I’ve mentioned some of my mistakes cooking failures in the past but I figured I would feature one. As much time as I spend in the kitchen and as many new recipes as I try I am bound to have some failures. And failures I do have! Pink lemonade cupcakes, four pink lemonade frosting recipes, stuffed cookies, yellow cake, and the list goes ON and on. I have had dozens of recipes that just plain suck. Sometimes, it’s my fault but other times… it’s not.
This time, it was my fault… I think. When I saw these salted caramel shortbread bites on Erica’s Sweet Tooth I HAD to try them. That was my first mistake.
I followed the shortbread recipe and that was easy enough. The caramel is when things went south. I’ve never made candy or caramel before. I’ve never used a candy thermometer either so perhaps I was getting ahead of myself by attempting this recipe but I decided to give them a shot.
I think I went wrong by not letting my caramel cook long enough. It cooked up for about 8 minutes and it did reach the 230 degrees BUT it never seemed to be at the “soft ball stage”. I went based solely on the temperature of my caramel instead of just eye balling it and trusting my gut that it wasn’t ready yet.
I poured the caramel and hours later it still wasn’t hardened enough to cut. I let them rest over night and attempted to cut them… it turned into a HUGE gooey mess. They were never bites… they were a soupy mess.
However, they tasted freaking amazing! I used a fork to grab chunks of it from the pan all day Saturday. I can normally stay away from my own creations because I know they aren’t really LapBand friendly but I just couldn’t resist these. No one else would touch them because they assumed that they tasted terrible. More for me 😀
I did eventually throw the entire pan of them in the garbage because I don’t like people seeing my mistakes. I like to throw them straight into the garbage and try again. But, I’m human. And I make mistakes. I will be following this post with a winning cake ball post so I don’t feel so bad about my epic failure.
I will definitely be making these again. I highly recommend them to others, as well. Just check out ericassweettooth.com to see the recipe and trust your gut. Next time, I’ll be skipping the thermometer!
Oh, I forgot to mention the weird caramel film that developed on top of my pan… yeah, I still don’t know how to fix that. But Round 2 should hopefully be much more of a success. 🙂
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