With all the recipe experimenting and inventing that goes on at our house (especially recently as we’ve been working on our new Healthy Snacks eBook), you can be certain that we have some fails and flops from time to time. Sometimes a recipe idea turns out tasty but ugly, sometimes a recipe is not tasty in the least, and sometimes it’s both not tasty and it’s ugly. Bless its pitiful little heart.
A few weeks ago I was excited to try out a recipe for Cinnamon Quick Bread. Sounds good, right? My men thought so. It looked like a recipe I could adapt easily to make with healthier, real food ingredients. But I ended up cutting the sugar down too low, and I didn’t adapt the baking soda amount, and I’m not sure what else I should have done differently – but not even Matt (who eats anything) could make himself choke it down. It tasted like bread full of baking soda. Can you say bitter? Bleh. (It was almost like the time I was at someone else’s house and I used salt instead of sugar while making cookies. Wow, wow, wow.)
Now silly me. I know better than to double a recipe experiment. But indeed, I thought for sure this Cinnamon Quick Bread experiment would turn out fine. So double it I did. Brilliant. Not only did I come away with one bitter loaf of quick bread – I came away with four. {shudder}
Like I normally do with “leftovers,” I put the bread into the freezer. I’m not sure why I did this, because dare I remind you of the nastiness? It’s just hard to throw away food and hard work. Maybe I thought the freezer would settle down the bitterness and bring out the sweetness – as if my freezer has a magic wand. Hey, I figure if lasagna and spaghetti can taste better the next day, surely bitter bread can find a way to taste good. I realize none of this makes sense.
Several weeks after baking and freezing the pitiful bread, I cleaned out my freezers. Wouldn’t you know it? Shoved in the back I found a bag with two of these delightfully gross loaves of bread. It had been in there too long, so not only was it likely to still be bitter, it was also freezer burned and crumbly. I’m telling you, I really nailed this one.
I walked to the trash can. “Just do it,” I said to myself. I could bury it under the other trash. No one would ever know.
Ugh, I just couldn’t do it. I decided that my family had by now forgotten how terrible the bread had tasted, so they wouldn’t be afraid to try it in a “re-purposed” breakfast. Maybe? Hopefully?
Guess what? Nasty, bitter, crumbly quick bread – when soaked in egg and milk and cooked in butter on a griddle – makes a wonderful (yet more than slightly messy) French Toast breakfast. Without blinking, my family ate both loaves of this interesting looking French Toast. Butter and real maple syrup make anything better, right? Well, at least in this case it worked.
I’m sure your life is enriched by hearing that inspiring story. I have no recipe to share this time (for obvious reasons, you’re welcome). I can’t even give advice based on my bad experience. But if at all possible, I do encourage you to try to make use of a recipe flop. There really is likely a good way to use up the food so you don’t have to throw it away.
But one more thing: Never stir 2 cups of salt into your cookie dough. Paula Deen herself wouldn’t be able to figure out a way to repurpose that one.
Have a “recipe gone wrong” story to share with us? Do tell. :)
Here are all the recipes that DID make the cut! Get our 227 Healthy Snacks eBook while the price is still cut in half!
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