So, my mom was visiting this weekend. I intended to wow her in that way I don't think we ever really grow out of wanting to impress our parents by making her a batch of homemade blueberry turnovers. I was even going to take on puff pastry from scratch.
And my AC went out. Oh, did I mention the heat advisories we had last week? Yeah. According to my landlord the AC I pay to have in my apartment is a luxury. AC is not a luxury when baking in a hot humid apartment. No, sir.
Things were actually seeming to go ok. The night before I chilled my dry ingredients for two hours like a good baker. Then I made sure to make the dough up to give it a chance to sit in it's saran wrap overnight. When I woke up Saturday morning it didn't seem like the temps were too bad in the apartment yet. So I got out my dough, followed the instructions and rolled it out, formed it and folded it, rewrapped and refigerated for 15 minutes. Three times. And things seemed positive for this hour long process. Then on the last roll within seconds things went bad. Very very bad. My dough with the nice horizontal layers and clear definition of butter that was present, but not one with the dry ingredients was looking good. Then within a matter of seconds I had a gooey mess on my hands. I panicked and put it back in the fridge. Got it out and rolled it between two layers of parchment paper to avoid contact with the dough. I was cursing as I filled them with the fresh blueberry filling. And then it happened.
As I opened the door to put the turnovers into the oven the pan literally flipped over, sending the turnovers flying onto the hot oven door with the pan landing on top. My mom's mouth dropped open. I sat on the floor, oven door open and turnovers melting, and cried. Not like little tears. Body shaking sobs. Total April meltdown.
Mom hurried over telling me it would be okay as she scraped the turnovers off the door, put them back on the pan, and set them in the oven to bake.
They weren't okay. Since the essential (in my understanding of it) of nice flaky pastry dough is the cold butter being suddenly exposed to the hot temperatures of the oven and essentially exploding, making nice flaky layers, the fact my butter first was a victim of high temperatures and ugly humidity levels and THEN landed upside down on a hot oven door pretty much made failure inevitable. It was gross. It was failure in the true sense of the word.
However, even with a 95 degree (not exaggerating) kitchen and unknown levels of humidity, life may have given us tomatoes.
But we made salsa.
What's that salty taste you ask? Sweat and tears.
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