The first of my many 'creative cooking' disasters came when I had been married 2 months and made my first pumpkin pie. When everything was mixed, I realized that I owned no cinnamon. The only thing cinnamon flavored in our apartment was a roll of hard candies. I mashed them up and added them to the batter then cut back on the sugar to compensate. Don't do this if you ever run out of cinnamon. Neither my husband nor my children, who weren't even there, have ever let me forget it 47 years later! I'm guessing the candies were a little bit, um, overpowering? S

• Reply