One of those days

Have any of you ever had a day where everything you tried to do in the kitchen ended badly? Well, I've had one of those days today.

It started with coconut macaroons. As I've shared before, according to the culture here, it's shameful to return a plate empty. I have a couple that need to be returned, but I haven't made the time to make something for returning the plates. Today was the day! I had searched my cookbooks for the perfect treat and found one that I knew I would enjoy eating the extras of . . . coconut macaroons. Yummy! The recipe seemed simple enough - 2 egg whites, some sugar, a little vanilla, and coconut. One thing intimidated me though . . . beating egg whites. I've never done it before. Since moving overseas, however, I've become pretty adventurous and I wasn't going to let a couple of egg whites stand between me and such a tasty dessert. Twenty minutes and 2 "still not stiff" egg whites later, I was beginning to get the message that today was not the day for macaroons. I called a friend for help, but she wasn't at home. After a few more minutes of beating and still no "peaks" I decided to just mix in the other ingredients, put the runny batter into my mini-muffin tin and see what happened. Of course, after putting the tin into the hot oven I realized that I hadn't greased the tin - I knew how that would end, even if the cookies turned out to be edible!

So how did they turn out? Hollow, crumbly, and stuck to the pan. Disastrous! We scooped out the little bit of gooey coconut in the middle to taste and it all just kind of stuck to our back teeth.

I didn't have the energy or desire to attempt another dessert at that point, and I can't try that recipe again because I used almost all of my good (from the US) coconut for the batch that didn't turn out. So I sat and worked on some language stuff for a while.

Later in the afternoon we got word from Mark's language tutor that he and his wife wanted to come over for a visit. The acceptable thing to do for guests (always!) is to serve hot, fresh tea with something to eat on the side. We had nothing really to serve with our tea, so I scrambled to find the most simple recipe for which I had all the ingredients. I found a muffin recipe that seemed pretty easy. It's a basic muffin recipe with a jelly filling. After my macaroons turned out so badly I was afraid to try anything else new today. BUT I needed something! Again, feeling adventurous, I went for it.

Wanna know what happened? Instead of the jelly making a filling inside the muffin, it ran out of the sides, stuck to the muffin pan, and made kind of a "split in half" muffin with sticky jelly in the middle and around the sides. Did I still serve them to our guests? You bet I did! Did they eat them? Yep! Did they like them? I have NO idea! The main thing is that we put something on a plate and served it to them.

So here's the deal . . . I and another friend are serving tea for a couple of ladies we've never met before (on Thurs.). I'm supposed to make something sweet. Can you guess the thoughts running through my head?!