The 3rd Post

I think I am a pretty decent cook, possibly a better baker.  Don’t ask my husband because he's obligated to fully enjoy everything I cook for him and he hates sweets so he never tries my baking (unless it's carrot cake).  I am pretty sure his picture of me in the kitchen looks something like the Tasmanian Devil wielding a hand held mixer and a spatula in a cloud of flour and sugar.

This week I thought I would make caramel corn.  Simple right? Wrong! The first attempt went well and tasted pretty good (probably because I followed the recipe exactly).  Two days later I thought (at 10:30 pm) “hey, I should make some more…but this time I should triple the recipe” which was not so smart.   I eyeballed the volume of butter, added extra sugar (the bag was almost empty…what’s another ¼ c?) and blobbed in what I thought was sufficient corn syrup.  Being lazy, I popped the popcorn in a cheap air popper, problem is I thought this thing could handle a high capacity of kernels; apparently not!  The thing overheated and died half way through popping.  So….I whipped out a pot and tried to pop fresh kernels on the stove; bad idea because I burned them all.  As the smoke was clearing the air popper decided to come back from the dead and finish popping the corn (all the while my syrup is over boiling on the stove). Great! I added the vanilla and baking soda (eyeballing volumes again) and coated the popcorn.  I was suppose to bake it which was fine except that I had a 12" mountain of caramel corn piled up on my cookie sheet.  It almost touched the ceiling of my oven.  When it cooled I was able to break some of it apart, next time I will break it up in a bag because my kitchen was covered in tiny shards and sticky globs of caramel.  The end product was tasty, I took it to work for my coffee break where I discovered that the caramel was like super glue when chewed.  Good thing I don’t have fillings because I would have lost a few.  It felt like I had temporary lockjaw.

At least this escapade was better than the time I grated a portion of my hand into the shredded carrots for a carrot cake.

I live to bake another day.