Accidental Biscuits and Bourbon, Bourbon, Bourbon.

I vaguely mentioned in my last post that my cooking skills leave much to be desired. A quick recap for those with short term memory loss: a while ago, I told my dude a story of how inept I am in the kitchen (with the exception of baking). That led to him asking me to bake him something. Since I know you're all curious about what I had told him, it was the story of what I now refer to as "accidental biscuits."

Surprise! It's biscuits
Whenever I tell people I can't cook, the reaction I get is always something along the lines of "didn't your mom teach you how to cook?" If you've ever tried her cooking, you'd know that she did and I'm paying for it every day.

In my adult life, I always managed to con someone into making dinner for me. They always obliged, although I'll freely admit it was probably out of pity. Unfortunately for me, a few months ago I found myself without a personal chef and had to fend for myself. Inspired and hungry one evening, I fired up the Google machine and came across a recipe for chicken in a white wine sauce. It met all of my criteria: it seemed simple enough and I already had all the ingredients in my pantry.

I managed to slice the mushrooms without cutting myself, I dredged the chicken in flour without making a (horrible) mess, and I didn't instantly burn the chicken when I put it in the frying pan. All was going (relatively) well until I had to add the wine and broth to the chicken and mushroom mixture. That's when the biscuits happened. Instead of creating a nice coat on the chicken, the liquid washed the chicken clean and combined with the flour to create little floury nuggets of chicken residue.

I'm not quite sure if I didn't have all purpose flour, or if I just didn't want to go out to the garage to check (I'm going to be honest, this is more likely), but I figured since I had self-rising flour in the kitchen, I'd use that to dredge the chicken instead. With as much baking as I do, I really should have known better. But the chicken tasted fine sans biscuit blobs, so I'm still calling it a success.

Mixie doing a whirl. Yes, I named my mixer.

Peaches come from a can, they were put there by a man
The reason I bought the self rising flour is because my go-to cupcake recipe calls for it in lieu of all-purpose. I usually just mix my own with some baking powder, but one day I thought I'd splurge and purchase some fancy flour, mostly because I make this cake quite frequently. My style of baking is usually this simple cake with a special filling or frosting. I'm into accessorizing.

This particular cupcake is another one from the Kyle Fyles. When I need inspiration, I can always count on my guy to be there with a resounding "bourbon." And what goes better with bourbon (besides bad decisions) than peaches?

I admit I may have gone a bit overboard with the booze on this one. For the filling I made a peach bourbon cobbler, a bourbon caramel sauce for drizzling over the top, and instead of the vanilla in the frosting, I added more bourbon.

That's it, just soak up the flavor of the butter.

The inspiration came to me suddenly when I was shopping for powdered sugar in Lucky. Unfortunately I forgot that peaches aren't exactly in season in February, so I had to do something I vowed I'd never do: use ingredients from a can.

Whoever said you can't tell the difference between canned and fresh fruit is a filthy liar. I wouldn't go as far to say that they tasted terrible, but they definitely didn't taste like peaches that didn't just take an aluminum hibernation. Luckily copious amounts of butter and bourbon hid the unsatisfactory taste of the fruit, though I'm sure it wasn't as good as it could have been.

As always, I had some left over after filling the dozen cakes I made. I'm not entirely sure what happened to the excess cobbler mixture, but I really hope it met met its demise in the compost bin. I've said it before, but I'll say it again: I will never bake anything with boxed or canned ingredients.

Liquid gold, bubbling in the pot. 

If you pronounce it car-mul, you're wrong
Without a doubt, my favorite component of this cake was the bourbon caramel sauce.

To me, caramel is its own food group. In addition to eating caramel, I also love making it. Surprisingly, even with my infatuation, this is only the second time I've ever made it. The first time was when I made Twox bars a couple years ago, but that's a story for another time.

Maybe one of the reasons I enjoy making caramel so much is that it requires a level of concentration that I usually don't possess. I have the attention span of a hummingbird (I'm simultaneously browsing imgur while writing this), but sugar work is delicate and finicky. Look away for two seconds, and you have a pot of burnt sugar water. The satisfaction of getting it right is why I do this. That and I get to eat a whole pot of caramel after. But definitely mostly for the satisfaction.

I'm still grappling with the frosting matrix

Not pictured: the five naked cakes.

Like I previously mentioned, I always end up with way more frosting than I need. In my last adventure in baking, I had enough to top two dozen cupcakes even though I only made one dozen.

This time I said it was going to be different, we were going to make it work. Using my superior skills in logic, I deduced that cutting the recipe in half would yield just enough for the twelve cupcakes that I had made. I painstakingly beat the butter in my mixing bowl, slowly added the powdered sugar, and gingerly poured in the bourbon. I got out my piping supplies and delicately scooped the frosting into the bag.

I barely had enough to top seven cupcakes. I'm not entirely sure what's wrong with me (the list goes on), but apparently there's no place for my logic in baking. It's alright though, I haven't given up yet. I will outsmart you eventually, frosting. Mark my words, I will outsmart you.