Y’ever have things just fail to go right? For ages? Well, here’s what’s been going on/going wrong in my kitchen the last few weeks, and why I’ve got nothing much to share until next week.

If you’ve ever noticed, any recipe you’ll ever find for caramel cake is actually vanilla or yellow cake, with caramel frosting. No one ever makes a caramel flavored cake! I thought maybe I’d found the solution in this way to caramelize sugar without melting it. After 5 hours of baking the sugar, it had a caramel-y smell, and a noticeable caramel flavor, so I was sure I was golden.

I put the sugar in a yellow cake and paired my hopefully-caramel cake with chocolate cream cheese frosting. Couple hours of making/baking/cooling later, and I had…a cake that’s entirely fine but in no way caramel. Disappointing.

After that, I thought maybe using the sugar in sugar cookies, and specifically ones that get rolled in sugar, would get the flavor right out there on your tongue and be unavoidable. Well, consider it avoided. The cookies have no noticeable caramel flavor. This used up the rest of the sugar I’d spent 5 hours baking, and I don’t hugely recommend the experiment to anyone else.

In the last week I also made this squash/chickpea/pasta dish that I enjoyed, but not enough to probably ever bother making again, and considering I’ve already made the stir-fried gochujang dish again… eh this doesn’t rate its own post.

Finally, I made a huge, overnight apple bread that totally is worth sharing, but only once I’ve changed the recipe enough to reflect how it actually works, and gotten pictures to match how I think it’ll work better. I’ve got the first loaf of bread the size of my head to get through before I start the improvement, so… that’s what-all has been going on in my kitchen lately. Hope more noteworthy things have been developing in all of yours!