Little Miss Kitchen Disaster!!!
So tonight is Shavuot. Shavuot, for all those who don't know/aren't Jewish, is the celebration of when the Israelites were given the Torah at Mt. Sinai.
One of the most popular customs of the holiday, which is observed even by more secular Jews, is the custom of eating dairy products, the most delicious of these being Cheesecake.
I don't remember the exact origin of this custom, so I will google/wikipedia it, now and elaborate...
From Shavuot on the Net:
One explanation states that this comes from a passage in the Torah which reads:
"And He gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey".
Another explanation comes from a legend stating that before the visit from G-d the Jews did not keep kosher or follow the Kashrut (dietary) laws. It was on this first Shavuot that they found out that their utensils were nonkosher and thus unfit for use. So finding themselves without kosher meats or utensils the Israelites were forced to eat only dairy foods. Today Jews celebrate Shavuot by eating blintzes, cheesecake, and other dairy dishes.
In any case, as those who know my family know, my dad is on the Atkins Diet, and thus eats no carbohydrate. It's not usually a problem, but it does mean that on Shavuot, the cheesecake he makes (tasty though it still is), has artificial sweetener in it instead of sugar, and tends to have no base.
I therefore decided that this year, I would also make a cheesecake, and that I would make one with a base.
I actually managed to prepare ahead of time, and I gave my dad a shopping list, with the exact ingredients I needed.
After lunch today, I started making the cake. Everything went great to start with. The pastry took a while to get to the right consistency (it kept on being too sticky, so I kept having to add more flour, but that inevitably happens to me), but it was ok.
Everything was going great, and I was onto the second to last step before pouring the cheese mixture into the baking dish over the pastry, when I realised I had the wrong ingredient left.
I looked at the recipe book again, as I thought that up til now I had been following the recipe more or less to the letter, and then I realised.
I was using a Hebrew cookbook, and in Hebrew, the words for eggwhite (Helmon) and for yolk (Helvon) are almost identical. I was left with five yolks, and the recipe said to whip the yolks up with half a cup of sugar, adding the sugar when the yolks were getting frothy and firm. Or so I thought. It then said to fold the egg-sugar mixture into the cheese mixture.
I then realised what I had done. Instead of reading Helvon as yolk, and mixing the yolks in with the cheese mixture, I had added the whites to the mixture, therefore resulting in a very light and airy cheese mixture, and was left with the yolks to beat up and make into a mirangue-like mixture.
I think it worked out ok in the end. I separated five more eggs, beat up the whites with the sugar to make the mirangue, added the 10 yolks to the cheese mixture to thicken it up a little, and then did what it said, folding it all together.
I think I have about twice as much cheese mixture as I was supposed to, and I made the second half of the cheese mixture into a baseless cake (like my dad's), but they both look pretty good, and they smell delicious.
So hopefully after I spread the blueberry pie filling over the top, no one will notice anything wrong :)
I love cooking... I just have a tendency to make a) a huge mess, and b) something slightly different from what I originally intended... teehee...
Some of my other highly amusing kitchen disasters (seeing as I'm in the mood) include:
Forgetting to put flour in a chocolate brownie mixture, and it became a sort of flat cake thing... (still came out yummy).
Putting too much of something in a chocolate brownie mixture, and not leaving it in the oven long enough, and it came out as sort of chocolate goo (absolutely delicious, as Abi just reminded me).
Trying to add strawberries or bananas in the middle of mirangue kisses, and having the kisses kind of flop (again, still really tasty).
Almost forgetting to add applesauce to what was supposed to be a mixture based heavily on applesauce! That one was just a few weeks ago for the cake I made for my birthday.
And then, of course, there are all the potential disasters when I just put a whole bunch of ingredients in a bowl, mix them together, put them in the oven and hope for the best.
Some of my best creations come out of those potential disasters! :)
Anyway, that's all from me... Shavuot starts in less than half an hour and I still have to shower and get dressed, etc.
I wanna hear about all your kitchen disasters too!!!
One of the most popular customs of the holiday, which is observed even by more secular Jews, is the custom of eating dairy products, the most delicious of these being Cheesecake.
I don't remember the exact origin of this custom, so I will google/wikipedia it, now and elaborate...
From Shavuot on the Net:
One explanation states that this comes from a passage in the Torah which reads:
"And He gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey".
Another explanation comes from a legend stating that before the visit from G-d the Jews did not keep kosher or follow the Kashrut (dietary) laws. It was on this first Shavuot that they found out that their utensils were nonkosher and thus unfit for use. So finding themselves without kosher meats or utensils the Israelites were forced to eat only dairy foods. Today Jews celebrate Shavuot by eating blintzes, cheesecake, and other dairy dishes.
In any case, as those who know my family know, my dad is on the Atkins Diet, and thus eats no carbohydrate. It's not usually a problem, but it does mean that on Shavuot, the cheesecake he makes (tasty though it still is), has artificial sweetener in it instead of sugar, and tends to have no base.
I therefore decided that this year, I would also make a cheesecake, and that I would make one with a base.
I actually managed to prepare ahead of time, and I gave my dad a shopping list, with the exact ingredients I needed.
After lunch today, I started making the cake. Everything went great to start with. The pastry took a while to get to the right consistency (it kept on being too sticky, so I kept having to add more flour, but that inevitably happens to me), but it was ok.
Everything was going great, and I was onto the second to last step before pouring the cheese mixture into the baking dish over the pastry, when I realised I had the wrong ingredient left.
I looked at the recipe book again, as I thought that up til now I had been following the recipe more or less to the letter, and then I realised.
I was using a Hebrew cookbook, and in Hebrew, the words for eggwhite (Helmon) and for yolk (Helvon) are almost identical. I was left with five yolks, and the recipe said to whip the yolks up with half a cup of sugar, adding the sugar when the yolks were getting frothy and firm. Or so I thought. It then said to fold the egg-sugar mixture into the cheese mixture.
I then realised what I had done. Instead of reading Helvon as yolk, and mixing the yolks in with the cheese mixture, I had added the whites to the mixture, therefore resulting in a very light and airy cheese mixture, and was left with the yolks to beat up and make into a mirangue-like mixture.
I think it worked out ok in the end. I separated five more eggs, beat up the whites with the sugar to make the mirangue, added the 10 yolks to the cheese mixture to thicken it up a little, and then did what it said, folding it all together.
I think I have about twice as much cheese mixture as I was supposed to, and I made the second half of the cheese mixture into a baseless cake (like my dad's), but they both look pretty good, and they smell delicious.
So hopefully after I spread the blueberry pie filling over the top, no one will notice anything wrong :)
I love cooking... I just have a tendency to make a) a huge mess, and b) something slightly different from what I originally intended... teehee...
Some of my other highly amusing kitchen disasters (seeing as I'm in the mood) include:
Forgetting to put flour in a chocolate brownie mixture, and it became a sort of flat cake thing... (still came out yummy).
Putting too much of something in a chocolate brownie mixture, and not leaving it in the oven long enough, and it came out as sort of chocolate goo (absolutely delicious, as Abi just reminded me).
Trying to add strawberries or bananas in the middle of mirangue kisses, and having the kisses kind of flop (again, still really tasty).
Almost forgetting to add applesauce to what was supposed to be a mixture based heavily on applesauce! That one was just a few weeks ago for the cake I made for my birthday.
And then, of course, there are all the potential disasters when I just put a whole bunch of ingredients in a bowl, mix them together, put them in the oven and hope for the best.
Some of my best creations come out of those potential disasters! :)
Anyway, that's all from me... Shavuot starts in less than half an hour and I still have to shower and get dressed, etc.
I wanna hear about all your kitchen disasters too!!!