One of the main driving forces behind the creation of Tattooed Martha was to show everyone the good AND the bad. Even the best cooks, bakers, and creators have failures, but they don’t always talk about it or show you. I want readers to learn from my mistakes and not feel so discouraged after making a few of their own, so I present to you the first edition of Friday Failures!
Photo by Lindsey Rickert Photography
I’ve been craving fall recipes so I spent a day with my friend and her two daughters cooking up all kinds of fall flavored deliciousness. I decided to make (or rather attempted to make) chai spiced cupcakes with a chai spiced whipped cream frosting. Moments before the timer went off I got a strange feeling about the status of my cupcakes and decided to peek in at them. Instead of a beautiful dozen fluffy cupcakes, I had a dozen deflated cake cups.
After the initial horror and disappointment wore off we all had a good laugh about it and awkwardly picked at the cake cups with a fork to enjoy what we could. They were still quite delicious, but not exactly the end product that I was hoping for.
So where did I go wrong?
I get a lot of requests for gluten-free dessert recipes and since my friend had gluten-free flour on hand, I decided to give it a shot. Typically you can just swap the flour in any recipe for gluten-free flour, but apparently that’s not always the case! I’ve since made them again with all-purpose flour and they turned out perfect, so check back on Sunday to get the recipe!
Have you had this happen to you? Any tips from gluten-free bakers?
I hope Friday Failures will be a regular feature that helps others learn from my mistakes, get inspired to keep trying, and if nothing else.. provides you a good laugh! Leave your thoughts and comments below!
Emily says
I have been gluten free for 12 years, and had this happen to me a lot when I first started baking. Maybe you already know this, but I’ll share anyway…usually it happens because there isn’t enough flour. GF flour weighs differently than regular, so depending on the brand, you can’t swap them out cup-for-cup. I usually use heaping cups and that works out alright – except with the King Arthur flour blend, which never seems to be enough. The best blend I’ve worked with is the Pillsbury one – a heaping cup works every time š
Sasha says
Thank you so much for the tips Emily! I’ll give that a shot next time I attempt gluten-free baking!