What was I thinking?

Two posts in one day about how idiotic I can be at times seems like a little much, but I'm trying to be honest here.

So there I was in the kitchen with my gorgeous humongous and miniature zucchinis, surrounded by mixing bowls, spices, and flour, ready for some action.

I shredded the zucchini - starting with the large one, and half of one that was getting rotten on Saturday so I picked it, cut off the bad end, and hoped for the best. I pulled out my trusty old zucchini and blueberry whole wheat muffin recipe from cooks.com for my first baking endeavor of the day. This recipe called for one cup of shredded zucchini.
One eighth of the giant zucchini

No problem. I have pounds and pounds of the stuff here. I don't know where to find fresh blueberries yet, but I had some frozen ones left over from when I discovered this scone recipe.
Mmm . . . scones!

In the meantime, since I was already going to spend half the day shredding zucchini, I figured I'd find a recipe for zucchini bread too. I found one in my America's Test Kitchen book, which looked like it would work. It called for one pound of zucchini. Again, not a problem.
I shredded and shredded, trying to spare my fingernails when I got down to a little nub of zucchini. The skin of the big one was a little tough and hard to cut, but it tasted good. (As per the America's Test Kitchen book, I scooped the seeds out before I started shredding.)

Zucchini shredded, other ingredients laid out in order, I got to work measuring and mixing.

I pulled out one pound of zucchini to be sure I would have enough for the bread. This recipe said I should squeeze all of the extra water out of the zucchini before baking. What it didn't say was whether this squeezing of water should occur before or after I had weighed the one pound of shredded flesh. Water is not light!
The extra six ounces is the weight of the bowl.

Since the zucchini was plentiful, I squeezed and then measured. (Actually, I measured, then squeezed, then added, then measured again, just to get an idea.) I wasn't sure if I should also squeeze out the water for the other recipe - it didn't warn me about soggy muffins if I failed to get every last drop of moisture out. I couldn't remember what I did last year. Eventually I just decided to go ahead and squeeze all of the water out of all of the zucchini. It couldn't hurt, right?

I also remembered using flax seed meal as a substitute for oil in several recipes last summer, so I thought I'd give that a try . . . but I only had enough of the stuff to substitute for half of the oil.

I got my cup of zucchini for the muffins, and started mixing. I was doing well until I got to the part about adding the oil into the eggs and sugar. The recipe calls for 1/2 cup of oil. To substitute flax seed meal for oil, you triple the amount - so I would have needed 1 1/2 cups of flax. I didn't have that much, so I went for 1/4 cup oil and 3/4 cup of flax seed meal. No problem. Then I added the flour and other dry ingredients. Suddenly, my spoon was stuck in the mixture. It was way too dry. (Duh. A five year old could have told me that.) I whipped out a spatula and scraped the oil from the 1/4 cup measure. I scraped out the liquid that had settled into the cup where I had measured the zucchini. I added about a tablespoon of tap water. I folded in the blueberries. The concoction still wasn't anything close to "pourable" although my recipe indicated I should pour the mixture into a muffin pan.
dry muffin batter . . . notice how I left extra space in the pan.

Messy Kitchen!

I kind of remembered that the flax would loosen up during the baking process, so the muffins would not be too dry.


In fact, they're really good. I had to eat the one that fell on the floor while I was taking them out of the pan. And, since I like for things to look pretty, later on I also had to eat the one that had fallen apart while being taken out of the pan. They were delicious.

While my muffins were baking and cooling, I got to work on the bread. I substituted a cup of whole wheat flour for the all purpose flour. I completely ignored what size of loaf pan to use. I pulled out my handy, favorite loaf pan from my aunt and poured the batter into the pan.

Here's your sign . . .

It's not like I don't know that bread rises. It's not like I haven't made a hundred sweet breads in my life. And even if I hadn't, wasn't I there when I added the baking powder and baking soda to the mix?

Why on earth didn't I pour this into a bigger pan? Instead, I had a fleeting thought of "this pan is too small. Oh well." Then I took a picture and closed the oven door.

About five or seven minutes later, I caught a whiff of the distinct smell of "the oven is on fire" and sure enough (and unsurprisingly) my bread batter was spilling all over the oven as it desperately tried to rise but couldn't find anything to support its weight.

I put a cookie sheet and some parchment paper under the mess, and continued baking it (turning off the air conditioner and opening all of the windows in the process, so the smoke alarm would not go off) but forgot to set a timer, so I had to guess when to take it out of the oven.

I got the bread out of the pan, and it is currently cooling upside down on a rack in my kitchen, next to the muffins, which rose perfectly, by the way. I tasted some of the bread that was crusted on to the pan and it is actually very good. A little too sweet, but definitely worth making again. In a bigger pan.