on the ups and downs of baking

i've been baking a lot. two, maybe three times a week. it's pretty amazing. i've been trying some new recipes, too. most have been fabulously successful and i'm sure the ones that weren't successful would have been if i'd know a little more about baking.

example #1:

a little over a week ago i tried out a new banana bread recipe. i know, i know. why? why would i do such a thing when the recipe i have has been using from the beginning, the recipe that started it all, the recipe that fills tummies with pure joy each time it's baked, is pretty much PERFECT?...well, i'd been browsing other recipes, perhaps sinfully, and thought that maybe it was time to break away from the tried and true and enter unknown territory. i found this wonderful sounding oatmeal banana bread recipe on a baking blog that i follow and since i had three bananas sitting around, i thought i'd give it a whirl. i was skeptical of my ability to follow this recipe since it called for egg whites to be beaten until stiff peaks form. okay, so this technique was a little out of my league. up until now, i'd stuck to the simple crack-the-egg-in-the-bowl kind of recipe. but gosh darn it if i'm ever going to be a real baker i need to learn new things! so i tried. i tried very hard to maneuver the egg whites out of the shell and into the bowl while keeping the yolk out. turns out that's not as easy as it might sound. so my two egg whites had a few egg yellows floating around with them. i thought i could get by with this small error, but, alas, i beat those eggs into oblivion and no stiff peaks formed. all they did was get really foamy and more yellow-y looking. well, dang. i wasn't going to just toss out everything i'd already done so far so i just tossed my well-beaten half-egg whites, half-yolks into the batter and hoped for the best. now, the bread came out looking like bread and was even edible. yet it didn't have the gooey moistness of the bread i usually make - it was dry by day 2. i guess this could just be because this recipe didn't have as much butter and oil in it as the one i usually use, but my heart tells me it was because of my egg white failure.

lesson learned: buy an egg-separator thingy. and learn how to make stiff peaks.

example #2:

this evening i decided to make oatmeal raisin cookies for iv tomorrow night. i love to bake and share my goodies with others. as with the banana bread, i found a delicious sounding oatmeal raisin cookie recipe on a baking blog. making the batter was no problemo. the best part was adding the 3 CUPS of oatmeal and 2 CUPS of raisins! yessss. the instructions told me to line a cookie sheet with parchment paper and stick 'em in the oven for 16-18 minutes. easy, right? well, okay. i have a confession to make. or maybe i general piece of knowledge to spread. parchment paper DOES NOT equal wax paper. in fact, baking with wax paper causes serious problems. yeah, i put those two cookie sheets lined with wax paper in the oven and what do you know? smoke begins to billow out of the oven and our fire alarm goes off. at this point i am still unaware of the effect heat has on wax paper, so i blame it on the raisins. (note: this is actually good reasoning because last time i baked cookies with raisins, that same thing happened. oh, yeah, and those cookies were on wax paper, too) it was not until the final batch of cookies were baking and i had opened all the windows in the condo, stood under the fire alarm waving a towel at it so it wouldn't go off, and cursed at the oven numerous times that my roommate, fran, finally helped me realize that maybe it was the WAX PAPER. maybe it was her comment that her room smelled like burning crayons that finally clicked off a light in my brain. ahh. WAX paper. it probably melts under heat. and it's probably NOT the same as parchment paper.

lesson learned: don't bake with wax paper. and don't blame it on the raisins.

the oatmeal raisin cookies turned out fine. they might be poisoned by melting wax, but i've eaten two and haven't perished thus yet, so hopefully they're okay. i guess i need to expand my baking knowledge. i can follow a recipe, but i don't know much of anything about technique or what certain ingredients do to a recipe. i'd love to take a class someday.

ah, well. without mistakes we'd never learn, right?