Baking and Not Baking

This week marked our start of our second session and the beginning of Pastry and Baking for some of us. After two days of baking biscuits, pies and tarts, I'd have to say, I must be one of the worst bakers. Being down a digit also makes the process a little slower as well. One doesn't realize that you do actually use all of your fingers to do every day things. As far as my finger goes, heading to the doctors tomorrow to find out if I will need surgery an/or physical therapy. Woot! So for the time being the digit is in a splint and we have ceased on the self appointed physical therapy.

Yesterdays biscuits were a bit overworked and huge. But they make pretty great sandwiches. Today...ha today we used some of our pie dough to make derishous apple pie! Or what we thought would be derishous apple pie. Mama MER and I have sat next to each other and started our own little group like in the last class. Today we broke up the ingredients to get and got ready to bake. After we got all of the ingredients we started putting everything together to make our pies. I put our topping together and MER got our filling together. Then after a while, I started to look at my filling mixture and noticed that it had started to bubble, in the bowl, just bubbling and looking really gross. But seeing as I was the last one to finish the day before, I decided to just keep going. Bubbling couldn't be bad. I thought we may have a weird ingredient in the mix or maybe not enough. We put our pies in the oven and continued doing our doughs for the following days.

We checked our pies and noticed that they looked different from everyone else's...they were over flowing with goo, like really overflowing. After talking to Chef we decided that it was due to too much liquid from our lemon juice and not enough cornstarch, all of which MER got for us. Now, as a side note, cornstarch is what thickens and makes the pie have that syrupy part to it. So, if you don't put the cornstarch in or have enough it'll be too liquidy. After about an hour we took the pies out and took a look. Not bad, just super gooy and crispy on the outside. MER tasted hers and said it had a funny taste. Well it was our first try and all. I decided to take it home anyway, maybe I could salvage it when I got home.

MER decided to walk with me and then she asked, "So, what container was the cornstarch in? The round one or the plastic container?" I almost smacked her. "The cornstarch was in the box, with the picture of the corn on the front," I told her. Well, that explains it all; the weird melting, bubbling, gooy mess and the weird taste, we must have put something not right in the mix. The world's worst bakers at your service. "So, what did you grab then," I asked. MER gave me a guilty look and said, "Baking soda." Are you freaking kidding me.

TIP FOR YOUR LIFE: READ THE LABELS. What if you wanted chicken but were allergic to apples and the chicken was served with carmelized apples and you ordered it anyway because you didn't read the whole thing. I should have double checked but seriously read your labels to know what you're working with....Needless to say, I would not give anything away that I myself would not eat, so the pies were promptly thrown away.