Food Writers, I Love You But You're Bringing Me Down...
Food writers, I love you sometimes but when your recipes fail you totally bum me out and leave me with a bad dinner debacle.
For example, hey you Smitten Kitchen, your recipe produced the greasiest carrot cake I've ever eaten. It made EcoBaby's birthday kind of lame. I even cut back on the listed amount of oil! For Pete's sake woman! But oh boy, your mulled spice cranberry bars were a total winner. More of that, less of the oil.
Melissa Clark, why did you make me waste two days of my precious winter break and two cups of pistachios on rather bland Pistachio Linzer Cookies with Marmalade. While I did substitute my homemade Meyer lemon marmalade for the suggested orange marmalade, that should not be enough to totally throw the recipe off. I had high hopes with all the exotic spices but meh... However, the butternut squash muffins were really great and gobbled up by one and all.
Also, NYT, please make up your mind on measurements. Either list ingredients in cups or grams. I'm willing to give this gram thing a try because I have a kitchen scale, but not everyone does and not everyone is keen on weighing out five grams of nutmeg like it's Miami circa 1983 and Michelle Pfieffer is lounging around next to you.
And you, Bittman, I'm talking to you. Why did your zucchini pancakes end up in a crumbled pile in my skillet? How did shredded zucchini and some binder end up such a mess that took forever to make? Nobody was happy to eat the results after all the cursing and sweating that went into making it. Dude, what happened?
Note to self: give shredded zucchini a squeeze before the next attempt at making them into pancakes; the excess amounts of moisture did not help matters.
Bittman, I'm going to make another loaf of No-Knead Bread this weekend and all will be forgiven, maybe.
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