fail muffins

Once in a while, I screw up a baking/cooking adventure. I know, it doesn't sound possible, right? Ha!

Yesterday, I was the Master of Multitasking in the Kitchen. I prepared ingredients for crock pot tomato soup, potato and veggie and Polish sausage for last night's dinner, and I made a double batch of zucchini bread. No big deal. Right.

Side note: there are no pictures of this exploit. Imagination is more fun, right?

So, as I chopped up the zucchini and doubled all the ingredients for the recipe, which happens to be hubby's favorite summer treat, I somehow managed to completely skip the sugar. I didn't realize this until after I'd baked 18 muffins and a loaf of bread. I cracked open a perfectly golden muffin, only to find out that it tasted...savory? Cardboard-y? Not even like stuffing or a crouton... just plain old bad. I blame it on pregnancy making me forget the essentials in life: Butter and Sugar.

I cried. Like, all-out wailing for about 30 seconds. The rational half of my brain did eventually take over so that I could put on my sunglasses and drive to pick up hubby, but seriously. This was devastating to me at that moment. How do you even forget the sugar in a baked good? Baked=sweet in my house! What was I thinking?

So I dumped about a cup of sugar into the remaining batter (probably too much sugar), and baked the remaining dozen muffins. I called my mom, who recommended that I try to incorporate the mistake muffins into something savory, perhaps as a stuffing or an addition to meatloaf. I texted my good friend, Sarah, who suggested poking holes in the bread and drizzling simple syrup in to make it all better, and slathering honey on the mistake muffins.

After I had recovered enough to face my kitchen full of dishes and fail muffins, this is what I did: I stabbed the loaf of bread all over with a knife (that was fun), and spread some spreadable honey all over it like icing. It melted down into the bread pretty quickly, so I added more and set it aside. Thanks, Sarah, for the good idea.

On to the muffins. I crumbled them all into a bowl, pulled out the Betty Crocker cookbook, and looked up a recipe for bread pudding. I added the requisite eggs, sugar and milk, putting in half a stick of butter to make up for the fact that I don't have any heavy cream to add. I soaked the bread, poured it in a 13x9" pan, and baked it. It now appears to be an acceptable dessert. And I've gone through a dozen eggs at this point.

The loaf of bread is now pretty tasty, though the texture is a bit strange. The sugar-added muffins turned out a bit crunchy because of how much sugar I added - laughable, but delicious, anyway. At least there are a few muffins that hubby can love!

All this to say, mistakes happen. They make me cry. Hubby holds me and lets me get his t-shirt all wet with tears, and tells me he loves me even though I'm not perfect, nay, because I'm not perfect. He's pretty wonderful. And then I'm forced to imagine new possibilities, to try new things, to make cavalier efforts, and to accept failure with sweet, sugary success.

Maybe I'll buy another zucchini. Maybe I'll wait until next year.