Half a cup? Holy crap! Even a “few tablespoons” would probably have been way too much, depending on the size of the drink you’re making. When I’m in a pinch and resort to instant, I put about a teaspoon or two teaspoons at the very most per 8 oz serving. For those who don’t want to do the math, a half cup is 24 teaspoons. I’m not surprised your next day and a half was a blur. I probably would have gone into full cardiac arrest with that much coffee swimming in my system.
All the pumpkin pie recipes I’ve seen have so little pumpkin in them, I think they’d be the same if you substituted mashed potato or gypsum. Well, that’s a slight exaggeration, but I’m still amazed at how scantly pumpkin is represented in pumpkin pie.
Sweet potato pie is an incredibly similar dessert and I, for one, cannot tell the difference.
If one invites guests for dinner, and one plans on serving said guests a beautiful huge honking Standing Rib Roast with Yorkshire pudding, one must actually turn the freaking oven ON at some point before preparing the pudding batter. :smack:
Thank goodness for good Chinese delivery and patient dinner guests who love me anyway.
I have a cross-cultural cooking error where I can only surmise what happened. Right after college I joined my then-boyfriend (now husband) in Germany, where he had moved to study after he graduated. I didn’t speak German. During one of our early weeks together I attempted to cook a fantastic roast chicken with chopped vegetables and provencale herbs. The problem was that the chicken I purchased had absolutely no meat on it. It was skin, bones, and a bit of dripping. Boyfriend spoke German but had absolutely zero cooking knowledge, so he was no help. I can only guess that German markets sell soup chickens for making broth alongside the roasting chickens, and I bought the wrong kind. Maybe someone with experience of Germany can come along after all these years and confirm that that is what happened?
Even Cook’s Illustrated agrees. I made their pumpkin cheesecake from their The New Best Recipe cookbook, and it called for canned.
I might be able to help! Where did you buy the chicken – in a butcher shop or in a grocery store? Most meat of good quality is found at the butcher’s here, and what you find at the grocery is a pale, sad, scary imitation.
And don’t feel bad – in my first couple of months in Germany, I decided to make myself useful one day and started the dishwasher. After the entire machine disappeared behind the wall of bubbles coming out of it, I figured that it might behoove me to learn the German for ‘hand dishwashing liquid.’ :smack:
I was making bean soup and had it going on very well. Then I had to add sage. I poured it in a spoon over the soup. It clumped out and dropped a big chunk in the soup. I ate it because I had a lot of time and money tied up in it. I learned a lesson that time.
That’s it! Thank you, thank you.
Hmmm…When I made the pies, I actually didn’t use pumpkin, but rather butternut squash, which tastes very similar, and each 9-in pie had an entire 2-3 lb squash in it. That said, when you squeeze an entire roasted squash (or pumpkin) through a cheesecloth, you end up with about 2-3 cups of flesh for your pie. I wouldn’t really say that pumpkin is scantily represented in pumpkin pie. The traditional Libby’s recipe uses a 15 oz can of pumpkin puree for a single pie, which, to me, is a whole lot of pumpkin.
As for sweet potato pie, I have to say, I like it better than pumpkin pie. It’s got a better flavor and slightly thicker texture.
I’m sure it was from an anonymous grocery store… I wouldn’t have had the chops (pun intended!) to ask for what I wanted in German at a butcher’s!
Last Tuesday I was making Mexican Spoonbread from my MIL’s recipe. When I started cooking the ground beef, I splashed blood on the recipe card. I shrugged, figured I’d copy the recipe onto a clean card and kept cooking.
Mixed the batter, got the cheese shredded and the beef spiced perfectly. I layered them into the pan and put it into the stove. I sat down to handle the recipe card and started re-writing…to realize that I’d forgotten to add the oil into the batter. :smack:
I added the oil a tad later than planned and had to destroy all the layering that I had done. Still tasted the same and that’s all that mattered.
I once put 2 tablespoons of vanilla into a cheesecake instead of 2 teaspoons. When I realized what I had done, I added some lemon zest to try to counterbalance. It was surprisingly tasty!
A not-so-tasty outcome was my mother’s Christmas morning attempt at “hot fruit.” Hot fruit is a family recipe consisting of a mix of peaches, pears, apples, and other fruits in a tapioca base flavored with cinnamon and spices. Despite having made this recipe many times before, it must have been an early morning, or a late night, or my grandmother’s writing on the recipe card was faded or smudged or something, because instead of 2 tablespoons of cinnamon, my mother added 2 cups!
The result was like hot spicy mud. We still ask her to this day if she thinks this or that recipe needs more cinnamon.
This weekend I decided I was finally going to make the no knead bread that gets such raves here and elsewhere. I put the dough together Friday night and put it in the fridge as I wouldn’t have time to bake it until Sunday.
I pulled it out Sunday morning to rise.
I made the mistake of saying hello to my neighbors. My neighbors are sweet people, but I think a little lonesome. Two hours later I went back to find the bread insufficiently risen and insufficient time remaining until dinner.
I tossed the dough on floured parchment paper in a skillet. Our usual bread trick is to let it rise in an oven that’s been turned on for just a moment. (other favorite places - the top of the radiator in winter, the dishwasher just after it’s done running)
I forgot how short that moment should be and went outside to collect my offspring. Offspring collection always takes longer than it should. The dough burned, as well as the parchment paper.
We had hotdogs for dinner.
The first time I made cupcakes again after having my son (so, let’s see – I was probably 6 weeks postpartum, and incredibly sleep-deprived), I screwed up the frosting. See, I make frosting often enough that I don’t use a recipe (unless it’s a special frosting), I just wing it until it’s the right texture. The flavor usually works itself out (we’re talking powdered sugar, butter, vanilla, and salt, or maybe substituting peanut butter or melted chocolate for some of the butter – simple stuff). Well, like I said, I was sleep-deprived and out of practice, and I added a whole teaspoon of salt to my chocolate frosting. You’re only supposed to add a pinch of salt. This frosting was very salty.
I frosted the cupcakes anyway, and tried one – it almost worked as a “salted chocolate” flavor, since that’s so in these days, but… not quite. I could only get through about half a cupcake before feeling queasy. Ew.
(I scraped the frosting off the cupcakes, but didn’t have time to make a new batch of frosting before I was supposed to be at the event for which I had made the cupcakes. I made more frosting later that day, though, so the cupcakes did not go to waste!)
I’d love to know how she managed that. You’d need to have like 8 large bottles of cinnamon to make that amount – I don’t think I’ve ever had more than one bottle on hand, ever.
You’d think after the second or third bottle she’d start wondering if this was really right. 
WWABD? *
Get an electric kettle like this one, put eggs in, add water, turn on and walk away in complete safety.
Of course, the eggs will be easier to peel if you dunk them in cold water soon after boiling. And some tongs are handy for getting the eggs in and out.
*what would Alton Brown do?
I was making snickerdoodles for my roommate, but I only wanted to make half a batch. I halved all of the ingredients except salt. For an unknown reason, I doubled salt.
Salty snickerdoodles are… not good.
My roommate LOVED them.
I bought a full pound of powdered cinnamon last week. The tiny, overpriced jars are more visible, but larger amounts are readily available to cooks in the US.
My mom was staying with me for a while as she was battling cancer. I decided I was going to make stuffed cabbage one night, like my grandmother taught me, so she came in to watch. I get it all done, and we had a lovely time conversing as we cooked. I dished out a few for myself, since she wasn’t up for eating at the time, and put away the remainder. I dropped one of the casserole dishes and spilled some (a lot) of the sauce all over the place. We still chatted away as I cleaned up, and had a great time. I finally got to sample some of the fruits of my labor, and spit it out. “The rice isn’t even cooked!!” I yelled.
Mom hit the floor, laughing harder than she had in months. “You didn’t use cooked rice?”
“No, she never said ‘cook the rice.’”
More laughter from mom. “That’s why you spilled that whole dish of pigs. She was mad that you never paid attention!”
It was one of the last hearty laughs she had.
Haven’t tried making them since.