I love cooking. I’m pretty fond of baking, too. And after some pretty nice successes in the kitchen recently, I got a little too cocky tonight. The result? No out-and-out disasters, but I certainly won’t take great results for granted in the near future.
Lesson One: Careful with the peppers!
So, uh, yeah. You know those ginormous poblano peppers? You know, the ones that are mild and so versatile?
Well, I’ve taken to treating them like bell peppers because they have more flavor and they’re just so darned easy to get at the store. Heck, you’ll find the poblanos before you’ll find the bell peppers at one of the Central Markets here in Austin. So the substitution makes perfect sense to me.
Or it did make perfect sense until I decided to dice up three of them, barely run my hands under the water and then rub my eyelid. Great blazing balls of fire does that hurt. But not like a blazing ball of fire you’d get from a jalapeno or – heaven forbid! – a habanero; it’s more like a slow burn that builds up as the poblano oil seeps into my eyelid and is slowly burning away the skin and maybe the eyeball, too.
Also, for the record, three poblanos plus some red pepper flakes plus some cumin will lead to an unexpectedly spicy hot dish that will leave your lips tingling. At least some sour cream will help with that one. Too bad sour cream won’t take the sting out of my eyelid. Or will it? Hmm…
Lesson Two: Flour your cake pans!
My coworkers have requested a Pina Colada Cake. The last couple of times I’ve baked the cakes, the edges have been crisper than I liked. I thought it might be that I coated the pan with too much PAM for Baking. So what did I do? Did I use less PAM for Baking? No… Of course not. Instead I used plain ol’ regular PAM. No flour.
No flour! In a cake pan! With cake batter in it!
What a stupid, rookie mistake.
Always flour your cake pans (unless the recipe says you shouldn’t). Otherwise, you have that sickening moment when you flip the cake pan over and the cake doesn’t come out. Instead, the cake comes away from the pan with an awful suctioning sound of cake tearing. And this is what you get.
Bottomless cakes aren't desirable
Cakes with no bottoms.
The saving grace of this stupid, rookie mistake is the fact that Pina Colada filling along with some frosting and shredded coconut will cover a multitude of sins.
Including cakes with no bottoms.
Lesson Three: Frosting is good.
That is all. No further explanation needed. Just the reiteration that “Frosting is good.”
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