When you cook, you tend to make a lot of mistakes. Most of cooking is a trial and error experience.
Let's say you have a recipe in your head and make it, but you change it and think it may work the same. Then It completely changes what you originally had planned. By making the additions you have changed the texture and flavour. Is that a fail? Sometimes it can be and other times it becomes a discovery of something new. You find a result of something that you never would have imagined.
That is the one of the most challenging parts of cooking. Trial and error and imagining what the final product will look like. I think it’s also the fun part. It’s like a puzzle or painting, trying to figure out where the pieces go, adding and subtracting from the total.
The picture above is a batch of muffins made this week. I cut the recipe in half, since I only have a 6 hole muffin pan. I also added more blueberries than the recipe asked for. The result is good looking, but the texture was all wrong and was too chewy and not cake like enough. They were still good and I still ate them, but they could have been better.
This batch of cookies on the left had too much butter and spread too much in the pan. I also could have probably used a bigger pan, but I don't currently own one! I just mashed them on the pan and expected them to spread, but not this much. The best part about adding too much butter is that the result is super tasty and crunchy cookies. Not the worst result!
I really enjoy discovering things that work out when you don’t plan on it. I love seeing the final result, looking to see how it turned out. I also love looking to see what I have messed up. Confirming that no, you cannot add more flour or another egg and it will turn out the same way.
When you create a recipe that is the work you are doing to get to the result. When I was creating cookie recipes for a bakery I used to work for, I would do a recipe 20 times before I got to the perfect result. You may start with a base that you think will work and then add and subtract from there. It takes many tries to understand the texture and the result that you are looking for.
Cooking and baking all about discoveries, wins and fails. Does it work or doesn’t it. Sometimes It’s fun to play with some recipes and see if you can get a different result. It could be starting by adding one small ingredient that won’t make such a big difference and then go from there.
All I gotta say is, when you change a recipe and it turns out better than the original, you better write it down. Chances are you won’t remember how to do it. I love when people add notes onto their recipes and addition notes. I personally have a lot of scratch makes of additions and changes that worked.
Happy trial and error!
Trial and error! All the best!
My cooking is all error! Hope things are sorting out for you and the air quality improving