the cooking challenge (week 6): happily ever...no

Here’s a little story that typifies what happens when I try to bake.

Once upon a time, there was a recipe for chocolate-swirled brioche rolls, and this recipe called for a room-temperature egg and room-temperature butter. Why room temperature? No one knows why. But, fine, I’ll go along. Like most normal people, I keep my eggs and butter in the refrigerator; unlike most normal people, I don’t own a microwave. So to expedite their transition to room temperature, I did what most normal people would and set my butter and egg in a patch of sunlight on the rug in my bedroom. My dog, who thought all patches of sunlight on the floor were his personal, if itinerant and ephemeral, property, was pissed.

So was I, when I walked through the bedroom a little while later and accidentally kicked the egg across the room.

But no matter. Eggs basically grow on trees. Or in refrigerators, anyway. A new one came up to room temperature on the countertop while I warmed half a cup of milk to between 110 and 116 degrees. Why between 110 and 116 degrees? Because baked-goods recipe writers are sadistic power-trip types who take great pleasure in making bakers submit to their will. But like I said, I’ll go along. I sprinkled a packet of yeast on the exactly 114 degree milk, but the yeast didn’t foam like it was supposed to. So I did it all over again, this time while cursing the egg on the counter, which was definitely smirking: warmed the milk, measured the temperature, sprinkled the yeast. This time there was a very subtle foam, so I made the dough and left it to rise. But it didn’t. Why? To fuck with my head. That’s why.

Incredibly rude dough not rising.

I want pretty much more than anything in the world to be able to make chocolate brioche rolls. Actually, what I really want is to be able to eat chocolate brioche rolls at will, and you know what the lord, says: Teach a woman to buy chocolate brioche rolls, and she'll eat one whenever she’s near a bakery that makes them, which is not actually that often. Teach a woman to bake chocolate brioche rolls, and she’ll eat one whenever she wants, or maybe a couple of hours after she wants, because she’ll bake and freeze a batch and then when she wants a roll she’ll thaw in out in a of patch of sunlight on her bedroom floor. Anyway, fuck brioche.

I gave up and made scones. I’m not a huge fan of scones, but I was going to a brunch with some ladies and needed to bring something, and fuck brioche, and ladies like scones. But not these scones.

The ladies didn’t even get to try these scones. These scones were so bad I “accidentally” left them in the car when I went to the brunch. Actually, calling them “so bad” is giving them too much credit. What they were was bland. So bland they don’t even deserve “so” as a modifier. They were the perfect texture (moist yet crumbly) but

that blank space is the taste of my scones.

The end.