Sometimes the best-laid plans can go awry. Plans to beat back the Calamity go down the tubes as it usurps the technology of the Sheikah and uses it to lay waste to the kingdom. Recipes can go wrong, too. The simplest lists of ingredients and steps can turn into a disaster unlike any your kitchen has ever seen before, so begins the story of The Great Hot Buttered Apple Calamity.
After having great success with cooking and baking Zelda-themed recipes from The Legend’s Cookbook for my family, I was pretty confident about my chances of success when my wife asked me to make her the hot buttered apples. I perused the recipe, and it seemed pretty easy. I cut the apples and cored them with all the skill of Link wielding the Master Sword. I simmered the apples with the cinnamon and other ingredients to make a sauce. I hummed to myself while imagining the deliciousness that awaited. Butter was mixed with cinnamon to stick in the cored apple. All the pieces of the plan were coming together. That’s right when it all fell apart.
I took the skillet with the sliced apples, cored apple, and cinnamon sauce mixture and reached down with one hand to open the oven. One hand was not enough. I had misjudged how much the skillet weighed and calamity ensued. The pan tipped to the side, spilling some of the cinnamon sauce into the oven. Smoke began to billow out from where it came into contact with the hot metal, ruining the pristine (well, at least mostly clean) surface just as much as the ruined Hyrule Castle. In my haste to keep any more of the sauce from tipping out, I quickly titled the pan to the other side. Streams of sauce shot like Malice from the pan and corrupted various dishes and parts of the counter with its sugary slime. My hand became another casualty of the disaster as some of the blazing sauce spilled out and burned it. The great plan of hot buttered apples seemed ruined. All seemed lost.
Of course, nothing is ever really lost when a hero (or cook) decides to keep going. I salvaged the rest of the sauce, let it cool and put it in the fridge, and set to work. I opened the windows and forced the calamitous smoke out. I began to clean the oven, scouring the sickening sweet malice away with some water and scrubber. It took a while (not quite 100 years), but I eventually could turn the oven back on and resume my recipe. With two hands, I put the skillet into the oven, and the dish baked. A short amount of time later, I plated the dish and drizzled the sauce that had blistered my hand onto the apples.
Sometimes disaster can seem to destroy a kingdom (or recipe). It can leave things smoking and sticky. Even then, my experience making this recipe reminded me that while things won’t always go perfectly, victory can still be achieved with a little bit of cleanup and a little bit more work. As I watched my wife try the hot buttered apples that threatened to doom my day, she smiled and that made the entire journey worth it. Oh, the recipe also reminded me of another lesson: always use two hands when putting things into the oven.
