Mistakes - it's what you learn from.

It turns out that I am an amateur baker after all - prey to the foibles of my random kitchen and appliances.

I recently made a Concord Grape Tart - the photo of which I fell in love with during my perusal of the last Martha Stewart Living magazine I received. I imagined a golden brown crust with the royal purple fruit filling bubbling through and then the taste would be a concentrated grape jelly enveloped in a crisp, buttery crust.

What ended up happening was that I got impatient. The recipe, although extremely simple, called for a lot of prep and cook time. There was boiling, and straining and cooling and stirring of the Concord grape filling. Then the crust – well let’s say after I had to put the damn things in the freezer for a third time, I had enough.

I stirred my filling one last time, I removed my crust semi-frozen, put everything together and plopped the darn thing in the oven.

40 minutes later, what I pulled out of the oven was a far cry from what the picture promised. I had a pale, listless crust with the filling oozing all over the place. The taste was too sweet for my palette and even when completely cooled, the filling refused to remain jellied.

So what did I learn? I learned that in my quest for simple recipes that anyone can whip up in an hour or so, I’ve forgotten that sometimes, you need to spend time with your recipe in order for it to turn out perfect.

Haste, in this case, did make waste.