Despite how experienced, even the most accomplished cooks have made cooking mistakes at one time or another. Though it can make you feel bad when cooking goes wrong, you do learn just like anything else through mistakes. I know that I have made quite a few and expect to make more, but hopefully what I have learned from these cooking blunders will help you and save your efforts with these solutions.
Have you ever made gravy or a cream sauce that had a few lumps? Instead of dumping out the failed sauce, try using a wire whisk to beat the lumps out. However, if the sauce or gravy is too lumpy, then you can still save what you made by pouring the sauce through a wire strainer.
If you’re making fudge and it won’t firm up as it should, cooking it a bit more can reverse this when cooking goes wrong. What I do is to put it back into the saucepan along with one or two teaspoons of water, stirring until it reaches the right stage on my candy thermometer called for in the recipe. Something else to keep in mind is that weather does play a part when making candy just like it does for bread. When it is hot and moist just as it is now in summer, it is a good idea to cook candies two degrees higher than you normally use at other times of the year.
In case your fudge becomes too hard or sugary, you may feel that there is nothing more you can do to correct it. On the other hand, you don’t have to give up because adding a little milk can often help soften it up. Afterwards, cook the fudge to the right temperature. This can be enough to fix it.
How many times did you have a jar of honey that hardens? The first thought you probably may have had is just pitch and buy a fresh jar. Rather than that, I found that placing the jar in a pan with some hot water can help liquify the honey again.
Baking cookies can pose unique problems of their own such as refusing to come out of the pan. In place of attempting to work those cookies out with your spatula and risk them breaking, I found that returning them to the hot oven for about a minute can often help.
Making some confectioners’ sugar icing and finding that you need more confectioners’ sugar to finish when you ran out can be frustrating. Yet, when cooking goes wrong in this instance and you’re looking for solutions, you can still finish by making your own confectioners’ sugar for the remaining amount. What I do is place one cup of regular sugar and two tablespoons of cornstarch in my blender or food processor and mix thoroughly about a minute or two until it becomes a fine powder. If too much, store the rest in a covered container or a clean plastic jar like a peanut butter jar.
