Today is a beautiful day – the sun is shining, I can see the trees swaying gently outside my window. Ideally, I should be outside for a run, but instead I decided to stay in and bake.
Bad idea.
Hot day = horrible day for pastry.
I had the best intentions, heck, I even charted out what I wanted to accomplish!
I managed to ‘make’ the “Sparkly Special K Squares”:
Cute, right? Check out those new mini rainbow chocolate chips I bought! Unfortunately either Special K is not made for this dessert or homemade marshmallows don’t quite cut it because it was a mushy mess. *sigh* Too bad.
I managed to salvage this for a coworker who has never had homemade mallows:
Just a little bit off plain mallow spooned into a silicone muffin cup topped with some cheerful sprinkles.
Next up – “Lemon Meringue Bites”:
Lucky for me, I had made the curd last night (as evidenced by the check mark in the first photo) – however, I decided to try out a new pastry base. Today. At noon.
Too much water added in the egg + too warm of a kitchen = puffy, gummy, tough tart shells.
Next up – “Cherry/jam cream bites” with a graham cracker crust.
With the crust fail, I switched priorities to this crust to hold my lemon curd instead. It all rested on this crust. It came together well and they were patted into a mini-muffin tin. I put them in the oven and…they started to bubble and puff. WHAT???!!! I took them out and immediately started to pat them down. I put them in for another 5 min and took them out. They were a bit wet on the bottom so I thought, “hmmm, maybe I should take them OUT of the tin and bake them.” Bad idea. About 10 of them disintegrated in the heat. I would up sliding them BACK into the tins to cool.
They don’t look too horrible, right? They actually taste pretty good too!
I’m going to attempt assembling tonight @ T&J’s….wish me luck!
If it all fails horribly, I have a fresh batch of chocolate hazelnut ice cream – topped with thawed cherries and juice, yum!
BA in Vancouver 
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