How to Ruin 8 Hours of Work (And Carry On)

TL;DR? I ruined toasted sugar. But, stick around. The story is pretty sweet.

So, I am such a good wife. And I’m absolutely nuts about baking. Every year, I make a double batch of every-component-painstakingly-made-from-scratch homemade goodness in the form of Key Lime Pie Ice Cream (and yes, for those of you who have the time, I will post my recipe), specially for my husband’s birthday. It’s like the number one, penultimate thing that he looks forward to most about his birthday.

Sugar For the Sugar Daddy

I’ve made it going on 3 years now (the first birthday of his that we spent together, I got him the worst gift ever–don’t ask….and he proposed to me–my gift should have given him pause). I’m pretty sure that every time that I’ve made it, as much as he loves it, I’m always trying to kick it up a notch, take it a step further, make my job harder…

Maybe I should stop while I’m ahead. The guy has anosmia (he’s got a defective sniffer), and it affects his taste buds. If he’s wild about it and it’s for him, why do I need to do anything else?

Because it’s never enough! Nah, I really just do it for fun, because of how much I love baking, and because of how much I love his reaction when it really is better! That being said, one of the components of this super special ice cream is homemade shortbread.

I go down the rabbit trail of how I can cram as much mind-blowing and delicious flavor into this shortbread as humanly possible. I mean, it’s shortbread. Baseline is okay to good, for shortbread.

I want more than “okay”, I want more than just ice cream texture. I was to punch up that flavor till it’s screaming.

Enter: toasted sugar. Have any of you heard of this process? My rabbit trail led me to Serious Eats and an article written by Stella Parks about, you guessed it, toasting sugar. This loooong AF process leads to what is, in essence, granulated caramel.

This was my answer.

Toasted sugar, paired with brown butter, would make my shortbread absolutely insane, unparalleled goodness that would quite possibly outshine the ice cream itself. This. is. happening!

A Stubborn Cook

Once I set my mind to do something, I absolutely fixate. It is my most toxic trait. I may not wash my hands repeatedly, or lock-unlock-relock my door a million times, but I do have OCD tendencies that come out in other ways. I get obsessed with an idea (like this blog *ahem*) and have to power through, whatever the cost. It’s something I’m growing in, but not when it comes to baking.

I read this recipe late Wednesday night. Nathan’s birthday is Tuesday. I plan my bakes out waaay in advance, but then when it comes time, like a week before, I’m fussing and nit-picking over every detail. Making sure every ingredient is on the grocery list. Making sure I’ve accounted for any modifications I’m incorporating into my Frankenstein recipes. But I knew then and there that I was making time for this experiment the very next day.

In this recipe, the time estimate for the fully toasted (just shy of liquefied caramel) sugar is roughly 5 hours. I wish…

It’s 10 am. I get the sugar in a glass baking dish in the preheated oven and set a timer. Hubby is in the other room working, so I at least know it’s safe to still leave the house for the morning walk with the babies. I have an hour till I should see a barely-perceptible, subtle shift in color from white to ivory and start every-half-hour sugar stirrings. Babies and I go for our stroll.

Hour Five

Once we get back and the timer goes off, yeah, zero color difference…even holding up a spoon of plain sugar next to what is in the dish shows no change. So I begin the process of stirring it diligently, every. thirty. freaking. minutes. “Just looks like sugar to me” Nathan comments.

I’m super encouraged at this point. Not. But I don’t give up. 

Couple hours in, still….no different. My house smells yummy, but the sugar is far from toasted. I stick a thermometer in the pale pile and see that it’s not even up to temperature yet. Ugh! Time to really start experimenting.

I make adjustments to the temperature. Nothing. Then I get exasperated and decide that I’m going to put this dish on a lower rack, closer to the heating coils. Throughout this process, I discovered how unevenly the heat is distributed in our oven.

My Toasted Sugar was TOO Toasty

Next check after having shifted it down? I go to stir it, place my silicone spatula in the midst of sucrose, and pull back…liquefied caramel. OH NO! Nathan, I need your help! 

We quickly salvage most of the, at this point, barely-toasted sugar; most of it goes into a smaller glass baking dish and back into the oven (on a higher rack this time, lesson learned). The remainder was blitzed and stored. 

It went on like this for literally hours. A little after 8 hours of this trial-and-error exercise of saccharine torture, after having even further divided the sugar between the small glass dish and a metal pie pan, I started seeing wonderful, golden, toasty results from the glass dish volume. I let it go just a touch longer, just to the point where it was hinting at beginning to melt at the edges of the dish, and felt this exciting rush of satisfaction paired with nervous urgency.

I need to get this to cool down quickly.

Guys, I could just die. I could melt like the sugar was beginning to, recounting the horror of what was about to occur. Just know, it was a long, grueling day of culinary learning, chemistry and science, fitting in some fitness, and child-rearing two, ornery, adorable toddlers that are just soooo curious about the oven. Have mercy on me.

Toasted Sugar Literally Down the Drain

This sugar was perfect. It just needed to cool. I thought to myself, I’m going to fill this other bowl with some cold water and then I’ll just place the hot metal bowl containing the collected granulated caramel on top of the cold water while I stir…

Y’know what really helps granulated caramel cool down fast? Blanking out on the fact that the water was sTiLL rUnNiNg. It took a moment for my zapped brain to process the hissing I heard, to realize that I had, in one easy step, in seconds, RUINED what had taken me HOURS to create. I had let the tap pour directly over my beautiful, my precious, golden, toasty sugar. It dissolved into a sickening brown pool of liquid right before my eyes.

And that is how you ruin an 8 hour recipe in one easy step…

Mama Definitely Sad

Head hanging low. Exasperated, exhausted sigh.

My sweet Orson happened to be looking over the back of the couch at me: “Aww, sad. Mama sad.”

Fortunately, I still have enough of the lightly toasted sugar and all of the fully toasted sugar that was still in the metal pie pan for Nathan’s ice cream recipe, but wow, what a blow. 

I’ve learned, through so many painful, stupid, personal failures in my life, that I can’t dwell in the disappointment. Oh, I make room for it. I don’t deny my feelings or stuff them down, but if I can’t go back and change what brought those feelings to begin with, then, I realize, I only have to make room for and feel them for as long as I choose to. 

Will I make that mistake again? No.

Will I sink into despair and feel sorry for myself right before my children’s bedtime, knowing they recognize when “Mama sad” and have a hard time sleeping because things were just “off”?

Sugar just isn’t that important. Other things are, like enjoying bedtime stories and lullabies and snuggles and kisses, and my son’s barely intelligible “I wuv ru” as I’m sneaking out the door…

Learning how to model feeling your feelings and then letting them go is the “sweetest” lesson from this whole experience.