When I saw this title, I did not know how I could possibly respond
to this request. Nothing came to my mind other than so many thoughts
and memories of my many kitchen stellar achievements. I love being in
the kitchen to prepare meals and cook and bake delicious foods. But did
I ever even come close to having a kitchen disaster?
My
love of baking started when I was quite young. My mother was a great
cook and baker so I watched her working tirelessly in the kitchen every
day. She baked all the bread for our family of seven and was known for
the most delicious white bread imaginable. She also baked cakes, pies
and cookies regularly. All this on a wood burning kitchen stove when I
was a young child.
Mom had one cookbook that I have inherited. It was well used and well loved.
Whenever
Mom was out of the house - which wasn't very often - I headed into the
pantry to get out the cookbook and find a recipe I could make. I
remember finding the candy section. Caramels were one of my favorites
so I tried making those quite often. I didn't have a candy thermometer
so I had to guess at how long to cook things.
This
page shows plenty of use. Even if the caramels hardened too solidly or
were too soft, we could still eat them and think they were delicious.
When
I was in first and second grade, our Cross Ridge School teacher, Mrs.
Deurkop, added some fabulously delicious homemade candy to our box of
Christmas candy which had those traditional wavy curls and hard
peppermints in it. I remember wondering what were those amazing candies
that she made? I had never tasted anything so fluffy, so soft, creamy
and delightfully scrumtious as that candy was. At some point I
learned that those candies were called fondant.
So
the day eventually came when Mom was out of the house and I got into
the pantry, opened the Fannie Farmer Cookbook and found the page of
Fondant recipes. I was really excited because I found a recipe for no
cook fondant. That was sure to be easy and delicious. It seemed to be
just what would work in order for me to prepare a delicious dessert for
myself and my family - only four ingredients and no cooking. But as I
read what the four ingredients were, I found there was a little problem.
One of the ingredients was Confectioners' Sugar. I didn't know what
Confectioners' Sugar was. What eight or nine year old knows what
Confectioners' Sugar is? So I assumed that there couldn't be very much
difference between Confectioners' Sugar and regular sugar so I would
just substitute regular sugar for the Confectioners' Sugar. I measured
and mixed and followed the directions as well and quickly as I could.
The directions didn't seem to be very explicit about how to create the
fluffy, soft, creamy and scrumpious pieces like I remembered had been in
my box of Christmas candy so I just made walnut sized round balls and
laid them on a tray.
By
now you know what my "one" kitchen disaster was! That ball of four
ingredient Fondant was hard as a rock and inedible!!! A huge disaster
and a big disappointment for me. But the worst part of this disaster
was that I had just wasted 2 cups of valuable, precious sugar which was a
huge loss for my mother's kitchen. We did not have money to throw away
but that is exactly what I did with my kitchen disaster! I took the
evidence far from the house so my mother would not find out about my
failed experiment.
To
this day, I have never again tried to make Fondant and I never told my
mother about my disastrous attempt at making something that used
Confectioners Sugar. And I never use Confectioners' Sugar in a recipe
without remembering about the day I learned that there is a difference
between regular sugar and Confectioners' Sugar.
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