Nailed it…

All images from the show Nailed it.

I’ve seen plenty of memes from the show called Nailed It. Ordinary people try to duplicate intricate desserts, but instead of nailing them, they are funny disasters.

This happened to me when I was about 20 years old. I tried to make the French dessert Petit fours. It was a disaster right from the get-go.

I was making these in my parent’s house, so I couldn’t lose my temper nearly as much as if I were in my place. First, you make a cake, then when it is cool, slice it into seven even layers. Impossible!

Next, you make the filling, usually a fruit variety; I made an apricot. Then, you carefully spread the filling on the layers of cake. My cake crumbled when I was applying the filling.

I kept working at my petit fours, thinking they still had a chance until I tried to pour the white icing on them. Then I tried dipping them. What a fucking mess!

I absent-mindedly began licking my fingers because things were sticking to them. Then I realized our dog Strudel’s black hair was in the icing.

I had a belly ache from too much sweet icing and threw 7 hours of work away. I haven’t tried making them again. I was enraged that the Petit Fours got the best of me.

I’ve gotten better at baking even though it’s not my favorite thing; I can do it. Unlike cooking, I don’t like the idea that the whole thing could turn into a flop.

My favorite cake I made was for my father-in-law Han’s birthday. He was a very sweet man with a good sense of humor; check out how he is holding the knife! 😂

I’ve made a lot of Black Forest cakes over the years, but I wanted to make Black Forest cupcakes for our Oktoberfest dinner party. 

I wrote about how good they came out in my dinner party post and how delicious they were. I didn’t write about the behind-the-scenes drama but left a teaser at the end of the piece.

When planning the menu, I sought inspiration and found an image and recipe for Black Forest cupcakes that looked gorgeous! Oh, how I wanted mine to look like those! See where this is going?

I always make two tester cupcakes, so I don’t ruin the ones I want to serve. I followed the recipe exactly; it was rare, but this was baking. 

I made the dark chocolate cupcakes, which were moist. Cherry filling I’ve made many times before, and it was no biggie.

The big biggie was the stabilized whipped cream. I was home alone and started letting my swear flow, weaving a tapestry of curses that impressed me. 

Bakers use gelatin in the whipped cream. First off, the smell of gelatin made me sick to my stomach. I’ve been forced to eat a lot of jello when I had terrible ulcerative colitis flare-ups. Just the thought makes my stomach turn.

Even though I followed the recipe, the gelatin never did what it was supposed to. Instead, there were globs of gelatin in the whipped cream. I was pissed off here.

I tried putting it through a sieve, thinking I could save it, but that was a big waste of time and more dishes.

I scraped that damn whipped cream off the two cupcakes and threw it all away; I started fresh and made the whipped cream I’ve been making for decades. 

I piped the new whipped cream on the cupcakes using a pastry bag. I was pleased with how they came out. They were far from perfect, but chocolate shavings would camouflage the imperfections.

I returned to the recipe I was trying to duplicate on the two practice cupcakes. Mistake number two. Big mistake!

Yup, I nailed it. They turned out as funny as the other baking and decorating debacles on the show. At least I didn’t spend more than 20 minutes on the disaster, unlike the poor bastards who spent hours on their creations.

Of course, I didn’t serve those; they were for us the next day and tasted as good as the nice-looking ones we served our guests.

These days, we’ve had to learn to pivot during and after the pandemic, so shrugging off my failed cupcake attempt was fine with me.

The day after I put out the teaser about my Nailed It experience, my friend who lives next door, David, sent me a text telling me he tried to make gluten-free apple muffins for us along with two photos, his and the recipe he followed photo. He definitely Nailed it. 😂

I told him it was the thought that counted and was very sweet of him to make us muffins.

I may never be an artistic baker, but that’s okay since I can cook my ass off like nobody’s business.

Have any of you had a Nailed It experience? I’d love to hear about it.