"mistake" news and stories

Alanna tipped me off to a cute story about a cook and a cake, and what happens when you make a mistake in the kitchen:

There are some ingredients that aren't supposed to go into cakes, but accidents happen. For example, too much salt could stirred into a batter or some of the flour could be left out. When things like this happen, there are people who simply can't bring themselves to waste the cake. They eat it anyway and, once in a while, it turns out better than expected.

The woman in the story was making a chocolate cake for her garlic-loving husband as a followup to a garlic-filled meal. Since she was cooking and baking at the same time, she accidentally knocked a container of powdered garlic into the cake batter. After scooping out as much as she could, she decided to bake the cake anyway and served it, frosted, to family and friends at dinner. They raved over how "unusual" the cake was, even though there was a flavor that no one could seem to identify.

While I don't get the impression that the cook was planning to make any more garlicky cakes, her husband "ate every bite of the leftover garlic chocolate cake by himself  - with great gusto." So if you're a garlic fan, you might actually enjoy this mistake.  The cake was a "wacky" cake, rich and moist on its own, but if you want to try to get the garlic variation, you'll have to experiment yourself.

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An article in today's USA Today discusses how dieters face many pitfalls when shopping for diet-friendly foods in the grocery store, because there seems to be some confusion over what constitutes diet-friendly, "health" food.

Notice that I said "health" and "diet-friendly," as opposed to simply healthy foods. This is because the article isn't about increasing the proportion of nutritious foods like fruits and vegetables in the diet. It's about how dieters who eat things like YoCrunch's fun yogurts fail to loose weight. YoCrunch is a brand of low fat yogurt that comes with mix-ins that include crushed Oreo cookies, M&Ms and Reeses Pieces.

I'll venture out on a limb here and say that the dieters who believe that eating any product with candy mixed into is a "healthy" thing to eat are fooling themselves. Just because the yogurt is low fat, that doesn't mean that the crushed-up candy is, too. And beyond that, pretending that it is a "health food" is just silly. Is a product like YoCrunch better than, say, a deep fried Snicker's bar? Of course, but if that's your dieting criteria, you might have to reconsider before you actually lose any weight.

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The executives at Dunkin' Donuts are considering dropping the word "Donuts" from their sign, rechristening the popular chain "Dunkin'" to reflect their expanded offerings. They seem to feel that potential customers might be confused by the name, thinking that the shop offers only donuts.

Personally, I think that this would be a huge mistake on the part of the company. Over the years, they have built a successful brand that has a tremendous amount of name recognition. Not only does such a move reflect poorly on the perception of the intelligence of the customers, but it is just plain silly. Burger King has not dropped the "burger" from its name, despite the fact that it offers sandwiches and salads. And why not? Because they are most famous for their burgers, just like Dunkin' Donuts is most famous for their donuts.

Their new "America runs on Dunkin'" ad campaign might be a first attempt to see how people will respond to a shortened name.