Not always perfect

Tweet The day before yesterday, I (with quite a lot of help from Mom) baked Strawberry Muffins (adapted from the popular recipe of Raspberry Muffins). I had hoped that it would be my next recipe up here. And guess what? They weren't that good! :( They weren't bad either. However, we made too much batter. The muffin tins fell slightly short, so we filled them a little more than 3/4th (When baking muffins/cupcakes it is always known that you must not fill the tins more than 3/4th) Then after that, we realized that all the muffin cups wouldn't fit into the oven. After half an hour, what came out of the oven wasn't as spectacular as I expected it to be. The upper crust was more brown than it was supposed to be, (that part can easily be blamed on the not-so-detailed recipe I followed. I'd rather not link to it. And also keep in mind that the recipe doesn't have to be good just because there were beautiful photographs.) & I kept finding faults with the whole thing though Mom kept telling me it was a very good first attempt. *sigh*
So, when someone has a cooking incident like that, they would probably act like it never happened, let along blog about it, right? Well, after two day's thought, I decided to blog about it. Because my shepherd's pie turned out wonderful the first time itself, doesn't mean it has to be the same for everything. Even really good chefs have totally botched-up dishes. All I'm saying is, if the same ever happens to you, that doesn't make you a bad cook. There are many things that could be wrong.

• Maybe the recipe wasn't detailed enough. For example, the recipe I followed was from the website of an Asian Girl residing in USA. Wondering why I'm bringing up races? Because here are measure of heat are in Centigrade (C), while in the US, heat is measured in Fahrenheit (F). But all this recipe mentioned was preheat the oven to 375°. It didn't say Centigrade or Fahrenheit. We followed Centigrade, but the oven was obviously too hot.
• When baking cakes/muffins, always remember not to fill the tin/pan more than 3/4th (I know this is the third time I'm mentioning it in this post! Just stressing it's importance for first time bakers like me.) The batter will either spill, or rise in a not-so-pretty way (the latter happened with me)
• When reading a recipe on the internet, always try to calculate (in your mind) approximately how much batter the recipe will make. If it seems like too much, always remember to scale the quantities down. Evenly. If you halve the amount of flour you're going to use, remember to halve the amount of salt/sugar/butter too!
• Also, if it's a food blog you're getting the recipe from, remember to ask questions in the comments section. Food blogger  usually love to help you out so your dish can be perfect (At least I know I do! :) ) If your first attempt was bad, ask questions! It was probably a tiny mistake & you can resolve it the next time. Don't lose ♥!

So I just posted this so you can learn from my mistakes. Come to think of it, these could be some nice informal guidelines for anyone wanting to start up their own food blog or people who like to follow recipes from food blogs.


Hope I helped.


Happy Cooking! 




Update (19th Feb 2010) : Guess what! Last night my mom was talking to a close friend on the phone (she's my friend too.) We had decided in the beginning itself that we would give her a couple of the smaller muffins. But when we found that the muffins weren't that great, we were in two minds. We finally decided to go ahead with it, because 'first times are special!'
So getting back to yesterday's phone conversation- The lady said she & her husband loved the muffins! She scolded my mom for seeming apologetic while giving them to her, & asked, "What did you want in the muffins? They were absolutely perfect!"
This lady is a pretty good cook herself, & we knew we could get an honest opinion from her. I was absolutely overjoyed! She love my muffins! And then I felt a little stupid. Why didn't I like them? Maybe I just don't like muffins on the whole...