Okay, my inner toddler only threatens to make an appearance under one circumstance: food mishaps. And I had one today, specifically a blog-related food mishap. Those are the worst.
I have written several times about what I like to refer to as “food tantrums”. That is when something goes wrong with something I am cooking and I quite literally dissolve into a tantrum. This takes many forms: crying, cursing, throwing things (food or kitchen tools), jumping up and down, sweating…..I could go on and on. Philip could really tell you some stories.
For some reason pancakes are a big food tantrum trigger. They always have been. I’ve made hundreds of pancakes, and I can make a mean pancake….but sometimes there’s that one that just falls apart when you flip it. Or it ends up on the grate. Or the griddle is too hot….or not hot enough. In my past, pancake tragedy = throwing a spatula. These days, it means a laugh and a photo on Instragram.
Today, I made a cheesecake. It was my grandmother’s recipe. I remember when my grandmother used to make it (curiously, I don’t ever really remember eating it) and how beautiful and tall and brown it always was. I don’t think my grandmother ever burned or messed up anything (okay, of course she did, but I never saw it. She is definitely on a food pedestal in my memory.). I didn’t know that I had this recipe, but while my aunts were here last week one of them was looking through my grandmother’s little orange binder of recipes and she said, “This is Mom’s cheesecake recipe…” I had been looking for it all these years, and it was there all along.
I love this yellow piece of paper. What an interesting combination of ingredients. I will share this recipe with you eventually, but not yet. I have experimentation to do. I have to figure out how to make this work. You see, her recipe didn’t say to use a springform pan, or to bake the cheesecake in a water bath. Perhaps the springform pan was a foregone conclusion to my grandmother, but I just poured it into a 10-inch cake pan, reasoning that if it didn’t say to use a springform then, well, I shouldn’t. Mistake! My cake pan wasn’t deep enough. The cake fell apart when I turned it out. It cracked a lot across the top, which I think a water bath would prevent, although my mom said she didn’t think my grandmother did this.
Sigh. My Monday recipe, ruined. I can’t give you a recipe that doesn’t work. This is the second time this has happened in the last month, and it’s terribly frustrating (I didn’t take any photos of the “fail” portion. I wish that I had….). However, I am in control of my inner toddler. So, while I was not happy, I handed my inner toddler a lollipop and calmly voiced my frustration. No jumping up and down, and nothing got thrown. We ate this for dessert at my parents’ house tonight, and I turned what would have been a food tantrum situation in the past into a lemons to lemonade situation: cheesecake balls. Oh yes. I will be scooping this out and dipping it in chocolate. Stay tuned!
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