'Why I should not be a cook'
By : Paul Panks ([email hidden])
My legacy of cooking boils down to three episodes
of cooking "shame":
1) Vinegar Brownies. On Mother's Day 1992, I decided to do
something really special for my mom, Judy. I wanted to bake
her a batch of brownies in the oven. The recipe called for
cooking oil, but for some reason I couldn't find cooking oil
in the pantry, so I substituted vinegar oil instead. The
brownies cooked (and looked) fine, but upon tasting
them they had a distinct vinegar flavor. My mom was
impressed, though she joked,"Vinegar brownies...that's
something you don't see every day!"
2) Deep Fried Root Beer. I have always loved Root Beer,
both as a drink and as a soda. I was bored one afternoon
and decided to substitute regular cooking oil for
Root Beer instead. But this didn't last very long...it
sizzled on the skillet so badly that I had to turn
the top stove off! That was my last foray into root beer
"cooking oil".
4) Chocolate Pancakes. I love chocolate, but have never
had the luxury of trying "chocolate syrup" on top of
pancakes. I decided to give it a go recently, cooking
three medium sized pancakes and then topping them off
with a 1.55 oz (43g) regular Hersey's Chocolate Bar
on top. This didn't work in the skillet, so I put
the whole thing in the microwave, with chocolate
bar on top, and microwaved the entire contents for
1 minutes, 35 seconds. But the chocolate only
half melted like I wanted it to, so I put it in for
another full minute. Strangely, after the full minute,
the chocolate bar more or less retained it's original
"block bar" shape, and so I used a spachula (sp?)
to smooth out the block bar shape into a normal, smooth
topping. The pancakes tasted "mostly okay."
Paul