Big Baking Blunder

 Have you ever had one?

Sunday for a family dinner I made a Huguenot Torte from Stephen Colbert's cookbook, "Does This Taste Funny?"  I had made this once before after having it at the Cookbook Club dinner in the spring.

The recipe calls for one large granny smith apple but I had three small pears just ripe that I decided to substitute for the apple.  I sliced them up and placed them in a large but not my extra large pie plate.  Now the recipe says to use a 9" x 12" casserole. Somehow in my head I figured the torte was going to be smaller with the pears.  First mistake.

I beat the 4 eggs, added the sugar, chopped almonds, almond extract, the the flour, salt and the baking powder.  Quite a bit of the latter is called for.  I think you can see where this is going.

I poured the mixture over the pears and it immediately it started going over the sides of the pie plate.  I attempted to scoop some off but my second mistake was not dumping the whole thing into a bigger casserole. Instead I placed my larger pie plate under it so it nested.

Into the oven it went.  I placed sheets of foil on the shelf under the torte and could hear it plunking there as it heated up.

Close to the time to pull it out, I pulled out the foil because I didn't want the mounds of overflow to burn. I put another sheet of foil under it.  More came off.  I tasted one of the mounds and it was delicious. Dan thought so too.

When the torte was done the overflow ran down the outside of the pie plate.

I served it with whipped cream and all agreed it was delicious. Next time I'll use my large casserole dish!

What was your baking blunder?