There are no pictures of failure.
If I wasn't sticking to a standardized titling system with the name of the recipe and the year, I would have titled this post "Pot de Fail"
When I read Julie/Julia, she talked a lot about her "mutant gelling handicap" not getting things to set. At the time, I laughed at it, and said, to myself (smugly) "I'm a good cook! how hard can it be to make a custard from scratch?" The me of 2010 wants to go back in time and kick me of 2008 squarely in the shins. So I made the recipe first last night (I was making a whole dinner, that the other components of turned out AWESOME, Will post about them later this week) because I knew that it had to set in the fridge. I whisked the eggs sugar and salt, I heated the cream, I put it on the double boiler, and slowly added the cream, and I stirred. And I stirred. And I stirred. Once it got to the point where it was covering the back of the wooden spoon, I pulled it off the heat, and set the bowl into one with cold water, stirred in the orange and Grand Mariner, and poured it into my small ramekins. I set it in the fridge, and began to bumble about, preparing the rest of the dinner.
A little bit before we were about to eat, (two hours after they had gone into the fridge, I checked them, and they were still soupy. Heart sinking, I resigned myself to dessert failure, but thought that it might be salvaged by just serving them as "dessert soup!" because, come on, how bad can orange and cream be? We finished dinner, and I brought out the ramekins, (still not set) and we dipped our spoons into them... and tasted. In the beginning, you tasted cream, and orange, and then it was followed by a hit of salt, that made it quite unpleasant. I tasted yolk, and salt. I don't know if the error was me (mistakenly using the wrong measuring spoon) or if i used the wrong kind of salt (I used kosher salt I keep on my counter) but the result was... unpleasant.
A little bit before we were about to eat, (two hours after they had gone into the fridge, I checked them, and they were still soupy. Heart sinking, I resigned myself to dessert failure, but thought that it might be salvaged by just serving them as "dessert soup!" because, come on, how bad can orange and cream be? We finished dinner, and I brought out the ramekins, (still not set) and we dipped our spoons into them... and tasted. In the beginning, you tasted cream, and orange, and then it was followed by a hit of salt, that made it quite unpleasant. I tasted yolk, and salt. I don't know if the error was me (mistakenly using the wrong measuring spoon) or if i used the wrong kind of salt (I used kosher salt I keep on my counter) but the result was... unpleasant.
Julie soldiered on and had a few more tastes, but I was done.
The good part was, I had some chocolate covered crunchies in the fridge, and was able to use those to redeem dessert. That, and the rest of dinner was really excellent: Salmon in foil, and Perfect Batch of Rice, and I made another batch of the butternut squash soup, which was awesome.
Can't win 'em all.
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