First, a picture.

You might say, “Yum, that looks delicious… but what is it?”

If so, please feel free to take a guess – I highly doubt you’d really know what it is though.

So, after realizing that this March is going to be crazy hectic for me, I knew that it’s time for me to prep up for the already-started storm of to-do list items. And to a handful of engineers, that means booking out an hour or two on a weekend to prepare one type of food that will last you throughout the week. A friend of mine from undergrad used to plan his meal for the month, and have a grocery list planned out for every week of the month — that way, he doesn’t have to waste food, and more importantly, doesn’t have to think about what to get or what to eat throughout the month. And he’s not alone in this crazy structured self-managed meal plans. I currently have a labmate who brings in bags of same food every week, and eats mostly out of the bag throughout the week. I’m by no means making fun of such dietary plans, because I am guilty of it myself.

I mean, let’s face it. It’s convenient, an it’s fast — efficiency is key.

So this weekend, I decided to take care of my breakfasts. That usually means baking a loaf of whole wheat bread using my favourite recipe, and that lasts me throughout the week with the accompaniment of jam/jelly/cream cheese etc. However, I had bought this grounded cinnamon a while back, and had made cinnamon rolls that didn’t quite turn out very well. So I decided to give it a try again, but using a different recipe. The thing about cinnamon rolls is that you can freeze your doughs — after rolling in your cinnamon and sugar and all the buttery goodness — let it thaw overnight, put it in the oven when you wake up, take a morning shower, and voila!, you’ve just stepped out of the shower to the smell and the reality of freshly baked cinnamon roll for breakfast.

By now you probably have a better guess as to what the picture is representing — cinnamon roll gone wrong.

Long story short, the dreamy breakfasts probably won’t happen this week. Quite inadvertently, I read the baking recipe’s instruction to bring milk + butter mixture to “120 degrees” as Celsius rather than Fahrenheit, poured the uber hot liquid mixture into my bowl of yeast, effectively killing the key ingredient that’s supposed to make the final product soft and fluffy. So the final baked goods didn’t turn out better than the last time at all. When my friends wanted to try it, I had to continuously remind them not to pay heed to the texture of what they are eating. And the picture  above is my attempt to salvage it by crushing the dough and mixing in baking powder, in the hopes that it will rise when I bake it, and failing with a substantial degree of epic-ness. The icing turned out great though — and totally saved the day — although anything with sugar and butter can’t really go wrong.

Anywho, my plan totally backfired on me, and now I have to deal with the aftermath of my attempts-to-realize-and-salvage-the-dreamy-breakfast-plan in the kitchen… I wish I was living with my parents and didn’t have to start baking breakfasts in batches in the first place…. bah!

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