How to bake Everything Wrong™

[muckefuck]

For my example, I've chosen oatmeal-raisin cookies, but keep in mind that this is a technique, not a recipe, and can be applied to nearly anything.

1. Take stock of your ingredients, if you must, but only in a superficial manner--enough to convince you you have everything you need to begin the project, but no more than that. By no means check aged products for freshness or usuability.
2. Start late so that you won't be tempted to run out and replace anything you are short of.
3. Soften the year-old butter from the freezer as briefly as possible. Hey, we want to eat these before bedtime, people!
4. Hack up the rock-hard brick of dessicated brown sugar with an old kitchen knife. When this fails to reduce it to granules, moisten it with a bit of water and alternately scrape off half-dissolved goo and pare it into tinier rock-hard lumps. Be sure to spray bzw. smear sugar liberally around your work area in the process.
5. Cream the butter and sugar. And when I say "cream", I really mean "whip the butter and sprinkle with sugar rocks". (For best results, choose a bowl at least a size too small and fling whipped butter over every conceivable surface.)
6. Let sit the mixture in the vain hope that the moisture in the butter will begin to dissolve the sugar. Stick the bowl in the fridge for a while after you begin to worry that the butter is getting too runny.
7. Combine the dry ingredients--flour, cinnamon, baking soda, salt. Forget what you've down with your half-cup measuring cup and waste at least ten minutes searching for it before making do with a quarter-cup one, then convince yourself that baking powder is really the same thing as baking soda.
8. Mix in an egg into the butter-sugar mixture. Let sit again in the ever-vainer hope of dissolving huge hunks of brown sugar.
9. Remove the largest lumps and discard before beating in the dry ingredients. Mixture should have a noticeably gummy quality.
10. Separate brick of dessicated raisins, again using a kitchen cleaver if necessary, and add to batter.
11. Remember to preheat the damn oven.
12. Drop batter onto cookie sheet using two spoons. Be sure to vary the size and spacing of the lumps as much as possible. (It helps to have only one cookie sheet and fill it with more cookies than it could possibly hold.)
13. Bake for twice the recommended time. Three-quarters of the way through, ramp up the temperature at least 50 degrees because the balls of dough are still squooshy.
14. Burn the bottoms while leaving the interiors underdone.
15. Remove and cool. Eat at least a half dozen because, goddamnit, you worked hard to make the stupid things.

Tips: In carrying out these instructions, note that it helps to have a kitchen with a shortage of counter space. Keep in mind that you can simulate or exacerbate this effect by piling up crap on what counter space you do have. Waiting at least a year between baking attempts will help insure that your ingredients are as old and dried-out as they can be without actually being spoiled or inedible.

Comments

[bitterlawngnome.livejournal.com]

Mr Microwave is your friend, especially in the case of the raisins and the brown sugar.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

I'll remember that when I'm in a kitchen where he lives, like monshu's.

[bitterlawngnome.livejournal.com]

You can do the same deal with a regular oven it just takes a bit longer.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Really? But I'm confused--how does adding heat to dried-out ingredients make them moister?

[bitterlawngnome.livejournal.com]

You wrap them in wet paper (like a wet paper bag) then either in plastic or foil, and the steam generated penetrates better than just plain dripping water on them. BTW you know that most brown sugar is just plain white sugar plus a very small amt of molasses?

Or perhaps you could just drop Mr Microwave on them repeatedly to break up the lumps?

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Alas, no molasses! I thought about mixing honey and white sugar, but backed away from that idea.

[snowy-owlet.livejournal.com]

Genius!

[niemandsrose.livejournal.com]

Dang! I thought I had that shit copyrighted!

I Salute You

[mollpeartree.livejournal.com]

I have a four-year-old home-made "raisin-oatmeal-cookies-in-a-glass-jar" mix that has your name on it. How do I know that it's four years old? Because I lost the hand-made tag with instructions, including how much oleo to add, how long to bake, etc., when we packed it up to move to our current abode.

You are the man for this job! I'm too scared of it.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

I appreciate the offer, but I prefer to work from scratch. ("Oleo"! I haven't heard that in years!)

[mollpeartree.livejournal.com]

I think it actually said "Crisco" on the tag, but I don't want to be promoting one oleo over another. They're all good!

[lhn.livejournal.com]

I thought "oleo" was margarine and Crisco was shortening. Granted, they're pretty similar, (I'm a butter fan myself, at least for most purposes) but I think the water and salt content is different between the two.

[mollpeartree.livejournal.com]

I always thought margarine was just shortening with yellow dye added, and possibly it was, initially. Of course since the 70s (when my mom used the terms "oleo" and "Crisco" interchangeably, though she's not a chemist or anything so might have been speaking slightly inaccurately) the fake butter market has exploded with all kinds of mysterious products, so who knows?

[lhn.livejournal.com]

If a quick google is accurate, shortening is all fat (Crisco is partially hydrogenated soybean or canola oil with some palm oil to solidify it) and margarine is 80% fat, 20% water with some flavorings, emulsifiers, and vitamins added. Probably not a huge difference in a lot of recipes-- I remembered the water content because it came up on one of Alton Brown's cooking shows (he used shortening in some recipe because he didn't want any extra water).

[juniperesque.livejournal.com]

It sounds like your cookies had a failure to thrive.

When all else fails, add wine.

[snowy-owlet.livejournal.com]

Wine makes everything better.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

That definitely would've plumbed my raisins! And I had a year-old half-bottle in the fridge just begging to be used...

[my-tallest.livejournal.com]

Snort!

The truest part of this is that since I haven't cooked anything in maybe two years (!), I would make all these mistakes and more. I will diligently print this next time before I try to do something as simple as cooking cookies.

If I remember, which of course is mistake number one: have no instructions.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Fortunately for me, the actual instructions were printed on the underside of the oatmeal tin lid. (Hmm, should've added another instruction: "Remove oatmeal lid and consult recipe. Replace lid. Repeat as necessary, no fewer than ten times.") And you really can't make oatmeal-raisin cookies without oatmeal.

[tyrannio.livejournal.com]

Your experiences make me glad I do all my cooking on the stovetop. You should have made steamed red bean paste buns instead.