Pastries from Hell

After finding a GF recipe, I went to bed Tuesday night thinking about croissants. Craving croissants. I dreamt about croissants (this is not a joke). I woke up to a puking dog at 3 am Wednesday morning, and thought about croissants. Cleaning puke quickly wiped the reverie from my brain. I went back to bed, and then woke up for the final time at 7:30 am. Guess what I was thinking about.

I got ready and jetted over to the grocery store for some baking supplies. I couldn’t find xanthan gum (What grocer doesn’t have xanthan gum?), but I read that gelatin can be a substitute for it. I figured it would be fine.  I got home, and went straight to work on my fluffy pastries of the French gods. I then came to the shocking realization that the cream cheese was MIA. This is a once-in-a-lifetime thing- we ALWAYS have cream cheese.

Substitutions and recipe tweaks are my specialty, so and used cottage cheese in place of the cream cheese. Maybe I was blinded with hope, but I really thought they would turn out. After letting the dough cool, I took to rolling. To my dismay, it started sticking to the parchment paper, tearing, crumbling, and doing everything else that can screw up dough. I rolled it, added flour, added and egg, added more flour, which seemed to add some cohesiveness to the mixture.

Dough refusing to be rolled

So sad. 

I rolled it out again for the millionth time, and made my little croissants. They were the saddest looking things I have ever seen.

Observe: cracked, gooey, lumpy. 

I cooked them and they smelled delish (at least). When they emerged, my disappointment turned to frustration. 

Ugly, dense piles of crap.

No fluffiness. I didn’t expect it, but nevertheless. I ate two small ones. They tasted great, but I was disgusted. They were crunchy bread rolls parading around as croissants. Gah. I refused to eat any more. My family raved over the little imposters, but I was angry with them. I disowned them. I no longer claimed them as my creations.

It was a major fail on my part. Baking is clearly not my forte. I have major issues with following directions. I bring my cooking creativity and free-spiritedness to the baking which, apparently, doesn't go over well. I plan on trying to make these things again using a different recipe and following directions to a T. I am too depressed to try any time soon…

I’ll probably get more ingredients tomorrow…