Jackie O’ generally distrusted Martha Stewart because she didn’t believe hospitality should be product-driven.
I’m starting to think there’s something to that.
Martha, I love your Homekeeping Handbook. I’ll even link to it – see? Without you, I would never have known how to fold a fitted sheet, or remove stains from my hardwood floors.
But, girl, your lie about baking. Oh, you lie.
I’m a baker. Now, I can turn out a mean roast, and I can make most any side dish, and my homemade alfredo sauce can not be beaten. But mostly, I bake. I am a pro at baking.
And Jesus Christ, woman, not one of your recipes I have ever made has not resulted in emotional trauma.
Let’s forget that your “easy” chocolate gingerbread cake requires 16 ingredients that all have to be combined and added at different intervals.
Let’s forget that your Halloween cookies are much the same, only requiring apricot jam, molasses, and aspic cutters. Let’s forget that apricot jam tastes like butt on chocolate cookies. Let’s forget that the dough for these cookies will not set up with an ounce of humidity in the air.
Let’s set allllll that aside and talk about your Christmas Tree Cupcakes.
Here’s a photograph, so readers can keep up:
Now these don’t look that hard. Really. The premise is that you use inverted waffle ice cream cones, lined with parchment paper and held upright by an aluminum baking pan with holes cut in it. You fill these babies with cupcake batter, and bake them. Supposedly, after they’re baked, you slip them out, take off the parchment, and voila! Christmas tree cupcakes ready for icing.
You have overlooked, Martha, that ice cream cones are fragile things. Maybe you have a stash of designer, industrial strength ones – I wouldn’t put it past you. But for those of us who have to shop at Kroger, this means jack shit.
After preparing another 16 ingredient batch of batter, which was more like syrup than cupcake batter and required an extra-emergency cup of flour, I managed to finagle it into the cones. Nevermind that this required getting it all over me, my bathrobe, the stove, the counter, the floor, AND, let’s not forget, the dogs.
That’s fine. I’m cool with that. (The dogs are way cool with that.) Cooler than cool – ice cold, as the kids say.
My beef is with the actual baking.
10 minutes after sliding them in, I begin to smell burning chocolate – never a good sign. I pop open the oven and what do I see?
Apparently, cupcakes expand while baking. You didn’t know this? Me neither! I mean, what kind of dough expands while baking? Besides, um, all of it, I mean.
This meant that the bottom of all of my batter-filled ice cream cones exploded like pirate-ship cannons all over the bottom of my oven. So much so, that the bottom of the oven resembled a cake. A nicely cooking, 13 inch cake, on the bottom of my oven.
That was fun.
So you see, Martha, this relationship of self-abuse has got to end. It’s not you, it’s – oh, wait. It’s totally you, all you, you lying whore.
Cancel my subscription – I’m tired of your issues.
And now, I’m off to make cream cheese frosting. For the cake on the bottom of my oven.
