I’m guessing that many if not most of us have had a similar experience. Something seemingly goes totally wrong, but in the end, it turns out to be a blessing in disguise.
A popular book in our day school library, Mistakes That Worked by Charlotte Foltz Jones, records 40 such well-known Oops! moments that became legendary and incredibly successful new inventions. Chocolate chip cookies and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups are among the most flavorful of these accidental innovations.
I will be the first to humbly admit that my own personal experiences have not always resulted in the most stellar creations. As a teenager I enjoyed baking, but my cakes were not always as spectacular as I would have liked. I remember one particularly disappointing flop: a sponge roll cake smothered with whipped cream and enhanced in both taste and appearance with lots of sugared strawberries. However, despite my best efforts, the sheet cake baked somewhat unevenly in our antiquated oven, and the end result was less than magnificent. Part of it was slightly over-baked, the other half slightly underbaked. So, I nicknamed it “Rawberry Shortcake,” and offered our guests a choice of underbaked or over-baked. Somehow that unique creation never did take off, and admittedly it never did make it into the “Mistakes That Worked” book…
Likewise, the slightly burnt rice that my kids nicknamed “Brice” never became a big hit either. Ditto with the challah kugel to which I added too much cinnamon and too few apples, and served too cold. Sad to say, somehow that delicacy was never requested again.
However, in the years since those embarrassingly memorable kitchen mishaps, I fortunately have had some marked success with various mistakes that actually worked. The following is the tale of my most recent accidental invention.
My daughter recently made a kiddush for her fifth child and I offered to prepare some cake and desserts for the occasion. But, in line with my usual MO, I admittedly overdid it somewhat. I not only prepared several different cakes, but also several pans of each. In other words, I produced way too much stuff and not everything came out as perfect as I would have liked.
Add to that the fact that my daughter had very limited fridge and freezer space, and I had foolishly decided to prepare and send over everything in advance. Nor was I the only one preparing food for the simcha. Between what other relatives and friends donated for the occasion, and what my daughter herself prepared and purchased, there was enough to feed a small army.
Let’s just say that she had tray upon tray of baked goods sitting out at room temperature for a few days before the scheduled Shabbos kiddush. By the time everything was cut up and set out on the decorative mirrored platters, some of it was already visibly sagging from the heat.
And, as I discovered a tad late in the game, not that many people were included on the guestlist, which was limited to just close family and a handful of neighbors.
Needless to say, that meant a lot of leftover cake and pastries, which my daughter wisely stashed in the freezer as soon as Shabbos was over.
And soon after that, she and her husband embarked on a very strict calorie-counting diet. The good news is they both lost a lot of weight and look and feel great. On the flip side, they obviously had no interest whatsoever in eating all the leftover cake, bars, and cookies.
So, when my son and daughter-in-law made an upsherin for their son on his third birthday, the aforementioned daughter decided to free up some valuable freezer real estate and donate multiple pans of leftover cake for the simcha. A definite win/win.
Unfortunately, she had not let the rest of us know about this donation in advance. So, my youngest daughter-in-law and I prepared many more pans of cake to bring along for the occasion. And even the twenty of us who spent the upsherin and Shabbos together could not make much of a dent in all that inventory.
The son and daughter-in-law who hosted the upsherin and Shabbos get-together were also watching their weight, so they begged me to take home some of the pans of cake that had not been consumed over Shabbos. I reluctantly agreed to transfer a stack of pans once again, this time from their freezer to my own.
I discovered an easy and very versatile ice cream recipe in a Pesach cookbook several years ago, and have since tweaked it over and over again to create new flavors of ice cream for Pesach and all year round. That recipe is a personal favorite as well as one of my all-time most requested recipes. Aside from the usual vanilla, chocolate, coffee, strawberry, etc. I regularly produce more exotic flavors like Lotus, mint chocolate chip, cookies and cream, and the recently introduced chocolate fudge brownie, which is tantalizingly spiked with chocolate liqueur.
So, I used one half pan of brownies to make the company favorite chocolate fudge brownie ice cream, reserving the other half pan to serve alongside it. One pan down; lots more to go…
Next, I had to figure out what to do with all the leftover Reese’s Pieces that had gotten somewhat smushed in transit, as well as the leftover peanut chews that were likewise somewhat worse for wear.
And, Voila! That is when and how my latest entry for “Mistakes That Worked” was born.
Proudly introducing my latest – and possibly my best ever – ice cream flavor: peanut butter overload!
In case it is not obvious, this new flavor consists of peanut butter flavored ice cream overloaded with chunks of peanut chews and homemade Reese’s Pieces, AKA chocolate and peanut butter heaven! I’m getting hungry just writing about it.
So now you know how my severely beaten and battered leftover cake bars became the catalyst for one of the most delicious ice creams ever created. And I am anxiously waiting to see whether this undeniably delectable invention deservedly makes it into the next volume of “Mistakes That Worked.”na