Not a Recipe for Disaster

Mom wasn’t a “whiz” in the kitchen. She tried hard but her failures outnumbered her successes on a regular basis. In that regard, she was a victim of circumstances. She had a brood of five to feed on a daily basis, a husband whose standards were beyond the pale and no social media to offer a plethora of recipes and ideas to make meals delicious and exciting. Each day of the week had its set menu. Saturday was Hockey Night in Canada and steaks, Sunday was a full roast beef dinner and Monday was left over beef and gravy miraculously morphing into roast beef hash. You get the picture.

If recipe disasters are a genetic trait, then I am for sure my Mother’s daughter and social media has not by any measure helped improve my cooking skills.

My personal nemeses are recipe sites. I have wasted countless hours searching them, in an effort to be “cuisine creative.” Pinterest and Instagram lure me to waste time simultaneously perusing and salivating while reassuring me that I too can produce such incredible results. When I buy into these temptations, I am usually entering a chasm of impending doom and disappointment. Like Mom, my success to failure ratio is horribly skewed in favor of failure.

I don’t blame these unfortunate results on my ineptitude. Rather, I see myself as a victim due to the “tricks” employed by many sites, including:

• visual tactics including filters, angled views and designer kitchen backdrops , so that everything looks delightful
• titles like “World’s Best/ Best Ever/ So Easy Anyone Can Make It/ Your Family Will Love This, and until recently, I fell for it every time.

There is one bright spot however. I am supremely confident in the traditional Christmas confections that I create every December. According to my family, they are a “holiday highlight” and would be sorely missed if they weren’t on the menu. And if the number of people who ask for these recipes is any indication, they are surefire WINNERS! They can likely be found on social media but in my world, they are old fashioned family recipes, written on scraps of paper or torn from magazines over the years. They are covered with blotches of spilled vanilla, smudges of butter and smears of chocolate)

So it is with extreme humility and supreme confidence, I offer the following recipes. You will not be disappointed.

Shauna’s World Famous Butter Tarts

( I acknowledge the irony but they are incredibly delicious!)

These are very rich ( lots of sugar) hence I only make them at Christmas. They are just too tempting to have available all year round.

Some helpful hints:

• Under fill the tart shells. The filling expands and if it overflows you will have difficulty getting the tarts out of the pan.
• Roll the pastry quite thin so that they cook fully
• As soon as they are out of the oven run a knife around the rim of the shells to guard against any of the filling sticking to the pan
• Leave the tarts in the pan until somewhat cooled before you take them out
• This recipe should work using the equivalent of pastry for a 9″ or 10″ inch pie. It always seems to be a bit of a guessing game though. Be prepared for either some leftover filling or leftover pastry or both.
• Beat the eggs in a medium saucepan and then add the other ingredients.
• Stir continuously once you begin to heat the filling. It will be tedious as it may take a while for the mixture to get to a boil but if you don’t stir, you run the risk of the whole thing burning. Trust me on this one.
• I don’t like walnuts so I don’t include them

Oh Henry Balls

These too are decadent. You will probably want to make them the size of a chocolate. More than one or two bites is just too much.

Some helpful hints:

• Its important to keep the chocolate melted, so that the balls only get lightly coated. Once the chocolate starts to cool, it can make that difficult. Probably not many of us have a double boiler any more. I improvise by using a small dish over a saucepan of simmering/slightly boiling water.

• Use two spoons to dip and roll the balls in the chocolate, then lightly tap the excess chocolate off as much as possible.
• Good luck if you prefer to use the microwave. It is really difficult to keep the chocolate “runny” and you run the risk of burning the chocolate.
• Put the balls on the cookie sheet in the fridge while you melt the chocolate, then work relatively quickly to coat them.

And there you have it….a window into the world of an “unfailingly optimistic social media victim” who does have the occasional success. I wish you luck. If these recipes don’t work out for you I’ll feel bad but you have to remember that failure is a part of life. I should know…… I speak from experience.

I have no doubt that Betty Would Agree

We plan to publish a new post every Monday, so stay tuned for our next one entitled “Where is Clark Griswold When You Need Him?”