Baking FAIL

This past weekend my brother was telling us about his banana bread making efforts.  He left it on the counter the night he made it only to come down the next morning to Kelly laughing – she couldn’t cut it.  She asked if he’d followed the directions and he said yes, and went through the steps and how he had packed the flour three times for three cups.  Therein lied the problem, as you can guess. 

I was chuckling over this story this afternoon as I was filling cups with flour, making sure to not pack anything.  I was making blueberry muffins – the same recipe I’d made before.  But as I mixed, I kept looking at the batter thinking something didn’t seem right.

Then I pulled out the first batch…

They really didn’t look right either.  The shapes were weird and they never really turned a golden color.  But, inserting the toothpick, they were clearly done.

So I took a couple down to Mike and handed some over to taste test.  He said they were fine.  They didn’t look like they rocked his world, but he didn’t die.  Still, something wasn’t right.

I decided I wanted to be done – why waste time on something I knew was going to turn out badly.  So, I made a batch of 9 regular sized muffins.  Still, the pans weren’t filling correctly.  I’d been through the recipe 10 times and couldn’t figure out what I’d done wrong.

When I took the second batch out the pan weighed about 40 pounds.  Still no golden color and things were a mess.

On the 11th time of looking through the recipe I realized I’d skipped the line that told me to add Baking Soda. 

I did this exact same thing in 7th grade Home Ec. class.  There were four of us to share that responsibility then.  Unfortunately I have no one else to blame for this mess, but I bet my brother feels better about his baking skills.