This is a humbling post, but I submit to you that even supposed “semi-pro” bakers can have off days, read recipes incorrectly, and hare off madly in all directions which leads to…interesting results. Sometimes these results are exciting, new ideas and “tweaks” on tried and true recipes, and sometimes, well, they’re just wrong.

Recently, a good friend and I wanted to fart around in the kitchen and make something tasty she had seen on YouTube (red flag #1, _^hahaha); I said sure why not? I’m always up for a challenge! My friend LOVES cinnamon rolls and apple pie, so when she saw this mashup by YouTube channel Twisted of both of these desserts in one, she thought it would be fun to replicate. Here is the YT link to the recipe (#1 of 11): Twisted: 11 Easy Apple Dessert Recipes

First of all, I want to make clear that this review is more of what we did wrong, and not actually any fault of the recipe or the channel itself, despite the bad reputation that YT recipe videos often garner; UK-based website and food channel Twisted‘s got some serious game, and I heart their videos. Had we made the recipe as stated, it likely would have come out perfectly. Sadly, in our rush to get things done, neither of us watched the video fully while making notes, or critically analyzed any variation in what we thought the recipe was to what it actually was. This is simply a fancy way of saying we dun goofed. Still tastes good, but, well…she gots the oogly. ;P

Here is a description of the three things we did wrong in recreating this recipe, with the hope that you can learn from our mistakes.

Mistake #1: not reading the recipe thoroughly. Yeah. Read your recipes at least twice, folks. Had we done this simple thing, we would have realized the recipe didn’t call for puff pastry, but simple premade pie dough. This mattered because we were rolling out the puff pastry dough sheets thinly to get the dimensions we needed. This had the following consequences:

• the dough’s layers were thinly squashed together, which
• made the crusts too thin to spread properly and fill gaps, and
• was unable to support the weight of the apples and top crust, which
• made the pies too greasy from the layers of butter trapped between the layers of dough [ya know, like *puff pastry*], and worst of all
• negated the use of 2 boxes of expensive puff pastry in the first place.

Mistake #2: not setting up our mise en place. Less of an issue with this recipe, but still a goof. Setting up ingredients in their appropriate quantities before proceeding with the recipe would have not only made our process less “freeform” (read: chaotic), but we would likely have read our recipe at least once more and may have caught our translating error (see Mistake #1).

Mistake #3: not greasing the pans. This was a big booboo. These little guys (especially the toffee-covered pies), stuck into the muffin cups like it was their dang job, and it was a humungous effort to remove them in anything resembling one piece before they cooled down and glued themselves in there permanently. Had I thought to grease and flour the pans properly or at the very least pan spray them, the results may not have been so bad. I also now have many deep scratches in my muffin cups, which means I’ll likely have to use cupcake liners from now on.

So learn from us, folks, and follow these simple, first-year-basic commonsense instructions on how to bake (or in our case, how NOT to bake).