Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Liquid Cheesecake and Saran Wrap Mishap

I'd like to blame this mistake on "pregnancy brain" but it's more of a "stupidity" mistake.
Sidenote-I think I'm still functioning at 90% of my usual brain/memory capacity, but the other week, I did something really dumb. Mike let me choose the Redbox movie to rent while he dropped the groceries off at the car. He picked me up and asked, "So what movie did you select?" and I answered with, "The Vow," it's a Nicholas Sparks book.
Mike gave me a funny look and said, "Didn't we watch that movie?" Maybe all Nicholas Sparks movies  blend together-after all this is the second movie Rachel McAdams and Channing Tatum have been in.  Or maybe it was a pretty average unmemorable movie that I forgot I watched.  Whatever the case, I felt pretty silly and will probably not be in charge of movie rental selections in the future.
Back to my food mishap.  I just borrowed Christine Tosi's "Milk Bar" cookbook from the library and I wanted to try to make one of her recipes. Last year during our trip to New York, Mike and I visited the Milk Bar. I thought that the baked goods were super creative and was excited when the book came out.
Well, since I had bought a 3-lb block of cream cheese from Sam's Club to bake a cheesecake for a friend's birthday, I had extra cream cheese and decided to test out the "Liquid Cheesecake" recipe. It's pretty much an under-baked cheesecake that can be incorporated into other desserts as a filling or frosting.
The recipe required me to line a pan with plastic wrap. Yes, red flags popped up in my brain, but then I thought, "hmm....saran wrap can be used in the microwave, this cheesecake is baked at 300F for a short amount of time...not so bad."  Still my gut instinct told me, "Have you ever seen anyone place saran wrap in the oven?"  So against, my better judgement, I lined a pan with saran wrap and filled it with the cheesecake mixture.
Big Mistake. Luckily, since I was second-guessing myself, I looked inside the oven after a few minutes of bake time and quickly took the pan out.  So, no oven fire there!
Yes, the saran wrap melted.  Yes, I'm a dummy.  Yes, I usually have more common sense than this.  I then flipped through the book and saw that in the beginning of the book, the author explains that the "plastic wrap" that she is referring to is heavy duty plastic wrap. 
Here's the melted mess. 
Note to self-Never place saran wrap in the oven.  
Note to Self 2-Read the Introductory chapter of books before you follow recipes, usually there is a section that recommends what kind of ingredients and equipment you should use.  

3 comments:

K and S said...

aw boo, I hate when disasters in the kitchen happen.

genkitummy said...

Yeah, me too. But at least some of the cheesecake was salvageable.

Unknown said...

Your situation description ours exactly, even the borrowing from the library part! Thank you for sharing to help others avoid this disaster