kitchen FAIL

I’m sorry if I’ve disappointed you by not resolving the cliffhanger from my felted loops pillow post today, but honestly, it isn’t done yet. It’s one of my goals for this weekend, so next week I’ll fill you in on how it came out!

I think I said a couple weeks ago that it would be possible to blog about one food thing a week…that the odds were in my favor for making at least one blog-worthy food item a week….heh heh…apparently not.

After making that delicious Guinness Stew a few weeks ago, I still have 3 cans of Guinness sitting in the fridge because neither Brandon nor I like it. Correction: We don’t like to drink it. It’s quite tasty when cooked or baked!

So last Sunday I was pumped to make another Guinness inspired treat and browsed the internet to find some delicious recipe to try. I came across a Guinness Stout Ginger Cake recipe that sounded really good. I had almost everything except eggs and cardamom.

I do my usual Sunday Grocery errand to get food for the week but then also get the two extra items for the new recipe. When I get to the spice row I start looking for Cardamom. My usual (less expensive) spice brand doesn’t have it…could this be? I search through the rows again convincing myself that the spices are alphabetical and it would be between the bay leaves and cayenne pepper..*sigh* I move over to the “other” brands and quickly find it in its properly alphabetized place. My eyes move down to the price tag…$11.79?! Oh my gosh…how ridiculous…I go back to my staple brand and search for it again hoping that this cannot be the only option.

No such luck. I suck it up and put that expensive spice jar in my cart. I think my next food mission will be finding recipes that require cardamom…

After I get home I mixed it all up, put it in the oven, and came upstairs to blog. Within 20 minutes I can really smell it which I thought was odd because it was supposed to be in the oven for an hour! 5 minutes later I start to smell burning and I think, this can’t be good.

I come downstairs to this:

Terrible!

I immediately go back to the recipe and try to figure out where I went wrong…too much Guinness? nope. not enough flour? not at all. I can’t figure it out! So then I go to the reviews and I find out that quite a few people ended up with terrible messes in their ovens. And they advise putting it into two 9×5 pans.

To add salt to the wound, a lot of other reviews were along the lines of “I didn’t have any cardamom on hand, but the recipe was so good, it didn’t need it” gahhh!

Word to the wise: read the reviews before buying for and baking the recipe.

So what am I doing this weekend? finishing my crazy hard pillow and trying out this recipe again.  That’s right, I’m going to brave it a second time. For one thing, I still have two cans of Guinness and a whole bottle of cardamom! Plus, I tried some of the cake that had actually baked after its short oven life and it was really good! I can’t wait to try it when its successful.

Thats all for today, enjoy your weekends! What are you up to? Any fun adventures?