a failure and a success

It was my first time...to bake, that is.

Everyone who knows me knows that I don’t know how to cook, but less than a month ago, we were in the grocery and I suddenly wanted to try my hand in baking. On the safe side, we bought the White King Brownies Fudge & Crinkle Mix. The recipe seemed fairly simple to follow so I was hopeful that the end result wouldn’t be a total failure. When we got home that day, I lost the enthusiasm to cook, so we just put the box in our kitchen cabinet. It had been sitting there for almost three weeks, until I mustered enough courage to open it up and bake it last Saturday.

I pre-heated the oven, greased the pan, mixed all the ingredients together, put the mixture in the pan, and finally placed the concoction in the oven. Every once in a while, I would poke the mixture with a toothpick to check if it was ready. After 33 minutes, it looked done, so I switched the oven off and took out the pan to cool.

To my horror, it was half-cooked and half-burned...yikes! The temperature must have been too high, or I should have turned the pan so that the mix would be cooked evenly. When I sliced it into squares though, it looked ok. The burned part was just the top, but was still edible, slightly crunchy like a chocolate cookie. But the bottom part was not cooked well; parts of it were still a bit wet...double yikes! So half of it was (according to layer): burned, cooked, and half-cooked. Ayayayayay!

Ate Cel and hubby told me the brownies were good, but of course I thought they were just trying to soothe my ego. In all honesty, when I took a bite into that first piece, it tasted ok.

Then yesterday afternoon, Caila went to the kitchen looking for my brownies. I was surprised that she actually liked it. Unfortunately (or fortunately), there were no more left; so I told her that we’ll buy another box soon and I’ll make another batch over the weekend. To my surprise again, Ate Cel was also glad when she heard me saying this. Apparently, she found my brownies delicious too and admitted that she must have eaten half of the entire batch. Even when I told hubby about it, he also said that he liked my brownies. Yaaaaaaayyy!!! I was so glad!

Thanks to White King, the final product of my first baking attempt may have looked like a failure, but at least the taste was definitely a success! (but no matter how proud I am and much as it would be proof that I really did bake, I'm not posting a photo of the end result here because it's just too embarrassing!)