad news...it was 2 o'clock in the morning &
I had to be up for work in two hours. Needless to say there was some
blue tint on the walls of my bedroom when the alarm went off & I
wasn't Little Mary Sunshine that morning at work. Tried to just keep
it in my cube.
As
you might imagine, I couldn't help to but have my spirits lifted by
the generous donation from my wonderful co-workers. As well, my super
celebrity co-baker Austa, made mountains of delicious
Butterscotch-Chocolate Chip cookies and Reese's Peanut butter
brownies. Saved my bacon that girl! So grateful. That day we
collected $87.15 for the Women Build project. All me previous
escapades were worth this outcome. It was a good day!
Nanette
