Sunday, October 30, 2011

MOFO Day #30 True Grub: King of the Bill Cake and a GIVEAWAY!

As far as I know there are three factions in True Blood: Team Bill, Team Eric, and Team Alcide. ((groan)) Thanks from the bottom of my black heart, Twilight People.

What's wrong with being Switzerland in this scenario? Much like Sookie, I love all three. Hate me if you must, but I do. Is Bill a douche for what he's done to our little Fairy? Of course he is. He does have his redeeming qualities, he's a much better king than Sophie was queen. Those eyes. What happened to his sideburns? Is that a no-no in vampire royalty? I decided I'd take on the task of making him a cake--a King of the Bill Cake, which is just Kittee's King Cake recipe. I've been sworn to secrecy, so I cannot disclose the recipe.

Here's what I will tell you: the King Cake is a big ol' ring of cinnamon buns. Imagine making the log of dough and instead of cutting it up into individual rolls, you form it into a big circle. Sounds easy, right? Wrong. There's a learning curve kids, and the final product looked like a half inflated inner tube.

I think I wasn't paying attention to the temperature of warm liquid when I added in the yeast. Or maybe my yeast was bad. I could go on all day about it, but I will tell you that it wasn't a total fail taste wise. I improvised my own filling of cherries and chocolate chips and made some blood sugar sprinkles. It was good to me, but I'm sure a King Cake Connoisseur like Kittee would do a face palm and send me to detention.


So on this day before Halloween tell me about a kitchen fail and you could win a prize. Whuuuut? When I was at Vida Vegan Con, I bought TWO copies of Papa Tofu Loves Ethiopian by Kittee. One was for me, and the other one is for one lucky PITA vegan reader. I had planned to do this much sooner, but I got bogged down with some stuff at home. Sorry.

So get those stories to me by 4pm EST on Halloween.

Yes, I know that's tomorrow. So get to gettin'. Tell everyone you know about this contest and I look forward to reading about your epic fails.

11 comments:

Kim said...

My worst kitchen fail was probably when I tried to use my microwave rice cooker to make brown rice. I didn't notice anything was wrong until my smoke alarm went off, at which point I realized that the kitchen (and at that time I lived in a studio apartment so the kitchen was in the bedroom and it was the only room there was aside from a tiny closet-sized bathroom) was completely filled with smoke (to the extent that the air was opaque) and it smelled like melted plastic was was so acrid that it burned my eyes and made me choke and was probably pretty poisonous. The rice cooker itself was completely melted into a terrifying plastic blob and I ended up needing to get a new microwave afterwards too. It was such a disaster. Thanks for having such a great giveaway!

Katie said...

My worst kitchen fail wasn't a botched recipe, but when I went to put my waffle iron away one eve. It was unlatched, I wasn't wearing a bra, and when I picked it up, it opened and then closed ON MY NIPPLE. Thankfully, it was completely cold, but still. OW.

If my nipple story doesn't suffice...

A few weeks ago, I tried making Joanna's mojito pie. I overcooked the syrup, so when I added it to the tofu in the blender, it cooled and hardened into taffy instead of blending with the tofu. To try and save it, I scraped out as much as I could, took apart the blender, microwaved the glass part enough to soften the taffy, while heating the tofu-taffy on the stove. It took 20 minutes of scraping and heating. And then I only had enough filling to fill up half of the pie crust and ended up burning the crust.

And this pie was for my father-in-law's birthday.

Anonymous said...

So.... I desperately wanted to impress a guy who was a mutual friend of mine that LOVED beer. While hanging out one day, I mentioned beer bread and saw lots of people perk up, including him. They were absolutely fascinated that you could dump a bottle of beer into a baking tin with some flour and it would come out as bread. He said, "No way!" and I of course had to bake it for him to prove it.

Now I only knew about beer bread from my dear roommate at the time, so I asked her for the recipe. And she whole-heartedly gave it to me hoping it'd land me a date! Only.... she forgot to mention that SELF-RISING flour is a *vital* component of beer bread.

At our next gathering, I proudly walked in with a fresh loaf that smelled delicious- but was the consistency of a brick. Everyone- potential boyfriend included- proceeded to make it the butt of all jokes for the rest of the night. Nobody ate more than one bite. *sigh* I was totally humiliated. And still single. Stupid self-rising flour! Now I can't pass by it in the store without remembering that bread.

mmmorgans said...

Worst kitchen fail to date was probably the first time I decided to cook dried chickpeas. Everyone had always told me how easy it was and how much better they were than canned beans so I was super excited to give it a try so I could make hummus for a family dinner that night. I soaked them overnight, then rinsed and brought to a boil, set the timer & let them simmer. Then I made the mistake of going to see what my better half was up to. He was all snuggled in the bed with our kitties, looking adorable so i figured I would lay with him for a minute or two and get up when the timer went off. I woke up to beeping but it wasn't the oven timer, it was our smoke alarm. The whole kitchen was smoky and reaked of burnt chickpeas :( They were so badly burnt, that you couldn't even tell what was in the pot other than a thick layer of burnt mess. To top it all off it was a new pot that I had cooked them in and now had to throw away. Our house stunk like sour, burnt beans for days! Never again have I attempted to cook chickpeas, canned beans all the way!

Southern Purple Veggie said...

My worst epic fail in the kitchen , was very harilously bad in many many ways. I had justed went vegan from being vegetarian for almost my whole life, and I wanted a green bean dish for christmas. I was homesick and I attempted to make my family dish but veganized. So I lookes up the recipe and compared veganized items that I could use. I found I need cheese but the town I lived in didn't have fake cheese so I was told to sub with nutrintional yeast. Well I got the wrong kinda of yeast and didn't know it until the dish was cooking. Need less to say I have learned the difference between brewers yeast and nutrional yeast.

C.J. said...

Well, you didn't say it had to be MY kitchen fail -- once when I had the flu, my husband* decided to make me dinner. What was it?
Blackberry** mushroom curry with rosemary. I had the flu already. After two bites, I thought I was going to die. I think hif he'd taken one of the main flavour ingredients out, it might have worked.



* Who can't cook and almost never does.
** He picked them himself.

showmethemurray said...

I have many minor kitchen fails...they're often really silly things - i'm a repeat offender of taking things out of the oven and putting them on top of the electric stove which takes aaaages to cool down - resulting in burnt bottoms of whatever and severe disappointment.

Oh, the other week, the two oven trays were full of pizza so I decided to squeeze garlic bread in by putting on the base of the oven. Yep, burnt to charcoal.

Oh and there was the the time I tried to make marshmallows but they didn't set because I added purple food dye (don't know why?) so I tried to make them into rice crispy bars by mixing them with rice bubbles and agar agar....yeah, no.

And of course the lamington fail that was like a brick. I ended up throwing it into the garden for the birds to eat. Hmmm...

jared said...

I've had many small kitchen mishaps in my day, but this is probably the worst.

July 4th, 2010: I tripled a vegan low-fat cheesecake recipe and blueberry sauce the day before. I had three parties to attend and just wanted to whiz something together in a blender, throw it in the oven, top it with a sauce, and go. I had three nice looking pies ready to go, and only until we tried it at the first party did I realize I tripled all the ingredients except the sugar. Needless to say, omnivores aren't big fans of baked barely-sweetened silken tofu. Smothering it in blueberry sauce didn't quite do the trick. Ohhhh well!

Lizzie Bordello said...

Most of my fails involve dough of some kind. Yeast hates me.

The worst in recent memory, though, was a squash and apple soup. Should have been a perfect comfort food for a chilly Autumn evening. I don't even know what went wrong - I blame the recipe itself, there was just something that shouldn't be there. I thought it was pretty icky, but the true verdict came when the husband wouldn't eat it. He eats everything, even what I consider failures and refuse to eat myself. When even he takes a pass, you know it's B-A-D, BAD!

VeganLinda said...

I made enchiladas with liquid smoke that was super concentrated and I didn't notice and dilute it. We pretty refuseto waste food, but it was completely inedible.

KitteeBee said...

Stop lingering and get your ass to DETENTION!

not really. sorry it was a fail. can i help? should i change something? lemme know!

xo
kittee