My favorite quote (or reminder as I like to think of them)...

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.” (Marianne Williamson - A Return to Love)

Friday, May 21, 2010

Testing

"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." ~ Thomas Edison

I've been doing a bunch of recipe testing lately -- so many recipes, so little time!!! At one time in my life, I actually collected recipes! Can you even imagine?!

I think I may have come up with a pretty good chocolate chip cookie dough, but I want it to be great, so back to the drawing board! Then today, I tried a brownie cookie. Not gonna make the cut. See, I don't like when they aren't pretty too and this is a really ugly cookie and quite frankly, I feel sorry for any home cook that tries to make it work, 'cuz ain't no way it's gonna! I had too much fixin' to do to make it even ok for today!

That bothers me a lot actually. I feel sorry for home cooks and bakers who try recipes out and think they failed. Oh no they did not! (Well, maybe they did, but....) So many recipes are just not right, accurate or good, but if you don't have a foundation to know what's wrong with it, and let's face it, how many people do, your product will fail and through no fault of your own. For instance, I tried making the Queen of the Kitchen's Chocolate Chip cookies last week (Martha's) and the recipe called for 1# of butter and 3 1/2 cups of flour. That is about HALF of the actual flour you will need to make the recipe work...well, if you want cookies not chocolate chip cookie soup that is! Hey! There's another idea! ;o)

So I'm going to 3 Sisters' today to plan a really fun "Indulgent Day" with Dani to be held at the shop (hers, not mine, yet!). Picture it -- chocolate, wine, conversation, wonderful women, chocolate, wine, relaxation, chocolate, wine....ok, sorry! Well, I thought I would bring some chocolate treats for our meeting -- you know, to put us in the mood for planning, and I made these chocolate brownie cookies. Let's just say that YES we will be enjoying them with our Starbucks TODAY, but NO they will not be on the menu for this event or any other. And again -- it was another recipe that didn't make sense (scientifically) and I am in no mood to figure it out or reinvent it when there are SO many good ones out there to try! Maybe there's a calling out there for a home cook/baker's hotline?! Maybe a little something like this:

"Hello, this is the Martha sucks and so do all the others, but we'll get you through it 'cuz you don't (suck) and we applaud you for trying Hotline. Now, how can we serve YOU today?" :o)
Posted by at

1 comment:

  1. Merry MEMay 21, 2010 at 10:26 PM

    And I thought it was me! I guess if the home baker ventures too far afield from the traditional Toll House cookie (s)he is going to run into trouble. Good thing my family is easily satisfied. Actually I never even considered that cookies had to be pretty! Thanks for the tip!

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)