Weekend Baking Part Deux

I had a list of recipes to try out over the weekend, but decided to not be overly ambitious when I'm baking to give away. I needed to bake 2--1 for my family gathering on Sunday, and another for Intuition's family when I join them for the Mother's Day lunch celebrations. During times like that, you simply have to resort to tried and tested recipes.

I baked 2 orange cakes on Saturday mornings and things went well... I ran out of self raising flour and found a jar of flour at home, leftover from one of my brother's cooking projects. Just to be sure, I asked him,"Eh, confirm this is multi-purpose flour har? Not corn flour right?" He said "yah yah confirm chopped guarantee, it's multi purpose flour". Satisfied, I added half a cup of that flour for the cake.

After baking the cakes and going about my tasks for the rest of the day, I decided to end the day with an attempt at baking cookies. Cookies seem easy enough, going by all accounts of the online reviews for a recipe I had in mind. Pour everything in a bowl, mix, bake for 10min. Easy peasy, and I'd be done within 30min. Cool.

30 min later, I was still figuring out the measurements of the cookies.

45 min later, I managed to get 2 trays into the oven.

55 min later, I stared at the tray where the cookies have expanded and melded into one another, forming a nice bulbous cookie sheet. Sigh. Well nevermind, I'm sure they'll taste great, as the online reviews have promised. I took it out and let it cool for a while before breaking a bit off the cookie sheet. The texture looked dodgy, but maybe the taste test will prove it otherwise. *Munch munch*

The taste was great--intensely chocolatey and not too sweet. Delish. But the texture... it's both too dry and too soggy, if there's such a thing. The edges were almost powdery, the centre portions are soft and malleable... it doesn't hold a shape at all. *Downcast* Man oh man... I can't even get a simple drop cookie right. Everyone else said it's easy, but why does mine end up so disastrous? What a perfect waste of sugar and butter. So sad.

My brother came home and laughed at my baking failure (reminder to self: failure is an event, not a person. Repeat.) and took a bite... like a shining beacon of light, he said "the taste is not bad! not bad at all... just that the texture a bit wrong. I'll eat it for breakfast." and I said "Oh thank you thank you... please help me eat up my baking tragedy, I'm so grateful."

This morning, I whined to my brother "Sigh, there must be something wrong with the ingredients. I followed the recipe quite faithfully leh... You know, the flour looks strange to me. You sure it's multi purpose flour?" He thought about it, and declared "You know you're right! IT IS CORN FLOUR!"

...

My cakes had a bit of corn flour in them. One cake went to my family gathering--a family of food snobs, and another went to Intuition's family. The family took a look at my cake and commented that it's sunken, it's a bit more dense, etc... I don't know what to say, except to glare at my brother each time a negative comment came my way. He even had the cheek to say "It's the baker's fault!"

May I just reiterate the fact that my brother is a doofus.