I guess I will start off by saying hello again. I haven’t written much lately and I think that my last post took a lot out of me. I’d say 2020 has been quite the year, but that’s more than a bit of an understatement, isn’t it? I’m back, and trying to figure out how I really want this blog to work for me. I started writing because friends and family who read my FB have told me I should write more. I don’t know that I have the gift or patience for an actual book, but I do enjoy telling stories, so a blog seemed to be the right way to go about it. At first, there were big plans, and I wanted to do themes loaded with info and photos. As I’ve gone along, that seems to be too much work and actually keeps me from writing because who can come up with that many big ideas? It seems more natural to go with my FB style and just do smaller posts about whatever is rattling around my brain. Sometimes I’m funny, oftentimes serious, occasionally a little sad. I write about my interests, my family, and talk way too much about food. That said, I guess I will get to my story.

One of the things you need to know about me is that, like a lot of folks, I can sometimes get a little full of myself, or as they say around here- “too big for my britches”. I like to cook. In fact, food is what I think about at least half of the time I am conscious. Most of the time, I’m decent at it. Occasionally I pull off something impressive. My family praises my efforts and since I know a lot of people who do “maintenance cooking’ rather than inventive cooking and who seemed surprised at some of my recipes, I sometimes get a little bit of an inflated ego over my own skills. I forget myself and get a little snobby. I know, I’m sorry. I was taught better, I swear.

Fortunately for my own salvation, two things serve to keep me humble and put me in my place when I start believing in the hype in my head and thinking I should have my own cooking show. (Honestly, the last part is a joke, because I’m messy and I cuss waaaay too much for TV). First, I have a friend, we will call her “A”, who takes joy in keeping me in my place. I assume God put her in my life just for that reason, She is the friend who will take pictures when you fall down and save them forever, but is usually too kind to post them in social media. She also is the kind of friend who will remind you, like 8 years later, of that one time you made cupcakes and a stray bit of egg didn’t get mixed into the batter good and ended up as a rather unappetizing lump of scrambled yuck in a bite. True story, one cupcake out of hundreds… But she’s right, and she makes me laugh and keeps me from getting the big head. (Also, I get to feel a tiny bit superior, because she cusses more than I do, and is prone to saying things in public that make me feel like I’m a proper southern lady. Spoiler, I’m not.)

The second thing that saves my soul is that periodically, right about when I start really feeling my own self and start to show out, I fail. Spectacularly. Sadly, this usually happens in one of those moments when I was trying to perform and put on for people, and it happens most on special occasions. I’ve dropped cakes, left out ingredients, had things collapse, etc… The point is, I really should know better by now. I don’t. It happens again and again. So, here is what happened this week.

We are doing virtual school currently. We all know why, and frankly I don’t want to mention it anymore. My youngest child’s science teacher sent an assignment for them to stack things to make a holiday tree shape. Normally, this being the week before school lets out for Christmas, the teachers are mostly just trying to manage the animals, and let them do this in class with toothpicks and gumdrops. It’s actually a good scientific engineering project, and then they can eat the candy. Win, win. This year, they were supposed to use things around the house and do the challenge at home. So, normal people get gumdrops or marshmallows or whatever, and let their kids do the thing, right? Are you getting a sense of premonition here? Do you think I did the normal thing? No, no I did not.

I thought and thought about how we could do something spectacular. One, to have fun, and lets be real here, two-because I’m a show out. After some thought, I decided it was a good idea to bake something. Aww, cookies or brownies, you say? Nooooo, pastry. French pastry. The notoriously difficult and temperamental croquembouche, to be exact. Now, I’m actually not bad at pastry. I’ve pulled off eclairs and tarts with no issue. I have done pastry cream before, and various kinds of caramel. Sooo, no problem, right? Oh, wrong. Problem. Many problems. A veritable host of ‘em. Murphy’s law ruled over that day like a Roman emperor.

I started off by forgetting something, and my daughters may kill me for this. Our cycles have coordinated. It was hormone city up in here. Now, I, even on my best days, am what you would politely call “high strung”. I run on pure emotion and react in a split second. (Lets say its often an overreaction, at that) My youngest is just like me while the oldest is a bit more mellow but still sensitive. The three of us were a veritable powder keg. Now, I don’t know about you, but my cycle also makes me clumsy and forgetful. My mother said the same thing. My hands don’t work exactly right and I haven’t the slightest idea why. So, we have hormones and lack of coordination. Let’s add the fact that my kitchen is tiny and there were three people trying to work together. See where we are headed?

Ok, in my vast collection of cookbooks, I couldn’t find a recipe for croquembouche. I searched a few of my phone and read through them. I knew the timing. We gathered ingredients and got ready. Then I decided to use a different recipe than the original one I’d chosen. Why? Because it came from an “upscale” magazine and not some random person’s blog. I deserved everything that was going to happen. We started the pastry and then halfway through I remembered you’re supposed too do the cream first so it can chill. Ok, move those pots, get more bowls, get more pots, rearrange, and start the cream. That went off pretty well, albeit with perhaps a bit of sniping back and forth amongst the hormone queens. It went into the fridge to wait. Back to the pastry.

The pastry cooked up fine. We let it cool five minutes as instructed and then placed it in the bag to pipe. Just before I snipped the end of the bag, while wondering how this overly warm runny mess was going to set up right, Sophia says, “Hey, what about all these eggs in the mixer? Were they supposed to go in there?” Yep. Eight shiny little carefully separated egg yolks waiting to be blended into the cooled batter. Oops.. We dumped the dough out, mixed the eggs in. (Very carefully “A”, very carefully). I scooped it back into the bag and got ready to pipe. Oldest daughter had, during this, struggled to line baking sheets with parchment paper, which sensing her emotional vulnerability, decided to get all sideways in its little case and refuse to rip straight. She may have cussed, but she’s 18 so I pretended not to hear it.

I start trying to pipe the little mounds to make the profiteroles. Apparently, more chilling time was needed because this wasn’t going well. Our ancient incontinent Pomeranian is capable of tidier piles than what I was making. I just kept going, pirate mouth and all, determined that whatever happened would happen. I’m yelling, the older daughter is trying to commiserate, and the youngest is bumping around trying to help, but mostly saying and touching things at the wrong time. Totally not her fault, however. She’s nowhere near as experienced in the kitchen and sometimes tries to guess what you need next and gets in the way. I was past the point of clear communication. We got them piped and the daughters argued and managed to egg wash them. While they were doing that, I sat on the sofa and guzzled tea and questioned my sanity. The good news is that despite inauspicious beginnings, the little pastries turned out and puffed up nicely in the oven.

Once the little puffs were cooled to room temp, it was time to fill them with the pastry cream. Everybody wanted to be the one to fill them, so there was a bit of “discussion”, but we got it under control before it got physical. This was the point where we realized that the underside was a tiny bit harder than was possible to cleanly insert the frosting tip in, so there I was poking holes in the bottom with the end of a clean paintbrush. Hey, whatever works. Finally, they were all filled and ready to go. I was feeling a little more confident this point. Heck, we’d gotten the hardest parts done, right? No one had died and there hadn’t even been any realistic threats of bodily harm. That’s when ish when downhill. It when downhill faster than a greased sled on ice. It. Was. Epic.

Ok, I’d read that amateurs sometimes used a little cone to assemble the filled puffs into a tree shape. At this point, normal folks would have used their brains and a little humility. Me? Nooo. I was a dumpster fire out of control. Boldly i set out a little cardboard cake circle and started the batch of caramel that is used to stick them gather like mortar. Oh, dear. It was simple mixture of water and sugar, cooked to a certain stage where the profiteroles could be dipped and laid like a tasty brick tower. Easy peasy, right? Nope. I put the mixture in the pot, put the lid on and waited as instructed for it to turn “ a lovey light shade of amber”. I stood there like a hawk. Nothing but slow bubbles and certainly no color change. With a few minutes to go, I slipped around the corner to sip my tea for a second. Like a flipping unholy magic trick, 30 seconds of hydration cost me the whole kit and caboodle. I skipped back into the kitchen to find a burnt umber mess in the pan. I smelled and tasted it with the optimistic and tearful hope that color be darned, it was salvageable. Indeed, it was not, it was a smoky nasty hard candy briquette.

The air ablaze with colorful language, I tossed that pan in the sink to soak, and started another batch. This one didn’t even get halfway through before seizing and turning into impenetrable sugar rocks. I threw in more water to no avail. It wouldn’t remelt and became something I could have repaired foundation with. I was in tears, the girls were stunned, things were being thrown, and my son was smartly hiding in his room, because he wanted no part of any of this drama. Sigh. A third pan, and a third batch. This too, started to seize. I was boo-hooing, adding water and crushing sugar crystals until finally some semblance of sugar caramel sauce became apparent. Look, it wasn’t a lovely shade of amber, and it had some heinous lumps in it, but I was at the end of my rope here. We grabbed the puffs and got ready to dip and stack. Thank the good Lord I had had the foresight to put on a double layer of latex gloves before the dipping process. Liquid sugar is basically caustic lava. Trying to hold the delicate puffs to keep from squeezing out the cream, dipping them in the molten sugar, and trying to make them stack in reducing circles was akin to building a pyramid from flaming balls of jiggly sweet death. We all tried, we cheated and placed reinforcements in the middle. We teamed up with racing and dripping more syrup. Naughty words, yelling, tears, fervent prayers, and the complete destruction of our Christmas cheer (and almost our souls), and we ended up with no fingerprints, a couple blisters, and the pastry tower equivalent of the Charlie Brown Christmas tree. Tired, broken spirited, and sick of the smell of burnt sugar, we threw edible glitter and sprinkles on it, along with a couple Instagram filters, sent a pic to the teacher and called it done.

Theoretically, a lesson has been learned here, and I will not attempt stupidly intricate stuff when simple ideas will do. Perhaps I will buy prefab gingerbread kits and slice and bake cookies. Yeah, I wouldn’t bet on it. I think there’s years of jackassery left in us yet. Stay tuned.