Dear BIAT Revisited

About a month ago I published a post called Dear Baking. It was about some of the email  and messages I get and my attempt to answer them.

I got a lot of feedback on that post and many people thought that I should make it a regular feature. Well, I don’t know how regular it would be as the amount of email and private messages I get is not within my control. But I am at least able to do a second installment.

Once again the names have been changed to protect the innocent:

This was a comment on my FB wall from a kind reader who had my back concerning the recipe I posted for my Chocolate Toast Crunch Cups.

I was looking at your recipe and noticed that it said 12 cup of dark or semi-sweet chocolate chips . . . I know you mean 1/2 cup because all the others are 1/2 cup . . . but someone may not notice that . . .

My response:
Can you believe I proofread it? More than once?

And on to the private messages and email:

Dear Baking:
I saw your recipe for White Chocolate Blondies. I don’t have any white chocolate chips so do you think I could use regular chocolate chips? Please answer quickly because I wan to make them today.
In a Hurry

Dear In a Hurry:
I’m pretty sure those wouldn’t be White Chocolate Blondies. Can I recommend a recipe for Brownies?
Baking In A Tornado

Dear Baking for a Tornado:
I’m going to make your Strawberry Cheesecake Filled Strawberries. Yours uses a no-bake cheesecake filling. I make a delicious cheesecake so I thought I’d use my recipe and bake the cheesecake in the strawberries. I’ll let you know how it comes out in case you want to use the recipe.
Helpful Hannah

Dear Hannah:
I had to laugh when I saw your message. Although my blog name is Baking IN A Tornado not Baking FOR A Tornado, I have to admit that with 2 boys and their friends around, Baking FOR A Tornado could be a good name for what goes on around here.

As far as the recipe goes, I love changing recipes to fit our tastes. But if you’re going to put traditional cheesecake into strawberries and bake them, I have a sneaky suspicion that’s not going to turn out well.
Baking In (and for) A Tornado

S’more & Strawberry Skewers

Bake Lady:

I need you to settle a bet. My friend thinks your name is about baking but I think it’s about being “baked”. And do you have a recipe for any really special {wink, wink} brownies?

Smoking Joe

Dear Smoking Joe:

Listen carefully: Put down the matches and step away from the flammables.

Baking in A Tornado

Dear Baking In A Tornado:

My friend and I thought your Butterfingers Brownies recipe looked delicious so we decided to make it. But we ended up eating all the dough. It was amazing.

No Need to Bake

Dear No Need:

Is this Smoking Joe again?

And whoever you are, if you get a tummy ache it’s not my fault.

Baking In A Tornado

This last one is serious. I thought for over a month about whether or not to post this. It wasn’t an email or FB post, but a comment left on my blog. It’s my first mean comment ever and since I have Comment Moderation, no one saw it but me.

This comment was left anonymously on a post I called Comment Fail Jail. The piece was supposed to mostly be a humorous look at the absurd comments left by “bots” trying to get their links onto blogs.

I really had a hard time deciding what to do with this. I hosted an open discussion concerning rude comments on my FB page, ran the specifics of this one by some close blogging friends and wavered back and forth for quite some time. I wanted to delete it but I finally decided that I do want to address it. So here it is:

“The unfortunate part of looking for good recipes in the blogosphere is that sometimes you have to put up with the self righteous ranting’s of the blogger. I love your recipe’s but I could do without the “lessons” on how to be a good commenter. The simple fact is that if you don’t like what someone has to say then delete the comment and move on like everyone else does. And yes I am posting this anonymously. I do this simply because I don’t wish to be inundate with hate mail by you or any of your blogger friends”.

Dear Anonymous:

You missed the point. This post was not intended to be a lesson to my readers, for whom I am endlessly grateful. It’s supposed to be a humorous, tongue-in-cheek commentary on the spam left by bots just to get a link to their site onto a blog. This is why the 30 or so people who got the joke left comments speaking to the humor of the post and the inappropriate nature of robo-comments.

Anonymous or not, I would never inundate you or anyone else with hate mail. Further, I have the utmost respect for the maturity level of my blogger friends. We show support by building each other up, not by knocking others down.

For instance, I’m confident that if they were ever to even consider responding to you in any way, they wouldn’t even mention that you don’t know how to use an apostrophe.

S’more & Strawberry Skewers

                                     ©www.BakingInATornado.com

                                                                                                                                                     

 
Printable Recipe
 
Ingredients:
12  Marshmallows
1/2 bag (about 7 ounces) Chocolate candy melts
3/4 cup semi sweet or dark chocolate chips 
1 cup Graham cracker crumbs
Chocolate bars (I used milk chocolate and dark chocolate) broken into 24 pieces
12 Strawberries, rinsed and dried well

~Supplies: Skewers, Parchment paper
~Note: you will need to decide if you want to cut the green off of the strawberries or not. If you do, they’ll be easier to eat but will need to be eaten sooner as the strawberry “juice” will leak onto the plate.
 
Directions:
*Mix chocolate candy melts and chocolate chips and melt according to candy melt package directions.
*Dip a marshmallow partly into the melted chocolate (immerse about 1/3 of the marshmallow). Let excess chocolate drip off then immediately dip into graham cracker crumbs. Place onto parchment paper until chocolate sets.
*Repeat with all marshmallows. Once set, repeat with the other side of each marshmallow.
*Dip each strawberry into melted chocolate (immerse about 1/2 of the strawberry). Let the excess chocolate drip off. Place onto parchment paper until chocolate sets.
*Once everything is set, thread a strawberry onto each skewer. Top with a piece of chocolate, a marshmallow and  another piece of chocolate.
*Store in the fridge and bring to room temperature before serving.