Its official!!!

Its official my dear friends, romans and kandry fellas that I am a certified baking disaster…:-( Now disaster is a very mild word… more like a catastrophe …if there is some other word, which can encompass the enormity, plzzz let me know. Will put in that word…) *sigh*

The whole problem started the day I got hooked onto food blogs. All these online food goddesses & food gods were posting drool worthy pics and were giving me the impression that baking was a dream. I do partially agree to their statement except that baking is turning into a nightmare for me :-(

Now to list my case:

i) First effort was a simple microwave chocolate cake, which came out well… surprisingly… Now it looked like a cake, also if you were blindfolded and asked to bite it, you would have bravely guessed “Cake???” Now your guess could have been at the risk of your life, so you had no choice but to guess “Cake???” (mmm, we get the picture, don’t we???)

ii) Fortified by the first result I went about making an eggless cake for one of my veggie friends on her birthday. The end result was a rubbery concoction, which could only be eaten with the same pleasure as that of eating chavaprasham or drinking kashayam. Now my friend is an expert in PR and to give the gal credit she bravely took one bite of my creation and had even the grace to go “mmmm” when her mouth was seriously begging to form an “ewwww”. Surprisingly she is still friends with me after that fiasco though very clearly there has been no more requests for cake…

iii) Then the “volcano” cake… this one was designed by soul sistah and yours truly. Before people get wind of this superlative dessert (?) we should run and patent it. The end result was an erupting lava spewing cake (?!?).

iv) Now seeing my success rates with the cakes, I decided to bring my goals a li’l lower and set my sights on making “puffs” or the “nadan pups” (not to be confused with kutty doggies). As per the instructions all I had to do was cut pastry sheets, insert filling, gently cover it and place in the oven for abt 12 min at a certain temperature. The end result should have been golden brown puffs waiting to be bitten but what I got was a broken plate and soggy pastry sheets. With utmost haste and horror, the resulting mess graced the garbage bin within nanoseconds and a suitable dish was made to appease hubz to get him into the mood to listen to my disaster…

The ever insightful and long suffering hubz has discovered that it is infact cost effective and remarkably tension free & not to mention hassle free if we simply bought these little devils from our local baker. I can imagine his viewpoint. He feels like having the sinful (but so bad for waistline) Choco-Dutch Truffle.

Scenario I: Have a smile on his lips, walk barely 5 feet and greet our sweet assistant at the bakery or bakkerij as they say here. Order two truffles and walk home and bite into them. (Hah! Life is simple)

Secnario II: Now, if I were to make the little devils at home.

Eljo: Hubz, I am making Choco-Dutch truffles today…
Hubz : *in shock, thinks of ways to dampen my enthusiasm* I don’t like those darn things.

Eljo: *rubbing her hands in glee* Whoever asked you in the first place???
Hubz: *realizing tactic is not working tries another strategy* You realise what you are getting into???? I will not clean up the resulting mess.
Eljo: *conveniently goes into selective hearing mode*

After about three quarters of an hour
Eljo: *panicking* err… HUBZZZZZZZZZZ… I think we have a SMALL problem…
Hubz: Not responding *read selective hearing mode ON*

Eljo: Plzzzz… I promise not to try baking again.
Hubz: *selective hearing mode OFF & wondering for the nth time when Eljo will concede defeat * rushes to help Poor Eljo(whose plates are broken but not yet her spirit)
Hubz:Is this the right time to say, “I told you so”???
ELJO: @&*&$*@#&$
Hubz: Yeah, I thought not…

At present, I have a restraining order against my oven. Nowadays when Hubz catches me looking longingly at the oven, he tries distracting my attention. It looks eerily similar to handing lollipops to kutty babies so that they forget about the crystals and delicate jars they were planning to inspect.

Lately I get the feeling akin to Godzilla when I enter my kitchen. I swear I can feel all my glass plates shivering and running to the end of the rack so that its not their turn to lay down their life in my quest for that sinful dark yummilicious chocolate cake.

So, my dear sympathizers do put in a good word on my behalf to dear hubz so that he lets me near the oven again…

To my defence, my point of contention is whats life without a little adventure … and some broken plates…and a royal mess to clean up… and *sniff* whats that burning smell??? Oops dearies, time to go… Ta da….