So, I stumbled across this phrase somewhere online, or maybe it just popped into my head: “Zendaya baked.” You know, Zendaya. She seems like one of those folks who can just effortlessly nail anything, looking incredibly cool while doing it. I pictured her whipping up some gourmet cookies, looking flawless, probably while writing a movie script and figuring out global economics all at the same time.
It’s a funny thought, right? Because, let me tell you, when I step into the kitchen to bake, it’s a completely different ball game. It’s less “effortless chic” and more “did a flour hurricane just pass through here?”
That One Time I Tried to Be a Baker
This whole “Zendaya baked” idea really threw me back to this one particular weekend. I got this sudden, powerful urge to bake something from scratch. I think I’d been watching one of those cooking shows where the chef makes everything look so simple, so achievable. “Okay,” I thought to myself, “how tough can it really be?” Famous last words, my friends. Famous last words.
I decided to tackle brownies. A classic, right? Supposed to be pretty much foolproof. That’s the word they use: foolproof. Well, clearly, the term hadn’t accounted for me and my unique kitchen talents.
First, I gathered all the ingredients. Or, what I believed to be all the necessary ingredients.
- Flour? Got it.
- Sugar? Present.
- Cocoa powder? Uh oh. I only had this fancy hot chocolate mix. Figured it was close enough. Spoiler: it wasn’t.
- Eggs? Yep, rounded those up.
- Butter? Check. Though I might have overdone it a bit in the microwave while melting it. It was looking a little… aggressive.
The mixing process was where the real adventure began. The recipe calmly instructed me to “gently fold” the ingredients together. My interpretation of “gently fold” was, shall we say, more energetic. More like “wrestle the batter into a state of reluctant cooperation.” The resulting mixture looked… interesting. A bit lumpy, a bit pale, and definitely not the rich, decadent brown I’d seen in the recipe photos.
Anyway, I poured this questionable concoction into the pan and slid it into the oven. I set the timer, feeling a strange mix of apprehension and misplaced pride. “Zendaya probably doesn’t make this much mess,” I muttered, wiping a smear of batter from my eyebrow.
After a while, a smell started to drift from the oven. It wasn’t quite the mouth-watering chocolate aroma I’d fantasized about. It was more… a toasty, slightly焦 (jiāo – burnt, but I’ll use English) sugar smell with a hint of something unidentifiable. Not entirely unpleasant, but not promising either.
When the timer finally dinged, I eagerly pulled the pan out. What I saw wasn’t exactly brownies. It was more like a flat, surprisingly hard, somewhat chocolate-ish… slab. You could have probably used it to patch a hole in the wall. No kidding.
My wife walked in, took one look at my creation, then at my flour-dusted face, and just slowly raised an eyebrow. She didn’t say a word. The silence spoke volumes.
We ended up getting takeout that evening. And I spent a good chunk of the night engaged in an epic battle, scrubbing what felt like hardened volcanic rock off the baking pan.
So yeah, “Zendaya baked.” Good on her. She probably has a whole team to make sure everything turns out perfect, or at least to clean up any culinary disasters. Me? I learned that “foolproof” is often a dare, not a description. And perhaps, just perhaps, I should leave the baking to the professionals and stick to admiring Zendaya’s many actual talents from a safe distance. Maybe just buy my brownies from the shop next time.
It’s funny, though. Even after that, every so often, I still get that little itch to try baking again. Maybe next time I’ll aim for something simpler. Like… making toast. Surely, I can’t mess up toast. Right? Don’t answer that.
