Baking Fails

My friend invited me to her tea party and I planned to bring a baked treat.  Well, I didn't end up bringing anything because I had a baking FAIL!  I told my friend what happened and she said that she never knew me to fail.  So I thought I'd post all my fails (or at least the ones I captured, because there's been a lot!).

Let's start with what I had planned to bring to the tea party.  It was supposed to be a malt blondie with ganache swirls.  These (below) are not blondies.  They were more like dense cakes with chocolate on top.  No swirls, not chewy, dry, and no malt flavor.  FAIL!  I froze them and sneak them into the boyfriend's lunchbox.

  

Next up, what was supposed to be a sourdough rye.  I was soooo excited about this bread because it used a sourdough starter.  Well, after the final rise of 8 hours, I was supposed to bake it, but I had to go to work, so I just put it in the fridge.  When I came home, it had deflated.  I baked it and as you can see below, it didn't rise.  Maybe if I brought it to room temperature before baking?  The bread tasted great, it was just a bit dense.

The day came when I wanted to make macarons.  For my Dad's birthday, I wanted to make something without butter, so I opted to make coffee macarons with ganache filling.  I was so confident that I would knock these out of the park (French macarons are hard and they have whole classes devoted to teaching the technique? Pshhh, I can totally do it the first time).  WRONG.  I think I babied the batter and didn't stir it enough because the batter was stiff and no feet formed.  The final product was pretty tasty (better than ones I've bought!) and my Dad seemed to like them, but it was still a FAIL. I'll definitely try again!

Finally, my most recent fail.  For Mother's day, I wanted to make my mom loaves of fluffy milk bread with swirls of red bean and taro paste.  Well, the loaves turned out dense and not at all fluffy. I realized the yeast was dead and I had overworked the dough.  FAIL! I still gave it to my mom though.

Fail on the left.  What it's supposed to look like on the right.

Hopefully, I'll have better luck next time!