April 29, 2013

Kitchen Disasters II

Last week, I found a can of pumpkin during a cupboard clean out. I know it's not pumpkin season, but it was still in date, and wouldn't make it until next Thanksgiving. Plus I had a recipe for sour cream pumpkin bundt cake that I wanted to make to bring to a friend's.

I dutifully got the ingredients together and taped the recipe onto the cabinet (my fail safe way of getting it out of my way while still being able to read it.) 

Where I put the recipe doesn't seem to make a difference, because apparently I can't actually follow directions. I accidentally stirred two sticks of butter into the streusel mixture, instead of two teaspoons. (Don't you hate it when there are two separate ingredient lists in a recipe and you read from the wrong one?)


I thought the mess in the bowl looked a bit funny. 

I like to think of myself as a fairly decent cook, and I have gotten better over the years at trying out new recipes and techniques. But I still have my share of kitchen disasters.

This time, I thought I could possibly salvage the operation. I really didn't want to throw out an entire cup of butter, and all of that brown sugar, so I looked up what I could do with it. 

I just discovered Super Cook -- a search engine for recipes based on what ingredients you already have.

Wouldn't you know... there's a recipe for brown sugar shortbread right here. I added more brown sugar, the required flour, and left the all-spice and cinnamon right in mix. I also dispensed with the idea of adding granulated sugar to the top of the shortbread. Really, the brown sugar in the mix was plenty.

An hour later, voila. 



I'm definitely keeping this recipe in my repertoire. You never know when I'm going to accidentally use too much butter again. 

The sour cream pumpkin bundt cake was also a roaring success, thanks to the fact that I had extra butter on hand to actually finish it. (It was also cute... how did I not get a photo of it?!

I love it when kitchen disasters have a happy ending. Let's hope this trend continues!


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