Now anyone that knows me will know that cooking is not my bag, I can do the basics and have produced the occasional decent cake, but I leave the cooking to OH as he's extremely good at it and above all enjoys it . Seriously the amount of times I've tried to make something behind oh's back that's turned out so awful that I've had to dispose of it before he's caught sight of it - "Oven to bin"! I need to prepare myself a picnic for tomorrow as I'll be travelling up to festival. Got it all planned out, get up early have a good breakfast to keep me going and have a picnic to take to sustain myself for the journey. For some reason as I was drifting off to sleep I had the notion to make some blueberry muffins to take, so I thought I'd get up early and get them done before he gets up just in case they need to go in the bin.
Got up at 6.45 am, threw all the ingredients into my magic bullet blender and blended away. I unscrewed it and and the consistency was far too runny so I bunged a heaped tablespoon of flour into the mix and blended it again, yep that seemed good, so I stirred in the blueberries but I got this over whelming smell of flour, of course now the ratio of flour to sugar was all wrong, so I knew they would taste awful even with the blueberries. I reached into the cupboard for the muffin cases and noticed the bottle of honey, so I squeezed a bit of that into the mix, plus a slug of vanilla extract, it actually smelled quite pleasant so I decided to carry on. Right! Muffin cases - d'oh! I'd run out. Luckily I checked another cupboard and found a roll of baking parchment so I fashioned my own. I dolloped the mixture into the wonky cases and bunged them in the oven that I had remembered to pre-heat. As they were cooking I hoped that oh wouldn't decide to get up early and witness this potential disaster! Cooking time expired, so far so good, opened the oven to see some rather horrendous looking blobs! Surprisingly they'd risen fairly well but they looked blinking awful I thought I'd better give one a taste before they went into the bin, I broke one of the lumps off and it was a tiny bit crunchy on top but other than that tasted ok ish. I put them onto a cooling rack, thought I heard oh stirring, so I legged it into the front room and hid the rack underneath the computer table. It was a false alarm yay! I peeled off the parchment and I ate one and it was actually rather nice and once the parchment had been peeled off, displayed upside down they don't look too bad ! Anyway I managed to get them safely into a lock and lock and whisked them upstairs. A few minutes later he got up and said have you been cooking? I said no, he said that's funny I can smell cooking, so I said nah just had some toast. Then he said a short while later why does the oven feel warm? Thinking on my feet which I'm thankfully good at I said I was gonna have a sausage roll but I couldn't be bothered in the end - phew!!!!!
Before he retired I could experiment to my heart's content and get culinary mistakes out of the way before he got home. I can't seem to get a balance, generally it either looks great but tastes awful or looks awful and tastes ok (I won't stretch as far as saying great) but I can't be doing with the ribbing and embarrassment. To be fair I did make some flapjacks a couple of weeks back and they were lovely but it's a tried and tested recipe!
A lot of my problem with cooking is pure laziness. I know I can make a decent cake if I get the mixer out, measure the ingredients properly and not just chuck them in together. I also know that a magic bullet blender as useful as it is for other things is not ideal for making cakes. Oh would have had kittens seeing me use it for that purpose, as least it cleans up in seconds! If I'm making something for myself, slapdash is the way and if it turns out to be edible - result!
Got up at 6.45 am, threw all the ingredients into my magic bullet blender and blended away. I unscrewed it and and the consistency was far too runny so I bunged a heaped tablespoon of flour into the mix and blended it again, yep that seemed good, so I stirred in the blueberries but I got this over whelming smell of flour, of course now the ratio of flour to sugar was all wrong, so I knew they would taste awful even with the blueberries. I reached into the cupboard for the muffin cases and noticed the bottle of honey, so I squeezed a bit of that into the mix, plus a slug of vanilla extract, it actually smelled quite pleasant so I decided to carry on. Right! Muffin cases - d'oh! I'd run out. Luckily I checked another cupboard and found a roll of baking parchment so I fashioned my own. I dolloped the mixture into the wonky cases and bunged them in the oven that I had remembered to pre-heat. As they were cooking I hoped that oh wouldn't decide to get up early and witness this potential disaster! Cooking time expired, so far so good, opened the oven to see some rather horrendous looking blobs! Surprisingly they'd risen fairly well but they looked blinking awful I thought I'd better give one a taste before they went into the bin, I broke one of the lumps off and it was a tiny bit crunchy on top but other than that tasted ok ish. I put them onto a cooling rack, thought I heard oh stirring, so I legged it into the front room and hid the rack underneath the computer table. It was a false alarm yay! I peeled off the parchment and I ate one and it was actually rather nice and once the parchment had been peeled off, displayed upside down they don't look too bad ! Anyway I managed to get them safely into a lock and lock and whisked them upstairs. A few minutes later he got up and said have you been cooking? I said no, he said that's funny I can smell cooking, so I said nah just had some toast. Then he said a short while later why does the oven feel warm? Thinking on my feet which I'm thankfully good at I said I was gonna have a sausage roll but I couldn't be bothered in the end - phew!!!!!
Before he retired I could experiment to my heart's content and get culinary mistakes out of the way before he got home. I can't seem to get a balance, generally it either looks great but tastes awful or looks awful and tastes ok (I won't stretch as far as saying great) but I can't be doing with the ribbing and embarrassment. To be fair I did make some flapjacks a couple of weeks back and they were lovely but it's a tried and tested recipe!
A lot of my problem with cooking is pure laziness. I know I can make a decent cake if I get the mixer out, measure the ingredients properly and not just chuck them in together. I also know that a magic bullet blender as useful as it is for other things is not ideal for making cakes. Oh would have had kittens seeing me use it for that purpose, as least it cleans up in seconds! If I'm making something for myself, slapdash is the way and if it turns out to be edible - result!
