Don't Bake When You're Overtired

Coffee Talk Thursday

Have you ever heard that being overtired is a little like being drunk? Law enforcement officials will tell you it impairs your ability to drive. In my case, it impairs my ability to bake.

Generally, I consider myself fairly proficient in the kitchen. Give me any recipe, and I'm game. But today--maybe it's the fact that I haven't slept in days--we're talking rookie, big time.  

I'm hosting a mom's play group from our church tomorrow, and I thought I'd bake a new coffee cake recipe--filled with cocoa and coffee. Sounds good, hugh? Well, it probably would have been if I would have been more alert.

Here's what went wrong:

• It says to add 2 eggs. I added three.
• It says to add 1 teaspoon baking soda. I added two. Double anything else (the vanilla, the butter), but never the baking soda! Realizing my mistake, I tried to scoop out one teaspoonful, but you know how quickly it mixes in with the flour. I added more flour to compensate.
• It says to add 1 teaspoon baking powder. I thought my one-half teaspoon was my teaspoon and used it by mistake instead. Then, I wondered if I should just leave it at that, since I doubled the baking soda. I can't remember what I decided.
• It says to add 1-1/2 tsp. salt. I think I nailed that one.
• It says to "pour" the batter. Mine was more like a plop.
• It says to swirl the coffee/cocoa/sugar (did I add the sugar? I think so...) six times through the batter. I missed that part and swirled it more like 60 times.
• At least I remembered to grease and flour the bundt pan, and I am baking it at the right temperature. (There was a cookie sheet that my husband put away in the oven last night that preheated quite nicely, causing the fire alarm to go off. Too bad I didn't have any cookie batter ready to go on the hot baking sheet!)

Well, we'll see how it turns out. At least baking soda is a great natural cleaner for the teeth. So if you come to my house tomorrow, I'm watching out for you--I'll feed you sugar and make sure you have some baking soda to keep your teeth nice and pearly white. 

Now if I could just get a nap!

Since it's Coffee Talk Thursday, I'd love to hear your worst kitchen experiment ever. Did you ever start your kitchen on fire? (I did once, when I was 12ish, baking chocolate chip cookies...but we got the fire out before it spread much past the range hood and wall).