— 7 November 2005 —
Please Sir, Put Down the Spatula
There are times when I really shouldn’t be allowed in the kitchen. I usually make fabulous dishes, but last night… not so much.
When you bake it is often good to follow a recipe. It’s fine to deviate, but the base recipe should be there. Last night I created a recipe against nature. Okay, it wasn’t that bad in the end. In the beginning, it was horrible.
I had baked a sweet potato for no real reason. I saw some chocolate chips (bittersweet, 60% cocoa) in the pantry. Like your great mind, mine said Sweet Potato Chocolate Chip Cookies!
My stove didn’t agree. I approached this like I do my cooking: what’s in the cupboard? Here’s what I mixed together in a bowl.
- 1 quite large sweet potato
- 1/2 cup of succanat (or you can use sugar if you want)
- 2 T flavourless oil
- 3/4 to 1 C milk
- 4 oz Apple sauce
- 1 t Vanilla extract
- 2 C flour (I used whole wheat pastry flour)
- 1 t salt
- 1 t baking soda
- 1 cup chocolate chips
As usual, mix the wet stuff together with the sugar. Mix the dry stuff together. Then mix the dry with the wet. I spooned out dollops for cookies and baked at 350 F for about 12 minutes. I got the following:
And frankly they tasted like crap, too. Still, we are experimenting here. Too dry and too sweet-potatoey. Which in itself isn’t bad, but when you stick the word cookie in a title you expect something a little cookie-y. So I added another 1/2 cup of sugar and a half cup of milk so I could stir.
I only cooked one (and for got to take a picture). It tasted fine, but the texture was disgusting. Claire suggested I make a cake out of it since the batter was cake consistency. So I did.
The taste was fine and the texture was much better. Still this isn’t something I would serve to anyone I’d want to keep as a friend. It isn’t bad, just not up to par with what I am used to sharing with people.
So the moral of this baking story is: experiment. If a recipe doesn’t turn out the first time, try something different. If it doesn’t turn out the second time, start drinking and try something different.
