The other day, I was looking through the pantry to see what types of stuff we had on hand. For some reason or another we have accumulated a lot of ingredients for a variety of things, not many of which can be combined together for something tasty. What is "cream of tartar"anyway? And how did we end up with 3 things of cinnamon spices or 3 things of lemon pepper? Ryan doesn't even like lemon-flavored foods. What on earth will we do with a pound of corn starch or 48 ounces of canola oil? We even have rice vinegar in case we ever want to make sticky rice for sushi. Yeah. Right. Like that's going to happen anytime soon!
I started reading through the labels, checking for expiration dates and maybe a hint as to what I could do with them. Some of these random ingredients have recipes on the back. Also, somewhere in my reading I learned that corn starch can sometimes be used in place of flour. On the back of the box of the spare vanilla extract (yes, we have 2 little bottles for some unknown reason), there was a recipe for sugar cookies.
As I read the ingredients, I realized we had everything but the butter and baking soda. So, industrious little me went to Publix, acquired the missing ingredients, enlisted Ryan's help and set to baking. We replaced 2 1/3 cups of flour with a little over 1 cup of corn starch, mixed all the other ingredients together as directed, placed the mix into the fridge, waited 2 hours for the dough to firm and then got it ready for the oven. The timer was set for 10 minutes and we waited impatiently, anxiously awaiting our sure-to-be-delicious sugar cookies. What we found when the timer went off and opened the stove was pure disaster:
That looks nothing like delicious, fresh baked sugar cookies! Apparently, I cannot be trusted in the kitchen. Unfortunately for Ryan, I also cannot stay away from baking endeavors.
Needless to say our carmelized sugar and slowly burning batter set off the fire alarm:
Turns out, you can only replace flour with corn starch when you are using it to thicken sauces and gravies. Hence the overflowing sugar gobs and fire alarm. And to make things even more entertaining, I later found a HUGE-MONGOUS box of baking soda.
Silver lining? The stove received a very thorough cleaning. We finished one bottle of vanilla extract and half the container of cream of tartar, though I am still not sure what it does.
We tried again today and the results were decidedly better:
Next week, we're going to try making pecan pie...
I started reading through the labels, checking for expiration dates and maybe a hint as to what I could do with them. Some of these random ingredients have recipes on the back. Also, somewhere in my reading I learned that corn starch can sometimes be used in place of flour. On the back of the box of the spare vanilla extract (yes, we have 2 little bottles for some unknown reason), there was a recipe for sugar cookies.
As I read the ingredients, I realized we had everything but the butter and baking soda. So, industrious little me went to Publix, acquired the missing ingredients, enlisted Ryan's help and set to baking. We replaced 2 1/3 cups of flour with a little over 1 cup of corn starch, mixed all the other ingredients together as directed, placed the mix into the fridge, waited 2 hours for the dough to firm and then got it ready for the oven. The timer was set for 10 minutes and we waited impatiently, anxiously awaiting our sure-to-be-delicious sugar cookies. What we found when the timer went off and opened the stove was pure disaster:
That looks nothing like delicious, fresh baked sugar cookies! Apparently, I cannot be trusted in the kitchen. Unfortunately for Ryan, I also cannot stay away from baking endeavors.Needless to say our carmelized sugar and slowly burning batter set off the fire alarm:
Turns out, you can only replace flour with corn starch when you are using it to thicken sauces and gravies. Hence the overflowing sugar gobs and fire alarm. And to make things even more entertaining, I later found a HUGE-MONGOUS box of baking soda.
Silver lining? The stove received a very thorough cleaning. We finished one bottle of vanilla extract and half the container of cream of tartar, though I am still not sure what it does.
We tried again today and the results were decidedly better:
Next week, we're going to try making pecan pie...
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