It Tastes Like Burning

Cooking appliances are important. And expensive. This helpful article from the Savings Experiment over at WalletPop gives a few helpful hints to figure out those you need (French press ftw!) and those you don’t (ice cream machines: fun in theory, not in practice). 

I had a dinner party to attend. I happen to be one of those people that feel the need to “bring something” whenever I attend a function- be it a mix cd, a nice bottle of liquor, or (my personal favorite) some sort of baked good. So I dug through my Attempt Recipes! folder (kidding, I don’t actually possess that kind of organization) and set my heart on the St. Louis Gooey Butter Cake. I was stoked on this recipe for two reasons: 1) it’s really fun to say and 2) one of my favorite bands in the whole entire world is from St. Louis and I got to pretend I was making it in their honor. 

ANYWAY, because my life is governed by Murphy’s Law for much of the time, things did not go as planned. Like the fact that after almost two hours my dough still hadn’t risen. Which is not something you want to see when you’re dealing with a yeasty dessert, and you have no back-up pastry, and you’ve still got to get ready. Now, should I have taken into account the fact the “warm place” I had set my dish was not optimal due to the inclement weather by my house? Yes, probably. But hindsight is 20/20 and I still had a pan of flat dough to deal with. Using Macguyver as my Spirit Animal, I set my oven on the lowest temp and successfully tricked the dough into rising. And you know what? It was a big fucking party hit. Take that, Universe!

St. Louis Gooey Butter Cake - serves 16-20 (taken from Smitten Kitchen)

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I blame College. No, I blame Cinco de Mayo. Ok fine, technically I blame Cinco de Mayo in College. My point is that without that singular event, I probably wouldn’t be the cook (and I do use that term lightly) that I am today. Don’t get me wrong, I took cooking classes when I was little like everyone else (I guess my parents thought it’d be useful if I could fend for myself early) and my grandma would sometimes give me cookbooks for Christmas but once I found that kids aren’t really supposed to operate fire by themselves, cooking kind of lost its luster. Plus when mommy and daddy are around to fix you sandwhiches and what not, knife skills really aren’t part of your repretoire. Which is why the extent of my cooking ability throughout high school and most of college was limited to things cooked in the microwave, ramen, and the occassional grilled cheese/cheese quesadilla- despite the fact that my father is a tremendous cook and my mother, an expert baker. 

But then I threw a Cinco party in my senior year of college and I made promises of glorious tasting enchiladas and home cooked rice. Totally delivered on the enchiladas btw, and then some; the rice, not so much (thank God for Uncle Ben). Ever since, I’ve been on this odd little journey into chefdom. Which has, at times, been fraught with my lack of experience and preparation but it’s always been fun. And I’m pretty sure that’s what matters most.