Picture a Day - Day 292

Hello, dearies. Auntie Maim here with another great homewrecking tip, this time we're visiting that heart of the home the kitchen (of course that's one big problem right there if you're storing food and pots in your heart, might want to look into that or at least swallow a couple magnets).

About the biggest crime against nature one can commit in the kitchen that doesn't involve a couple of goats and a dominatrix is the wanton destruction of a carefully crafted recipe. But it takes skill to miss the pool and belly flop onto the parking lot so amazingly when it comes to baking.

The first trick is finding the recipe you wish to destroy. I suggest looking through magazines as they are most likely to not bother to have a team of editors comb through for mistakes and a professional kitchen creating 30 versions of it for that perfect no way you could ever achieve it picture.

I chose a caramel apple cake. It seemed surprisingly easy and next to impossible to screw up but I like a challenge.

The first task is to skim over the recipe getting the gist of what you need. Apples, caramel, cake mix. Got it.

You never want to write a detailed list, or to even bring the recipe with you or you could accidentally come home with all of the correct ingredients. In this case I substituted Honeycrisp apples with Granny Smiths and to really mess with it I hand chopped five apples instead of slicing up three.
But that isn't enough to really mess up a recipe. No, you must forget at least one important ingredient so there's a good chance your cake could refuse to form something other than a soupy mess or even turn into an evil mutant bent on the earth's destruction.

In this case I decided to forgo the radiation poisoning by adding in plutonium and skipped the suggestion of a box of pudding. It was a bit tricky as you'd think that would stand out in reading over the recipe but I made sure when at the grocery store to never go anywhere near the aisle ensuring I'd forget.

There was a brief moment when I hesitated but a horde of kids pushing the "Customer in Training" carts came baring down on me and all manor of Cosby type desserts was forgotten.
Now you could do the rookie mistake of just never turning your oven on and declaring it a failure but that's only for those who are too lazy for the final "What the Hell Happened?!" reveal. Skip the lazy way out and actually turn your oven on and let the thing bake. (You could at this point but it in the wrong pan though, giving it the chance to burn on the outside and refuse to bake inside).

The trick comes towards the end. Instead of finding your stash of toothpicks you have fun for baking, accept that they slipped off to the interdimensional kitchen of the damned along with your colander and melon baller and just pull the cake out of the oven when it's been an hour without checking for doneness.

When it's cooled enough that you're ready to get it out of the pan you should wind up with something that looks a lot like this:
For that final, hand toss "well it could still taste good" melt something and just dump it on top. Nothing fancy or sneakily covering it in frosting. How could people know it's a failure if you actually hide the evidence?
If you follow all of my tips and maybe throw in a few of your own (it is still classic to forget the eggs or confuse salt for sugar) you too will have a completely destroyed recipe taking up your counter space.

Next week I'll teach you how to remove spilled wine spots by employing a sand blaster and how to house train a griffin. All that and more on the Happy Homewrecker.