Frankencake- Where Pinterest goes Wrong

Don't you just love Pinterest?  All those great looking pictures for all those great tasting recipes?  Maybe Pinterest is just about looking at pictures.  I know that's what some people do, they spend hours upon hours just looking.  And drooling. I'm sure they drool. How can they not?
When Pinterest first became popular among my friends, I vowed to do more with it than just waste time.  After all, I was wasting so much time doing other useless things, I would need to be more effective in my time management skills to have more time to waste.  So I decided to actually MAKE the things I pinned on Pinterest.  It has been so lovely.  I've taken up quilting, and have baked and cooked some lovely meals.  It seemed like a dream come true.  Pinterest was making me better.
But then, everybody started pinning.  There were so many pins to choose from, its hard not to pin the same thing twice!  And now...  it appears that not all the recipes are as good as they look!  I've even seen some pins with little flags that say "Pinstrosity"!  A new word made up for these awful, miserable recipe failures. In fact, there's a whole website dedicated to these failures (see here) Well, I've had a few that were not as delicious as I would have expected, but I have to tell you about my friend Cracker, and her fantastic FRANKENCAKE!

Cracker's son (We'll call him Crumb) had a birthday.  He requested a cake based on a beautiful picture he found on Pinterest.  Cracker read through the recipe and thought to herself: is that a typo?  could there really be 1 1/2 cups of oil in a cake?  and 5 eggs?  and jello???  After a phone conversation, and consulting the not so good reviews of this recipe, Cracker doubled the recipe, except for the oil and egg.  Within a few hours, this is what I saw on Facebook:  

Today's life lesson: If a recipe looks like a disaster, walks like a disaster, and quacks like a disaster, then it IS a disaster. Worst thing I've ever baked!

I'm not sure what a disaster quacks like, but I needed to know more...  so another phone conversation to find out that the cake flopped out of the pans into the bottom of the oven during cooking, was flat in the middle, wouldn't come out of the pan, and tasted very oily, I asked her if she wanted a different recipe... maybe for something different.  But it was late, so she decided to save the cake, frost it, and present it like it were a masterpiece at the birthday dinner.  

Here's her pictures:

Figuring Gas-X might be the perfect after cake treat?

Happy Birthday Crumb! Hope you enjoy your 10 pound Frankencake (and the gas-x)

What a beautiful picture.  The cake is so perfect, green, and crooked.  

Are you curious as to which recipe this is?  This my friends, is Tricia Yearwood's Key Lime Cake.  You can find the recipe here.  Poor Heidi, if she does really bake, did you make this cake?  I also found the recipe on Food Network's site, and the comments there were quite poor too.  
You should know that Crumb politely claimed that the cake was "really good", and that other family members ate it up (some requesting seconds).  Sadly, I live too far away from Cracker and her family to have the opportunity to taste the Frankencake.  I can't tell you how sad I am.  Almost sad enough to buy the ingredients to make it flop in my oven...  but not quite.

Remember when I first started blogging, I said I'd love to be on Pinterest?  Well, not so much anymore.  I can tell you one thing. I will not be making any cakes that call for 1 1/2 cups of oil or jello.  Unless I've gone mad.  That could happen.

Tastes like Chicken! (crispy baked fish)

Fish isn't something we have at our house.  I love it, but it seems nobody else does.  Last week something changed.  Muffin went to a friend's house for dinner and she ate fish!  She came home and said:  Fish is good! It tastes like chicken!  She wasn't impressed when I told her that she used to eat fish sticks as a child, because I said it was chicken....  
While grocery shopping today, I wasn't going to let this pass. I picked up a big pack of wild haddock from Costco, while Sweetie says:  Muffin ate fish once, so you're making it for her again? YES.  That's the plan.  And I'm going to make it taste like chicken.

Crispy baked fish

3 haddock fillets
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/4 cup lemon juice
pepper
salt
cornflake crumbs
dried herbs (consider taragon, parsley, thyme)

Preheat the oven to 425F

Whisk mayo and lemon juice together, add pepper.  (I love fresh cracked pepper, so I used lots)
Cut the fillets into portion size pieces.  season lightly with salt.
Mix cornflake crumbs and herbs on a plate
Dip fish into mayo mixture, then into crumbs to coat.  Place on foil lined baking sheet, or on baking stone.  Bake at 425 15-20 minutes depending on how thick the fillets are.  They should easily flake with a fork.  

Enjoy!

Pancakes for breakfast!

I really like pancakes.  But pancakes aren't easy anymore.  I remember the days when I could grab a bowl, a scoop of pancake mix, water and then the frypan and I was eating in no time.  And pancakes were foolproof.  That's what mixes are all about, right?  Well, after many days of complaining after breakfast, Cookie pointed out to me that the bag had something else written on it:  BUTTERMILK pancakes.  And in one of her classic "face that says it all" looks, she said; "so do ya think there's dairy in this mom???"  ACK!  why had I never read the bag before??  Its not like the bag from Costco was a small bag....
So today, I was craving pancakes for breakfast.  Actually, I've been craving maple syrup, of which we now have a large supply again.  Pancakes were my chosen vessel upon which to eat maple syrup, only because we have no bread for French Toast.  Looking at my breakfast board on Pinterest, I found this recipe, and thought I'd try it out.  I didn't print it off though, because the printer is out of paper, and loading paper would require a trip to the paper storage shelf in the basement, clearing clutter on the desk to get to the printer, loading the paper and then ensuring that I'm only printing the recipe, not the entire blog.  Too much effort.  Especially when my kitchen is just outside my office and I can come back and look at the screen, right?
Well, surprisingly, after a few mistakes in reading the recipe, my pancakes were deliciously fluffy and light!  Muffin thought so too.  

So here's my version:

In a mixing bowl add:
2 cups flour
3 TBSP sugar
3 TBSP baking powder
1 tsp salt

In a large measuring cup add:
1 1/2 cups milk ( I used So Delicious Coconut Milk Beverage)
3 eggs
1 TBSP vanilla

Whisk this all together, then add to the flour mixture.  Mix with a spoon until smooth.

Heat oil in stainless steel skillet until piping hot.  Gently drop pancake batter into pan making 3 inch pancakes. Reduce flame to medium under the skillet so the pancakes don't burn or brown too fast.  When the edges are golden and the top of your pancake is full of bubbles, gently flip them over. [The batter in the bowl will become fluffy and full of air.  Don't stir it to get rid of this air.  Leave it, and gently put it into the pan so that this leavening is somewhat conserved.  It will help make your pancakes super light and fluffy!] 

Serve with maple syrup and enjoy!

OOPS!!  I didn't take any pictures!!  I'll have to make some more this week and edit the blog!