It happens to all of us. The souffle falls, the cookies turn out too dry, or the cake didn’t rise. The flavor is fine, it’s just not attractive or the right texture or how it looked on Pinterest. You could scrap it all and start all over. No shame in that. I’ve been there. Or you could heroically try to salvage the sinking middle, the dry crumbs, or the raw batter. Maybe it’ll work out? Maybe it’ll be tastier than the original recipe? This is what I do when I’ve got a molten chocolate meltdown.
The Bread Trick
Cookies too dry? Or hard?
My parents use this trick even when the cookies aren’t dry.
Put a slice of bread in with the container holding your cookies. The moisture from the bread will diffuse into the cookies giving them a chewy texture!
Use a neutral tasting bread like oat, white, or wheat and avoid sourdough and rye unless you want Gardetto’s flavored chocolate chip cookies. I know from personal experience.
Give it about 30 minutes to let the water molecules mosey on down from the bread to the cookies and work their magic. Then consume your treats post haste!!
Truffle Conversion
Maybe the dessert just turned out ugly. No amount of bread will fix ugly cookies. It’s fine! Take a deep breath.
Put the cookies or cakes in the food processor and grind them up. (Let it cool if it has chocolate in it.) Using a stand mixer or your hands, combine the crumbs with an 8 oz. block of cream cheese. You’ll get a thick mixture that can be rolled into balls. Voila. You now have the filling of a truffle. Or a cake pop. Whatever you like!
Dunk those little revitalized globes into melted chocolate (chocolate chips, white chocolate, Baker’s chocolate…whatever you have) and set them on a cookie sheet lined with wax or parchment paper. Top them with sprinkles or drizzle a contrasting color on top in zig zags.
Pop them in the freezer so the chocolate dries and hardens. Now you have truffles filled with your ugly dessert. Not so ugly now, eh! CRISIS AVERTED.
Quick Fix Icebox Bar
Well, what if you don’t have melted chocolate on hand?? Or you didn’t make cookies, you made cake, and it’s still ugly??
Okay! Take your ugly dessert du jour and throw them (feel free to take out your frustrations here) into a large bowl. Grab a masher and turn those ugly cookies or cakes into mush.
Then take a 9 x 13 or an 8 x 8 baking pan (or if you have a cute dish you really like) and press that mush into a flat layer in the pan.
Cut them into elegant squares and dish them up on a plate.
Top it with ice cream or whipped cream (or both…) and a syrupy drizzle of raspberry jam, chocolate or fruit.
‘Tis Merely a Trifle
The souffle didn’t rise. The cake didn’t bake all the way through. Everything is going to be okay, I promise.
If the cake is still raw, scoop it out of its pan and spread the scoops onto a jelly roll pan, or any pan bigger than your original dessert pan. Bake it until it’s cooked all the way through and let it cool. Then mentally divide your pieces into thirds. Take the first third and spread it out in a trifle bowl. (Don’t have a trifle bowl? Use a glass bowl. Don’t have that either? Use wine glasses and make individual servings.)
Spread some pudding (easy microwavable chocolate pudding recipe here) over it. Then some whipped cream. Now you’re grooving. Do it again. Cake, pudding, whipped cream. Repeat until you run out of ingredients. There. Isn’t that pretty?
Now, if the souffle didn’t rise, or it did, but then it fell back down, it’s probably because the air you whipped into it got pushed out when you folded the batter with egg whites. Also fine. Folding is hard! But what you have left is a dense cake. Great! What’s a nice contrast to dense cake? Tart and sweet fruit (like raspberry or strawberry jam) and an airy, lightly sweetened whipped cream. Get those going.
Now scoop a bit (a third) of the souffle into a trifle dish or glass bowl. Then the whipped cream. Now the jam. (That order is important because you want the bright red jam to show up against the white whipped cream.) Repeat until you run out of ingredients! Always top with whipped cream. It gives a clean looking finishing touch. Beautiful. Now go grab some cabernet and enjoy yourself.
