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A place for me to express myself and put random things that won't make sense to anyone, including me!
Friday, June 11, 2004
Lemon Bar Massacre
It wasn't my fault! I swear!
Ok, so after cooking dinner with no glitches at all, I decide to pull out that costco sized box of lemon bar mix. You know, 3 batches of "just add eggs and water" lemon bars. So, no problem, right? Well, just a little... First I discover the pan is 13x9 instead of 8x8... ok, so I'll just make 2 batches and they might be slightly thick, but *shrug* oh well. Then I pull out the eggs. The instructions call for 3 eggs per batch. We have 5 eggs. There goes the 2 batch idea. So I decide to just make 1 batch and see what happens. BAD IDEA!!! I press the crust into the too big pan, and since there isn't enough to cover the bottom of the whole pan, I just cover about 2/3rds of it thinly. No problems so far. I put the crust in the oven for the amount of time it says and pull it out and it looks perfect. (Well, ok, so I didn't do the most perfect job of pressing it in flat, so it's a little uneven, but that doesn't really matter. :P) Then I've already mixed the lemony stuff and it looks great... but it's kinda thin. Probably no thinner than it ought to be, but I start to realize that this stuff is going to flow wherever it darn well wants to once it's in that pan. There's going to be no hope of keeping it on the crust portion only. I cast about for ideas. No tin foil in the house to create a barrier. (Not sure it would have worked anyways, but it was a thought.) I consider just pouring the lemon stuff in and letting it flow all over the pan, but I'm not so sure that would be such a great idea. The only other thing I can think of is to try to prop one end of the pan up somehow in the oven so the lemon stuff will stay on the crust, even though it'd then be very uneven. So I get my dad to come in and assist with this plan. He pulls a cookie sheet out of a drawer and tries to fit it into just one half of the oven. But it's too big. So he takes one of the shelves from the oven and places it at a slant. Meanwhile I've poured the lemon stuff into the pan, attempting to keep it only on the crusted end. This proves harder than I expected to do. You try keeping at pan at a specific but yet unknown angle while pouring something into it as well. :P Anyways, we finally got it in the oven and I set the timer. I could tell it was not going to be a pretty sight when it came out, but there was nothing I could do about it at this point. Well, it's out of the oven now, and there's a nice carmelized sheen (dammit, I have to try to wash that!) over the uncrusted third of the pan. The middle third is kind of a lemon soaked crust that's severly browned/blackened at the edge. The last third is a very thick and still too jiggly lemon bar. I let it cool for a little while, hoping the jiggliness at least would calm down. (I know, I know, the box says bake it until it isn't jiggly anymore... I don't think they expected the above circumstances. I couldn't leave it in there any longer to let the other 2 thirds burn completely black.) Well, now it's sitting there looking sad. I cleared out the crust only third. It popped out fairly easily. I picked at the carmelized sheen and I think it may come out if I work hard enough at it. And the lemon bar is slightly less jiggly, but still needs to cool a bit. So maybe we'll get a halfway decent dessert. *shrug* My dad will eat it at least. He can't let anything go to waste. :P
Oh, btw... my dad's out buying eggs. I'm going to do it properly this time!
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Ok, so after cooking dinner with no glitches at all, I decide to pull out that costco sized box of lemon bar mix. You know, 3 batches of "just add eggs and water" lemon bars. So, no problem, right? Well, just a little... First I discover the pan is 13x9 instead of 8x8... ok, so I'll just make 2 batches and they might be slightly thick, but *shrug* oh well. Then I pull out the eggs. The instructions call for 3 eggs per batch. We have 5 eggs. There goes the 2 batch idea. So I decide to just make 1 batch and see what happens. BAD IDEA!!! I press the crust into the too big pan, and since there isn't enough to cover the bottom of the whole pan, I just cover about 2/3rds of it thinly. No problems so far. I put the crust in the oven for the amount of time it says and pull it out and it looks perfect. (Well, ok, so I didn't do the most perfect job of pressing it in flat, so it's a little uneven, but that doesn't really matter. :P) Then I've already mixed the lemony stuff and it looks great... but it's kinda thin. Probably no thinner than it ought to be, but I start to realize that this stuff is going to flow wherever it darn well wants to once it's in that pan. There's going to be no hope of keeping it on the crust portion only. I cast about for ideas. No tin foil in the house to create a barrier. (Not sure it would have worked anyways, but it was a thought.) I consider just pouring the lemon stuff in and letting it flow all over the pan, but I'm not so sure that would be such a great idea. The only other thing I can think of is to try to prop one end of the pan up somehow in the oven so the lemon stuff will stay on the crust, even though it'd then be very uneven. So I get my dad to come in and assist with this plan. He pulls a cookie sheet out of a drawer and tries to fit it into just one half of the oven. But it's too big. So he takes one of the shelves from the oven and places it at a slant. Meanwhile I've poured the lemon stuff into the pan, attempting to keep it only on the crusted end. This proves harder than I expected to do. You try keeping at pan at a specific but yet unknown angle while pouring something into it as well. :P Anyways, we finally got it in the oven and I set the timer. I could tell it was not going to be a pretty sight when it came out, but there was nothing I could do about it at this point. Well, it's out of the oven now, and there's a nice carmelized sheen (dammit, I have to try to wash that!) over the uncrusted third of the pan. The middle third is kind of a lemon soaked crust that's severly browned/blackened at the edge. The last third is a very thick and still too jiggly lemon bar. I let it cool for a little while, hoping the jiggliness at least would calm down. (I know, I know, the box says bake it until it isn't jiggly anymore... I don't think they expected the above circumstances. I couldn't leave it in there any longer to let the other 2 thirds burn completely black.) Well, now it's sitting there looking sad. I cleared out the crust only third. It popped out fairly easily. I picked at the carmelized sheen and I think it may come out if I work hard enough at it. And the lemon bar is slightly less jiggly, but still needs to cool a bit. So maybe we'll get a halfway decent dessert. *shrug* My dad will eat it at least. He can't let anything go to waste. :P
Oh, btw... my dad's out buying eggs. I'm going to do it properly this time!
