This past weeks P&Q irritated me. In fact, I stopped reading comments because many folks were not being… for lack of a better word.. nice. P&Q is a place to address problems and questions about the week’s chosen recipe. It is not a place to bash a recipe because you do not like how it turned out, or worse, just don’t like the choice in general.
Please keep your comments respectful. Its okay to say you didnt like something. But, leave it at that, please. I do not want to start moderating comments, but I will if I have to.
Play nice kids.
Thanks,
Laurie
Tuesdays with Dorie 
Are we allowed to say hey I didn’t like this because it was too eggy and is not recommended for those who don’t like flan? I didn’t read all of the comments, so I’m not sure which comments you are referring to. I didn’t comment nor participate, but I thought the heads up on the egginess was nice.
I actually enjoyed reading the comments. It helped me know what to expect and helped me modify the recipe (increasing lemon zest).
I didn’t think the comments were bad…then again maybe one of the ones you are talking about was mine. :( Sorry if I offended.
I made this (twice!) the other night (the first time I doubled the almond meal by mistake.) I used cooking spray instead of butter to coat the pan. Big mistake…the bottom of the first loaf stuck in the pan. Lesson 1: BUTTER the pan. Lesson 2: the oil needs to be stirred in really well so it emulsifies. The reipe is on Epicurious with lots of posters saying they cut the oil to 1/3 of a cup. Lesson 3: this was SO MUCH better on the second and especially third day. I would wrap it up and let it sit out on your counter and enjoy it on the second or third day. I didn’t go with the orange marmalade, I made lemon curd instead and served the cake with a puddle of lemon curd. Yumbaroo!
I was a little put out with all the whining and complaining about prunes and alcohol. Isn’t the point of this exercise to stretch our boundaries?
I don’t have a blog but I’m faithfully following along each week and a lot of my friends are grateful AND intrigued. I expect some to be ordering their own book soon.
Thank you for creating this food trip!
I agree with Kathleen; it is useful to know both the good and the bad results. If I make something that turns out eggy, isn’t it reassuring to know it’s as a result of the recipe’s desired outcome, not my technique? It seems to me that the lemon custard recipe complaints were very different from the rather annoying prune and alcohol whining. In the case of the prunes/alcohol, the ingredients themselves were off-putting. When you look at the recipe and don’t like the ingredients, you should either make it see what happens or bow out with grace. In the case of the lemon custard, the results of the recipe were off-putting, which puts the complaints in an entirely different context. Most cooks could not have foreseen the results; the comments provided information, not mere opinion. And, moreover, people were really pretty well-mannered when voicing their negative comments about the lemon custard. However, the whole alcohol/prune controversy came across as childish and sort of naive.
In my case, I found the comments so overwhelmingly negative that I had to try it, because it seems the general run of the group is chocolate loving, while I am not. I loved the recipe and will make it again, so I’m glad that the comments were amotivator!
Kay, some of us have legitimate reasons for avoiding alcohol. To call that childish, annoying or whining is a little insensitive. Others of us do want to stretch our skills but were a little scared of starting a fire in their kitchen or didn’t have it in their budgets to buy an expensive ingredient they may not use again. Please understand that we are all coming from different experiences and have different skill sets. The beauty of the P&Q is that we are able to exchange ideas and other posters suggest modifications that enable us to tweak it in a way that we can still make the recipe. That’s one reason (I thought) that there is a P&Q–it’s for Problems & Questions.
Im sorry but real custard IS ‘eggy’. Thats how REAL custard is. Maybe people dont realize this. I do think the comments became snarky an insulting. Its one thing to say you didnt like it because you dont like custard. Its another to go into detail just how much you hated it. Thats recipe bashing. I wont have it. This club is about having fun with the ones we like and the ones we dislike.
Imagine the Lemon Cup Custard recipe was a recipe YOU had written and then read the comments.
You are correct that the P&Q the week before was no better. Im hoping people will snap out of the whining and bashing. Otherwise, I will moderate comments. That wont be good for anyone, bc I simply have no time to do it.
If you need help LW, I will gladly lend a helping hand.
I will respect your wishes LW because you run this group and that’s how it works. I am British born and this particular recipe is nothing like the custard I ate as a child. It had a much firmer texture, more like a gelatin than a pudding. I was happy to read the comments simply because the results I got were not what I thought they would be. However I was relieved to read the comments and see it wasn’t just me. On the other hand, if I were Dorie reading some of the comments I could see how it would be difficult. Not sure if my post was an offensive one, but if it was I apologize to Dorie for that. I’ll be more careful in my posting from here on out.
I’ve recently had several long discussions at school (this is what you get for going to library school) about the up and down sides of internet anonymity, and I just wanted to say that regardless of anyone’s opinion about the actual nature of the comments under discussion, I’m really gratified that the TWD community is willing to have a thoughtful, polite, and intelligent discussion of the issue. Thanks, guys, for valuing courtesy on both sides of the discussion, it’s very unusual.
i have the french yogurt cake in the oven now…. I am so excited. I followed Dorie’s reciepe exactly and the batter tasted like perfection before cooking. Seriously, I am SO excited that this was 1 bowl. I whipped it up so fast, it smells so heavenly…..just a few minutes left then lemoney sunshine, I know it! I am going to use apricot preserves on the top…yay!
kat – I made the lemon cake two weeks ago and it was Heaven!!