Share your cooking disasters

Well, there was the time I made a double batch of cranberry muffins and forgot to double the sugar, and to make it worse I was going home for the weekend so brought some of the muffins for my family to try (not realizing my foul-up; I guess I hadn't had one yet)--my sisters gave me all sorts of grief for that one!! That's my biggest cooking fiasco. There was also the time I was making the cranberry salad for Thanksgiving and mixed the jello in cold instead of hot water so it didn't jell too well, but it still tasted fine. One year my mom forgot the sugar in the pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving, and didn't figure it out until we all took a bite and it was bad!! She couldn't believe she did that--oops!

You have fulfilled my expectations, gals. These are some funny stories.
In keeping with my aunt's brownies disasters, I myself am a bit notorious for chocolate mistakes.

There was the time we wanted a christmas cake, and discovered on Christmas Day that we didn't have enough flour. I assure you, corn meal is not an acceptable substitute. Only our daughter (4 yrs that year) ate the resulting chocolate corn bread.

I'd heard a spoonful of cocoal powder added to chili makes a great chili recipe. Perhaps a smaller spoonful...my ex-brother-in-law still remembers my chocolate chili.

I tried making a cake for the hubby years ago. I mixed the batter and poured it in to the pan. Yes, single pan. I didn't realized it needed to go in two (duh, it's a layer cake). So after the time was up I open the over and it's still not done. Then when I go to check it again it looks like a volcano...it rose in the center, cracked, and then the uncooked batter oozed out like lava. So, I left it in for a while longer, frosted it and voila! a really dense birthday cake. Hubby was nice enough to eat a whole slice. I have yet to redeem myself :eek:

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Originally Posted by Drtgirl

I tried making a cake for the hubby years ago. I mixed the batter and poured it in to the pan. Yes, single pan. I didn't realized it needed to go in two (duh, it's a layer cake). So after the time was up I open the over and it's still not done. Then when I go to check it again it looks like a volcano...it rose in the center, cracked, and then the uncooked batter oozed out like lava. So, I left it in for a while longer, frosted it and voila! a really dense birthday cake. Hubby was nice enough to eat a whole slice. I have yet to redeem myself :eek:

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That reminds me of last year's birthday cake for my daughter. The two layers looked more like domes. I should have cut off a bit on the bottom layer so the top layer would sit evenly. But I didn't. I got it all put together and frosted, and came back later to see the top layer perched on the dome of the bottom layer had broken into pieces.

I washed a ~5" plastic triceratops and stuck it in the middle, with squiggly candles all around. It looked like the dinosaur was erupting out of the cake. It also looked like I'd meant to do it that way. Of course, everyone knows me better than that!

1. Hard corn taco shells are flammable. Very flammable. One lost toaster oven and one drained fire extinguisher later....

2. Brownie mix is very difficult to get off of a ceiling.

3. It is possible to burn couscous.

4. The lever on the stove starts the cleaning process. Best not to engage that when cooking cupcakes.

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Originally Posted by berkeley

1. Hard corn taco shells are flammable. Very flammable. One lost toaster oven and one drained fire extinguisher later....

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LOL...my roommate has a similar story!! We still have a cookie sheet with burnt-taco-shell imprints on it.

I write a cooking and lifestyle column for our local newspaper. A couple of years ago at Christmas I decided to make a little gingerbread house for the boys. I had made one years ago. We went and picked out all of the candy they wanted to use. I baked the simple little house and began to assemble. The roof caved in and then the walls followed suit. My DH told the boys that as we live in Arkansas, it had been hit by a tornado. (funny man). The boys promptly went to school and told EVERYONE about it. Needless to say, this year I chickened out and bought the kit. They were just as happy!

We just had a cooking disaster!!!
I call it "Boiling oil and exploding glass"
The title sounds more exciting than the adventure was. No ambulence, no injuries, nothing ruined but 3 cups of oil and an old grease jar.

I should have known better because I saw hot grease break a jar when I was a kid. After that my parents always put a metal spoon against the jar when they poured the grease into it...now that I think about it I'm not sure what that was supposed to accomplish.

My husband was trying out a recipe from Cook's Illustrated--Orange Chicken. We don't have a deep fryer. We don't have a candy thermometer. We have an instant read meat thermometer. And a sauce pan. And a stove. He turned the burner on high and stood over the pan, putting the thermometer in periodically waiting for it to go up. Naturally it skyrocketed and he turned the stove down and waited for it to go down. And waited. And waited. The oil by this time was brown and smelled funny. I said "It's burnt. You need to start over."

He got out a jar. I said "Put it in the sink." Holding the pan as far away from me as I could, I started to pour the oil into the jar.

KABLAM

I stopped pouring the oil quick and backed away. Then I put the pan into the other sink and surveyed the mess. There was oil everywhere. There was broken glass but only in the sink. No one even got burnt.

Eventually the smoke cleared from the room. The sink and the oil and the glass cooled enough that we could pick the glass out of it. The wood cabinets looked better than ever after I wiped the oil off them. Apparently burnt peanut oil is good for wood cabinets. I highly recommend it. The floor hadn't been mopped in an embarrassingly long time so it was all the better for getting cleaned up too.

The Orange Chicken tasted awfully good. I suggested however that we not attempt that recipe again. At least not until we acquire a deep fryer, which I really don't want because we don't need to be eating deep fried food that often and we don't have room for yet another kitchen appliance.

My Sister-In-law, in spite of 15 years of marriage and 4 kids, only knew how to make hamburgers and pot roast, and she called to ask how to make a turkey dinner. I talked while she took notes...I thought. Thanksgiving day we went to her house for dinner. She was rightfully very proud of the beautiful brown bird in the oven. She had decided to cook the dressing in a crock pot so she dished that up while I cut up the turkey and made the gravy. As I lifted it out of the pan, two used bandaids (like they had been wrapped around somebody's fingers )fell out of the cavity. I asked, "Did you lose a couple bandaids when you washed the turkey?"
"Washed it?" she said...


I make what I call zuchinni pie, it has vegetables, cream, cheese, spices, and eggs. My sister in law, who doesn't cook, asked for the recipe, then got back to me and asked how I kept the filling from oozing out of the pan. (She even bought one of those special pans, what do they call them?) I thought, "Gee, maybe you rolled the crust too thin?"
"Crust?" she said...

Now one on me:
Before Memorial day one year I bought one of those giant bags of potato chips that are in the stores on special weekends. It was sitting on the counter too close to the stove and the very end of it caught fire. I grabbed it by the OTHER end and started through the kitchen and family room toward the back door, thinking I could get it outside before it got too bad. The faster I walked, the faster the bag burned, away from the chips, leaving them hanging in the air briefly before the fell to the floor leaving a trail of chips that I was running through on my way to the door. Because I was part way there and couldn't turn back, right? 10 or 15 steps that seemed to last half an hour. By the time I got to the back door and threw the remainder out, there wasn't much left to toss, and I'd walked through and crushed most of them on the way, and we didn't have chips with our Memorial Day picnic.

PS Potato Chips are mostly fat and some of them burned, too, so my boys were following me putting them out. And boy did Mr. Safety Nut chew on me when he got home from work and heard about it.