Question Of The Day - Tuesday, May 22

[cassiopea]

Hello Hello Everyone! Happy Tuesday!



(Tomorrow is my Bday!)




What's your biggest kitchen/cooking fail?





This is when I first started to learn how to bake some years ago - I was making a type of cake, and had the batter ready to pour into the springform pan. I got the deed done, turned around in preparation for the oven with gloves on, turned back only to see that the whole batter had completely leaked everywhere through the bottom of the pan. All over the counter and the floor. So there I am, inwardly distressed as I "wisely" try to somehow scoop up all the survivable batter and pour out the remaining batter and put it in a safe spot as the springform pan continued to leak and leak. I was also upset since I hated the idea of wasting stuff!


Yup, I was toottttalllyyy smooth that day!


How about you guys?

 

[neely]

If you asked my kids they would probably say, "let me count the ways."

There was the time I turned the microwave on for 30 minutes thinking I had 2 baked potatoes in it but did not and thought I broke the microwave. There was the time I took a homemade pizza out of the oven and it slid off the pan onto the kitchen floor. And there was another time I baked a devils food chocolate cake for company but when I took it out of the bundt pan it fell apart into pieces.

cassiopea Happy Early Birthday!

 

[MoochNNoodles]

I have a great recipe for Greek turkey burgers where you mix feta cheese in with the meat. I've made them many times and they are good! Sometimes I dice portabella mushrooms and add that too. So good!

But this one time I cooked them on the George Foreman grill and they stuck. Half to the top of the grill; half to the bottom. It pulled every burger completely apart. That's when I gave up on George. DH said what he scrapped off tasted good.

I'm still not sure whose fault that one was!

 

[Brian007]

When I was aged about 6 years old I made my first ever cake. And because it was my cake I was allowed to flavour it with whatever I fancied. Well, I fancied purple flavour so poured an entire bottle of Ribena (blackcurrant diluting juice) into the mix. Not a single person, not even my mum, would taste my gooey purple prize. So, I ate the whole thing on my own and was subsequently sick with purple vomit for the rest of the night. But, I'm proud of the fact that I stuck by my invention and ate it all up, even if it did taste revoltingly sweet, and made me puke purple. It also stained my lips purple too, which I remember thinking pretty groovy. All in all, for a 6 year old, it was actually quite a success!

Happy Before-day Birthday cassiopea !

 

[sivyaleah]

Not many but I once managed to have a potato explode in the oven. I totally forgot it was cooking in there. Let me tell you an exploded potato is a mess and a half to clean from every surface of an oven.

 

[DreamerRose]

Mine was also when I was a child, about 13 I think. My mother was in the hospital, so I wanted to bake her a cake when she came home. I looked a recipe up in a cookbook and started right in adding the ingredients. When I got to baking powder, I searched the whole kitchen, top to bottom for the baking powder, but couldn't find any. So I blithely added baking soda.

It was horrible. It tasted so bad no one could eat it.

But I learned to be careful about substituting ingredients.

 

[Boris Diamond]

Happy Birthday, tomorrow, cassiopea !

When I was about 12, I tried to make cookies. I melted the butter and then added eggs. The butter was so hot that it fried the eggs!

 

[MonaLyssa33]

A few years ago I tried to deep fry potatoes in a pot with vegetable oil. I've never deep fried anything in my life, so I didn't know if the oil was hot enough and decided to flick water at it like I do when seeing if a pan is hot enough. Well the water made the oil start on fire. I had this pot of fire and thankfully enough sense to cover it with a lid. The house smelled horrible and kept making me cough. I put the pot outside until it cooled, opened all the windows and hoped nobody found out. I have not tried to deep fry anything since and probably never will.

 

[JamesCalifornia]

~ Too many to mention . ( My poor mother always encouraged me just the same )
The worst was my attempt to cook steak . Even the cats were disappointed ... `

 

[Winchester]

A very cassiopea ! I hope it's a great day for you!

Cooking disasters? Oh boy!

The first apple pie I ever made looked horrible. I never worked with pie crust before, but hey, how difficult can it be, right? Oh man, pie crust is a bugger. Rick's dad took one look and said, "Um, no. No thank you!" Rick said it tasted pretty good, bless his heart. I've gotten better at pie crust, but it took years. And today, I see no reason why I shouldn't take advantage of the Dough Boy....he's there for a reason, you know. And it's not bad pie crust.

One time I was making chicken and dumplings. My neighbor called to chat for a while, so I was talking to her and trying to get the dumplings together. My dumpling batter was very liquid-y and I kept adding more "flour" and more "flour", to no avail. Finally I got exasperated and dumped the batter into the stew by spoonfuls, only to see absolutely nothing happening. And the whole time I'm listening to my neighbor on the phone. We hung up and still, nothing happening with said dumplings. When I tasted one, I realized that what I thought was flour? Was confectioners' sugar. I had to throw dinner away; it was awful. Rick drove down to McD's that night. Rick told our neighbor she was never to talk to me on the phone when I'm cooking. Ever. EVER.

And then there was the time that I was making a two-layer pineapple upside down cake as dessert for a dinner with friends; I've made this cake a dozen times and never had a problem. Got the cakes out of the oven and they were gorgeous. Put the first cooled layer on the plate and slathered it with the pineapple filling. Put the second layer with the pineapple and cherries on top of the first layer....and watched the second layer crack into pieces and fall to the plate. Well, darn. I stood there looking at the mess for a while, cussing a blue streak to myself. (Banshee was still alive back then and she always perched on a kitchen chair next to me in the kitchen to su-purr-vise. I talked to her quite a bit while I was cooking. I swear she knew I was upset.) And then, I made a large batch of homemade vanilla pudding. Crumbled the rest of the cake. I have a nice trifle bowl, so I layered the cake and pudding into the bowl and decorated the top with whipped cream and more maraschino cherries. Called it Pineapple Trifle. And people loved it. I never told them what happened.

There's more, but you get the idea. I love to cook, but sometimes? Things don't always work out!

 

[cassiopea]

Thanks everyone for the Bday wishes!


And for your stories!

 

[blueyedgirl5946]

The one I remember the most is the time I used self rising corn meal to make dumplings. The results totally ruined the pot of collards I was cooking. The dumplings came apart and were just nasty. The who pot was a disaster.

 

[Moz]

Once when I was about 12 or 13, I made a little "pizza" with cheese, tomato sauce, and spices on a Greek-style pita. The key to making these pizzas was to cook it for only about 7 minutes, or else the pita would become very brittle, and it'd shatter when you'd bite into it.

I forgot to set the timer on the oven, and completely forgot it was in there... until smoke started pouring out of the oven. My pizza looked like a black, smoldering Frisbee.

 

[betsygee]

This incident comes to mind... I failed to make sure the lid was on tight before starting the blender. Those are coconut bits all over the cupboards, and counters, and appliances, and floor.



and cassiopea

 

[MoochNNoodles]

Not many but I once managed to have a potato explode in the oven. I totally forgot it was cooking in there. Let me tell you an exploded potato is a mess and a half to clean from every surface of an oven.

My DH made an egg explode a couple years ago. He set some eggs to boil on the stove and stepped into the garage to do something. And got distracted. They were burning when I came out and found him. So then he decided to run the pot under cold water and boom! There was egg on the ceiling.

 

[Draco]

Oh man, my parents still make fun of me for this one.

I was at my mom's house, and she wanted to make brocolli rabe. So she asks me to get the oil from the garage. I go in, and grab the oil.

I poured enough into the pot and cooked. Next thing I know, the entire kitchen smelled of cleaning ammonia.

I checked the container, it was Pinesol. It was the exact same size/color/shape can as the oil, so I just grabbed without looking.

at least the broccolli wasn't in the pot yet.

 

[MoochNNoodles]

Oh man, my parents still make fun of me for this one.

I was at my mom's house, and she wanted to make brocolli rabe. So she asks me to get the oil from the garage. I go in, and grab the oil.

I poured enough into the pot and cooked. Next thing I know, the entire kitchen smelled of cleaning ammonia.

I checked the container, it was Pinesol. It was the exact same size/color/shape can as the oil, so I just grabbed without looking.

at least the broccolli wasn't in the pot yet.

I thought you were going to say you grabbed motor oil!

 

[micknsnicks2mom]

i was 17 years old when i started living on my own, and everything i concocted was truly horrible.

over the years, i've taught myself how to cook and bake.

most recently, i've been baking more (from scratch) cakes and making homemade frostings. after baking beautiful cakes and having problems getting them out of the pans, i'll always use parchment paper. it's really upsetting to have a cake break apart while trying to get it out of the pan! and, i always cool my cakes in the fridge in the pan -- a tip from Smitten Kitchen dot com, or in the (unheated) back enclosed porch (in the winter months).

then there's the cocoa (/carob) brownies recipe that i make a lot. there have been batches that just didn't turn out like they should have, and i've figured out why that is. it has to do with the weight of the cocoa/carob powder ingredient. apparently, that can make a difference! the weight of cocoa/carob powder can vary by brand.

 

[betsygee]

I thought you were going to say you grabbed motor oil!

Me, too, since it was from the garage.

 

[aliceneko]

I'm a bit of a hopeless cook but the biggest definitely has to be burning pasta!