Sh*t Happens - How to Handle Mistakes in the Kitchen

I usually cook with a recipe, but with this new blog, I’ve been getting kind of cocky. That has led me to stop following recipes exactly and experimenting more in the kitchen. Don't get me wrong, I’m all for experimentation and growth, but I am also a perfectionist and nothing irks me more than failures in the culinary arts.

This brings me to my most recent failure: an upside down toffee caramel cornbread cake. I was inspired by a butterscotch cornbread skillet cookie that my boyfriend and I had in Monterey last weekend. It was gooey, sweet, sticky, textured, and just plain good. I just had to make one myself but couldn’t find anything similar on the internet. Instead, I found a recipe for pineapple upside down cornbread cake and thought (erroneously) “I’ll just swap out the pineapple for toffee and caramel flavors.” WRONG!

First of all, the cornbread recipe was dry. I should have stuck to the recipe that I know and upped the sugar content to make it more cake-y. Second, the caramel was too thick (compared to the juicy and sweet pineapple) and didn’t soak into the cornbread at all, exacerbating the aforementioned dryness issue. If I could do it again, I would have added more liquid to the caramel and more butter to the cornbread. At least my roommates liked it, though they will eat almost anything I make.

But that brings me to the question: what to do when you aren’t happy with your cooking? My great grandmother would have tossed it in the trash but I’m against food waste. But, I’m also against forcing yourself to eat things that aren’t good -life’s too short to waste calories on mediocre food. Luckily, at our age, we can pawn off almost anything to other young people to eat and the ingredients weren’t expensive this time. I’ve also found that tastes can differ so much that some people may even enjoy it or find a way to doctor it up with something to make it better. If it were truly inedible, though, I probably would have thrown it out. It does make me feel bad, but I would feel equally bad forcing someone (myself included) to eat it. The biggest and most important thing to do, however, is to forgive yourself. Everyone makes mistakes in the kitchen and getting hung up on it will only make you less likely to keep cooking and taking risks. Above all, we have to keep cooking!