Recipe Fail; Eating My Mistakes

I'm not the sort of person who prefaces lots of remarks with 'I'm the sort of person who...'--I don't pretend to know that much! But I am not the sort of person who throws out failed food experiments: I'm pretty comfortable eating my mistakes. As an inveterate recipe-tweaker, I have experienced that many of my more intriguing creations come about through improvisation, sometimes in the interests of salvage.

In the juggling act of life, between work, play, homestead-work, internet time (is that a whole new category?) and culinary artistry, I'm very apt to succumb to the temptation to multitask. If I get the cuisinart out to make a cake crust, I'll probably do something else with it too. If I'm melting coconut oil or cacao butter for one thing, I'll melt extra and think of something else to do with the rest of it.

I did both these 'add-ons' this morning, when creating another cheesecake (or a pair of smaller ones): this time white chocolate-raspberry (from the recipe in Sweet Gratitude, as near as I ever follow a recipe...) and the potential for inattention and mistiming, and just lack of thinking through, provided me with perhaps the most spectacular 'recipe fail' I can remember making, thanks to those extra ground nuts and melted cacao butter!

Thankfully, the cheesecake was not a 'fail.' I know, because I had extra of everything and made a mini-cheesecake in a half-pint mason jar and served it to Phil. I think that might be a great marketing idea, if I ever take these to the farmer's market!

His verdict: "delicious."

I should have known to stick to familiar tracks when multitasking, but I couldn't resist trying a slightly different spin on the usual energy bars I make for Phil, using the nuts that I'd pulsed in the cuisinart before make the crust for the cheesecake. I left out the peanut butter I normally include, and used less protein powder than usual, creating a more diffuse, loose, potentially caramelly and crinkly mixture. And if I'd had my head on, I would have spread the mixture as thin as possible before baking, to encourage this diffuse tendency. But instead, I crammed it all into the two little pans that are all that fit in our tiny toaster oven, and even with careful stewarding in my 20-20 hindsight, I almost ended up with a big, crumbly mess.

I shaped things up as best I could, but nice, regular bars these are not. And who knows whether the texture will be palatable so glommed together? I eat my mistakes: Phil has higher standards (and these are not his mistakes, after all). Texture and appearance matter as much to him, if not more than, flavor. We'll just have to see (he hasn't yet tried them).

However, that wasn't the biggest fail of the day! Remember my white chocolate experiment? It was so delicious, and is now running low (I've been hoarding it), so I melted a little extra cacao butter to try another idea. Now, I only ended up with about two tablespoons of cacao butter, so what could possibly be so bad? Well, it's a matter of scale, and evidently I didn't scale down nearly enough!

I'd been thinking that white chocolate tends to be so sweet, and that I'd love to make a white chocolate that had some of the alluring bitterness of cacao. I was trying to think of a good superfood ingredient that would allow the chocolate to be white but impart some of that bitterness.  What I didn't remind myself was that the easiest way to completely ruin a recipe is to overemphasize the bitter flavor.

I added almost a tablespoon of MSM powder! For two tablespoons of cacao butter, I only needed about four tablespoons of solid ingredient. What on earth was I thinking? MSM is soooo bitter...

I had also added a little peppermint oil, coconut milk powder, stevia and vanilla. It's delicious, except for the overwhelming bitterness that coats all those good flavors. And it doesn't taste any more chocolatey for the added bitterness.

I'm still not going to throw it out, though, even though this may be one of the harder mistakes to eat straight (although my tolerance for bitter is pretty high). I can throw little chunks of it into my smoothies. For months...

Do you eat your mistakes?

I showed the view from our window in my last post: here it is again this morning--

Yep--snow again! I keep telling myself not to assume that winter's finished, but I was pretty much fooled after two weeks of daytime thawing. The ground definitely has the thawing habit now, though, so much of that beautiful gilding of snow is already gone.