Friday Fuck-Up: Rice Puffies
First off, I would like to say that I did not actually make these. However, I did attempt to eat them, and there is no doubt that they deserve a mention on here.
My dear friend Jenn is an excellent baker. She makes cupcakes from scratch and they actually taste good. One day, though, she fell into the trap of cabinet experimentation. She is moving soon and trying to eat down the pantry, and thus came across an uneaten bag of marshmallows.
Rice Krispies seemed the logical choice. Her husband was stopping by Yes! Organic Market that afternoon and was assigned the task of picking up the cereal. Well, Yes! may be a great place to go for organic hummus made from hand-coddled chickpeas, but they are not helpful when it comes to name brand products. Instead of snap, crackle and pop, Pat enlisted the help of some Kashi puffed rice.
All I can say about the resulting atrocity was that I should have stopped as soon as I tried to cut off a piece and nearly bent the knife. It was fortunate that none of my teeth are filled, because they wouldn’t be any more. The combination of stickiness and chewiness would have been impressive if it weren’t so horrific. The worst part is, Pat could have totally warned me when I said, “Ooh, Rice Krispies!”, but I am pretty sure he kept quiet so that he would not be forced to eat any more himself.
I have had two Friday Fuck-ups lately (only one on Friday) and both times I have thought of you fondly. My beloved’s birthday is only a week after mine so I convinced him to wait until my birthday cake was gone and then I’d make his. I had planned for German Chocolate (his favorite) which I had a new recipe for. I made the cake, put it in the oven and cleaned up the kitchen. That’s when I found four egg whites that were supposed to be beaten and folded into the batter. Fail. The cake tasted fine, it just looked like a disaster.
Fast forward to last Saturday. My mouth had been watering all day in anticipation of the Roasted Chicken with Pears we were having Saturday night. I gussied up the bird, stuck in in a 425 degree oven and waited 30 minutes. At the appointed time I opened the oven and poured a half cup of stock over the bird. Then (and this is my downfall) I thought if half a cup was good, more would be better, right? Well, it might have been if I hadn’t been pouring cold stock into a glass baking pan in a 425 degree oven. The pan EXPLODED into about a million pieces and scared the bejeesus out of me. Needless to say, we went to Bonefish Saturday night after cleaning up an atrocious mess.
Thanks for sharing your mistakes, we should all be so humble!
I feel like I write more of these columns than any other, but at least I don’t make the same mistakes twice! I have never exploded a baking dish, but I have been in the presence of two of them. Once, my sis left a glass pan of coffee cake on my parents electric stove, which was on, although it was not obvious. A few minutes later, bam! Luckily, no one was hurt (except the coffee cake, which was mortally wounded).
Why were you cooking in a glass pan at 420 degrees? That’s too hot for glass in the first place.