Sunday, April 16, 2006

Recipe Feedback Etiquette

So... here's a silly etiquette question. I've had a recipe I saw in the Christmas IMBB cookie round up bookmarked on my to-do list forever! Its a gorgeous cookie, looks dreamy and uses interesting ingredients I have never used in cookies before.

I just made up the recipe and it is horrible. Even the batter sucks (yucky gritty texture). Its not that I mis-measured an ingredient... it seems to be that the main ingredient is just not suitable for making cookies. And I wasted four eggs on this, which gives me slight grumblies.

I live in fear of this happening with the recipes I post on my site. However, its a good fear- it keeps my recipe writing honest.

So Miss Culinary Manners, would leaving a questioning comment on the original post about the cookies (from eons ago) be appropriate, or should I just drop it and move on?

This post was written by McAuliflower of Brownie Points

10 comments:

Amy Sherman said...

Mistakes happen. I once left the oven temperature off a recipe. Fortunately a comment alerted me to the oversight.

I would see if you could contact the recipe writer by email first. They might not even see the comment at this point. But I would say something, I'd rather know that someone had a problem with one of my recipes than just think all my recipes are crap.

Jennifer said...

If it was my recipe I'd want to know. But like Amy, I'd probably go the email route first.

Jocelyn:McAuliflower said...

Thanks- that is a good option. My head wasn't plugged into it yet.

Ziz said...

If I make another bloggers recipe and it turns out badly..I just don't blog about it and let it go.

I tend to lean towards guessing that something must have gone awry on my end.

Unless I am dying to try it out again I don't think I'd bother emailing or leaving any comments. But that is just me. ;)

Cindy said...

Once I made a "marbré" from another blogger. Everybody said it was the best marbré they ever ate whereas I thought it was the most disgusting cake I ever ate. I just let it go, perhaps I made a mistake, perhaps not.
If you think something is wrong in the recipe then you should email that person, but if not just let it go. In any case, better send an email first.

Anonymous said...

I'd definitely want to know. It's entirely possible, despite proofreading, to have posted a wrong quantity, or left an ingredient out, or even, for some offbeat reason, have totally written in the wrong ingredient. Sometimes we're writing our posts at 3 in the morning after a couple of glasses of wine, one never knows!

kitchenmage said...

I'd want to know, although probably in mail to start. It also depends on whether its an original recipe of mine or something from a book. I can't recall ever making a Martha recipe that I liked--even though I have liked a lot of her presentation ideas.

OTOH, I recently picked up a copy of Donna Hay magazine and was totally underwhelmed. I'm planning on posting about that, but with an admitted 'maybe it's because I'm not an Aussie' tone.

As a professional writer, I think people have the right to have opinions about my writing, and to express those opinions. I also recognize that my professional writing has lots of other professionals working on it so it should be better than my blogging and thus handle to stand up to more critique. Especially when it comes to well-defined processes (recipes, troubleshooting steps, etc)

Susan in Italy said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Ed Tep said...

I like the direct email suggestion as a first step. But I actually do like to hear comments (both positive and negative) back from folks who've actually tried making one of my posts. There are always ways to phrase comments nicely/constructively.

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