I Made A Thing

This is the part where you’re probably expecting that I made a thing out of paper and words and stuff, and you’d be wrong.

I made this:

This is a thing.

So I’m a fan of the Great British Baking Show. It’s wholesome and pure, which is something this world greatly needs. People doing cool shit for no other reason than to get props for being cool at shit, and everyone being super nice and helpful along the way? Sign me up all day. But it also means that I, a person who should’ve probably bought shares in Kraft because of all the Mac and Cheese I’ve eaten over the years, suddenly has dreams of being a baker.

I made puff pastry, you guys. Not even rough puff. Full puff. That’s commitment. And brave. Or stupid, considering it took me four fricking hours. But it was good! Flaky, buttery, crisp. I had lamination coming out of my ears. You bakers out there—you are my people now, hi—know what that means. It’s cool. Especially for a first try.

But you have to have stuff to put in the pastry because otherwise it’s just a bunch of butter paper, and that’s lacking in potential awesome, so I went through my budget cookbook until I found a moderately-vague recipe that called for puff pastry. The cookbook boldly assumed that I knew the difference between jam and jelly, and so I turned to the internet for help with definitions and steps and stuff.

And herein lay the heretofore unexpected drama.

It turns out that what I ended up making was a Bakewell thing. I say Bakewell because that’s apparently what British people call stuff that “bakes” “well” and has “almond” “stuff” and “possibly” “fruit” that might be “cherry” or “something else” but it’s probably in “jam” form, which may or may not have “chunks.” Maybe. I say “thing” because judging from the comments on multiple blogs that I read over the weekend, British people will apparently shank you if you confuse a Bakewell pudding with a Bakewell tart, a serious situation that is complicated by the fact that no one can seem to agree on a definition for either. Other than that a random chick named Allison was deeply offended that Mary Berry put icing on hers on The Great British Baking Show, because icing is apparently “not” a “part” of a “bake” “well” of “any form” that “Allison” has “ever heard of.”

I AM NOT GOING TO REVEAL THE COOKBOOK’S NAME. I DO NOT WANT TO BE RESPONSIBLE FOR SOME POOR BAKER GETTING HATE MAIL ABOUT THIS IN CASE ANY OF YOU ARE BRITISH. SUFFICE TO SAY THAT AFTER ALL OF MY READING, I’M 64% SURE THAT 50% OF THE PEOPLE IN BRITAIN WILL THINK SHE MADE IT 43% WRONG AND WILL BE REALLY SURPRISINGLY ODDLY MAD ABOUT IT.

I suspect the actual answer is that a pudding is whatever the fuck your grandma called a pudding, and a tart is what your grandma called that girl walking by with your crush.

HA. A joke! It was cheap, I’ll admit. Just like that tart kissing up to the hottie you like. Boom! Another tasteless joke! I’m on fire today.

Not gonna lie, Stitch is my spirit animal. Take from that what you will.

Anyway, I made a thing that might be a pudding or it might be a tart, and either way, it looked fugly and got all sunken in the middle within a few minutes of coming out of the oven and the pastry ended up looking sort of like a throwing star—which is a point in its favor, as I see it, ha, point, get it—and it wobbled ominously, but it tasted delicious. My husband and I ate the whole thing standing up in the kitchen, toasty hot with vanilla ice cream and then we didn’t go to a movie after all because we felt sick from eating too much.

I also made danishes with the leftover pastry. I’m not including a picture because they looked like something out of that scene from Alien. You know the one. And if you don’t, seriously, your pop culture cred is so sad. Even Spider-Man knows that movie and he’s nine. Or seven. I forget. If you look at the face of the guy who plays the current Spider-Man, he looks like a toddler. Did you know Tom Holland is British?

I wonder if he puts icing on his tarts. I hope not. “Allison” would be so offended.