In the beginning there was the CHERRY RICOTTA STRUDEL

I love to cook and I love to experiment with new recipes but I cannot count the amount of times that I have followed a recipe and have ended up with complete disasters.
Like the time I decided to cook Cherry & Ricotta Strudel from a magazine recipe. I read it through thoroughly before I began. I made sure I had all the ingredients to hand:- it looked simple, it looked yummy but it ended up in the bin.
You see, (this recipe in particularly helped in my discovery of this) some recipes are based on a level of presumed knowledge. Unfortunately, on this particular day, I did not have said knowledge. In my defence I did note that the cherry ricotta mixture looked a tad runny at the time but I rechecked the recipe and I appeared to be right on track. . .until the moment that I placed the mixture onto the pastry which was artfully(if I say so myself) placed on my chopping board. For a moment the mixture behaved as it should and sat in a blob in the centre of the pastry, but I turned away to check the recipe for a split second only to turn back, and to my horror, saw sticky, cherry, ricotta goo ooze over the pastry and begin to slide off my chopping board. I tried spooning some of the mixture back into my mixing bowl but I wasn't working fast enough! I abandonned the spoon and raced to the sink for a dishcloth so that I could mop it up. The goo was working its way down the front of my kitchen cabinets. Would it ever stop!
Yes it did, but it managed to reach my floor before I could get it under control. Since the goo actually tasted nice I decided to continue with my receipe and, after great difficulty rolling my strudel, I managed to get it onto a tray and into the oven.
But my strudel was not done with me yet! It continued to ooze the entire time that it was in the oven- off the edge of the tray and onto the base of my freshly cleaned oven. ( I hate cleaning my oven and, as a result, it doesn't get cleaned very often) so I was not very impressed with my strudel, nor the recipe or the person who wrote the recipe in the first place.
When I called a friend to commiserate over my cooking disaster she informed me, in between wiping away tears of laughter, that Ricoota comes in different consistencies. Apparently some Ricottas are exceptionally runny. I know that NOW!
So this blog is dedicated to all the recipes that I will continue to experiment with- the ones that work and the ones that fail miserably- hopefully more of the former- so that I can share the fun, the frustration and the joy of cooking with other likeminded people.