Food Failures! A lot of them...

Saturday evening and night until 6:05 AM Sunday I was indisposed, REALLY indisposed.  It seemed like a good day to stay at home.  By mid-day I was feeling a little better so I thought I would do some cooking.  I had recently seen some very yummy-looking recipes.  May I say it:  they do not always come out as advertised!

Amazingly, all the pictures I took of the failed food seem to have disappeared.  I guess they are no loss.

The things I made (which I remember a week later....!) which did not work were Cinnamon Sugar Pretzel Bites with Salted Caramel Sauce and salt-baked potatoes.

It appears that I did not save the recipes but I did find a recipe for the salted caramel sauce, which I WILL make again even though the first batch failed.  Let me give you a tip:  do have everything ready (that means have your butter cut up into pieces and sitting in a bowl beside your stove, ditto with your cup of heavy cream) and a MAJOR TIP: do not worry about the thermometer!  When the two cups of sugar have melted and are completely smooth, REMOVE FROM HEAT IMMEDIATELY and stir in the butter then the cream....being extremely careful with the cream not to slosh it into the pan.  This way you will avoid burns.

Even though my caramel sauce was a failure, it was just barely a failure...in that it burned JUST SLIGHTLY, but that was enough to make it less than pleasant to eat.  I tried dipping in the cinnamon sugar pretzel bites off and on for about four days, and the sauce sort of grew on me, but finally I tossed it.  The texture was so wonderful and it looked so good.  If only it did not taste just barely burned.  Oh well.  Next time.

The salt-baked potatoes were totally a bummer as a result of not going back and reading the recipe before making them.  No, you can not just throw 2 cups of kosher salt in the bottom of your pan, toss on the potatoes and cook at 425 for 1 1/2 hours.  Does. Not. Work.  Sadly...and since they were not at all well-received, I won't try them again.

Good luck with your cooking!