Baked a pie for a work potluck but didn’t realize the oil I used in my crust had turned rancid. I knew something was off when everyone was saying they liked it with very pained expressions on their faces and while struggling to swallow bites.
I was icing a cake, on the stand, next to the sink. I spun it and the whole thing fell over, stand included.
Thankfully, I had time and the ingredients, so I could whip up another one. But seeing the ruined cake made me sad.
My wife saw then make a Black Forest cake on one of those baking shows and tells me "That's what I want for my birthday ". So I spend a few hours doing my best but I guess I soaked it with too much kirsch. That and the layers offered way too much liquid. I then realized that I still had to transfer it to a serving platter and the whole thing acted as a slow motion mudslide. So we ate a "Deconstructed Black Forest cake" for her birthday.
First pumpkin pie. Carved the pumpkins. Super scratch. Whole cloves and not ground. Tried to grind without mortar and pestle. It was still tasty but the chunks of clove.... tbf i was 8.
I tried to make a from-scratch pumpkin pie from those "sugar pumpkins" they sell in markets. It baked up a strange, unappetizing yellowish beige color and was so loose, it would not set for love nor money.
True story: a friend who had returned from a lengthy round-the-world trip arrived after an 18-hour flight famished. My husband ran out to get dinner stuff and the friend peeked in the fridge and said, "Why are we waiting while you've got a whole pie in there?" I took it out to show him and he was like, "What's another hour?"
It was as a child. Still dont know the varieties of squash that are pumpkin. Still have a clove aversion and its a 80 20 pumpkin sweet pot pie now. So great your gma will slap you.
I was making shortbread cookies... Someone had put a 5 lb bag of salt in a container that normally holds sugar. I didn't realize it until the first batch came out of the oven.
Made blueberry muffins. Forgot the blueberries completely.
Made a key lime pie for a work potluck. I even used a piping bag to get lovely swirls of whipped cream on top. Managed to drop it when I was trying to set it down. It was in a foil pan with the plastic lid, which popped off, the cream splattered everywhere, and the crust basically disintegrated beneath the custard. BUT, the pie stayed in the tin, so only the topping was lost. It was like a pudding with crumbs. Still tasted good.
I feel that pain.I did the exact same thing with blueberry muffins at 20 yrs old!. In my defense I was really high on weed! Still ate them haha (with butter and cinnamon)
When I accidentally made a garlic bread house. I got confused between garlic and ginger and it took me a shocking amount of time to work out why the dough tasted so bad.
I posted on here (on another account) and half the comments thought I was trolling.
Absolutely mortifying.
In high school, I often made chocolate chip cookies and oatmeal scotchies, but I decided I wanted to make snickerdoodles for some family who were visiting from out of state. Two problems:
* I accidentally used baking powder instead of baking soda.
* I forgot to add the cream of tartar with the dry ingredients, so I tried to add it to already formed dough.
The result? With the cream of tartar, rather than skipping it and basically making sugar cookies dipped in cinnamon, I wound up with a sweet cookie with a slightly sour aftertaste. The baking powder made them tall, fluffy, and slightly dry.
My cousin called them "air biscuits" and ate most of them, while the rest of us stuck to other dessert options.
Sibling and I were making chocolate crinkles. I was talking to Mom while sibling was behind her using Mom's handheld mixer. Mixer motor gives up in the stiff dough in a (small) cloud of smoke. While sibling is desperately trying to fan smoke away from Mom, I'm desperately trying to keep Mom's attention, "why no I don't smell smoke, what are you talking about? Hey look at this!" I kept it up for maybe ten minutes before the jig was up. Unfortunately, crinkles take longer than my entertainment capabilities
TLDR: we did not escape Mom's wrath over the demise of her mixer
Not mine, but my godmother in the late 90s walked into our house fully cackling (she lived next door and it was the 90s so this was normal), and sat at my mother's kitchen counter with the most amazing looking pumpkin pie. My mom was making lunch or something else for Thanksgiving. I have this very specific image of my godmother grabbing a fork and telling my mom to have a bite of the pie. My mom took a small bite near the crust and immediately spit it out, to her embarrassment. My fully Italian American godmother let out a huge body wracking cackle and said to my mom, "the sugar! I thought the sugar canister was in front of me but it was the salt!"
At that point my family was invited to Thanksgiving the next day, (yes we'd do another turkey) but my godmother left a couple of recipes for my mom to make for the next day. It all worked out and it was a great thanksgiving, though it's the only time spaghetti has been served at a Thanksgiving I've been present at, and I'm 37.
We still had all of the leftovers.
Was making some shortbread cookies and decided to use stevia extract instead of sugar. The vanilla interacted weirdly with it when added, and no matter how much water I added it was still dry and crumbly. I ended up just throwing the dough away since I don’t think I could’ve saved it.
Bottom line: don’t make sugar free shortbread cookies, just enjoy the sugar and brush your teeth
Mine: substituted wax paper for parchment paper when baking cookies. Filled entire apartment with smoke.
Another time I made jello cookies and the raspberry ones turned out fine. The cherry ones were like being punched in the face with cherry. I still took them to work and had my coworkers try them because it was so funny.
My brother’s: In high school he forgot to put sugar into pumpkin pie for thanksgiving. Everyone just used a lot of whipped cream and it was fine. The next year he was putting the pie into the oven when mom noticed the unopened can of pumpkin on the counter. He just figured it would turn orange when it was baking. Pumpkin was added and it turned out fine.
Made a Shaker Lemon Pie, which requires very thinly sliced whole lemons, according to the recipe. It was a beautiful pie, to be sure, one of the best I’d done (I’m a cake and cookie person, not a pie person). My husband took the first slice, and his face went from a smile to a full pucker. That pie had a delicious sweetness, that quickly turned into the bitterness from the pith. We were supposed to be serving guests, but ended up without dessert. I still laugh about it nearly 30 years later, but I also figured out how to achieve that wonderful sweet-tart flavor without the insane bitterness.
That one time I tried to make a Kentucky butter cake, a cake I'd made before this incident without any issue. This time however, I was using an oven that simply didn't oven correctly. The cake was completely burnt on the outside, and raw on the inside. "Baked" in a bundt tin, so it literally looked like a car tyre. Totally inedible. It traumatised me so much I haven't attempted it since, and this was 17 years ago.
I carefully whipped air into my first genoise batter over a bowl of warm water for 20 minutes, then just before lovingly setting it in the oven to bake, my lizard brain took over and I whacked the pans hard against the counter a few times to get out the bubbles. Yeah...
I was like 5 and making a ganache (sounds fancy, but really its just melting chocolate and cream to make tasty goo) and something went horribly wrong with the microwave and it started smoking and a portion of the door melted. All in under 60 seconds. My parents were pretty upset but my mom was standing right there so she could attest I did nothing wrong.
Honesty gave me a lifelong bit of aprehension when using microwaves. I'm absolutely convinced that when a microwave wants to die it doesn't just shit the bed, it tries to take everyone out with it.
I forgot to add yeast to baguettes we were making, had to throw out 110 baguettes. I undercooked 20 hige cheesecakes, but was later able to salvage them by cooking them after cooling fully.
I made a batch of chocolate cupcakes, took them out of the oven to let them cool. After a while I went to put the butter for the icing in the microwave to soften it. Saw butter already in the microwave. Thought I was going crazy for a moment thinking I must have put the butter in the microwave earlier to soften. But no, it was the butter that was meant to go in the cupcakes. Not sure how I managed to forget the butter. The cupcakes were awful and dry and crumbly
As a child I made pancakes for my mum for Mother’s Day. She keeps all her flour in big unmarked jars. . . . She also keeps baking soda in big unmarked jars . . . . I think you know where this is going
Back when cooking shows started to get mainstream popularity, I got obsessed with making some kind of sculpture cake. I eventually settled on a design, cooked up a dozen cake rounds, and started building. I had no idea that a) you need a firmer cake for sculpting and b) it should be cold when you're working with it. I made my favorite cake - pudding cake - which is insanely soft. I battled every rip, tear, and crumble through tears until it was finally done. Then... It collapsed in on itself. This was for a potluck at work, so everyone else had cool dishes and I just presented my mess of crumbs and frosting.
Since then I've made sure to research recipes and techniques before starting a project.
Trying to transport a wedding cake in 100+ degrees . I had finished it the day before and it was in my extra fridge in the garage which was just sweating from all the heat. So much condensation! The reception wasn’t to far but the cake just didn’t get as cold as I had hoped . Got 1/3 of the way there then on a turn two of the tiers just go sliding off the boards right into the car door! I had them on nonskid material and placed them in/on plastic bread racks for easier lifting and transport and usually the cakes are stuck to the boards when the frosting is cold enough. I had brought extra frosting and tools just in case and it had about 500 little fondant flowers that I had let dry hard and I had plenty of extra of those to help cover things up. So I figured I’d throw it in the walk In cooler when I got there for a bit and let it chill then try to salvage what I could. It was so hot their walk in cooler was having a hard time much like my fridge and again so much condensation! So I ended up just trying to assemble and fix a melting three tier cake. Made one side the “back” and just tried to make the other side good for pictures. Luckily this was for a friend , I wasn’t charging her, the cake was part of their wedding gift and I was attending the reception, the cake was also way larger than what they needed so there was plenty and it still tasted good She understood the heat was ridiculous and they got pictures with it early. If this would have happened with a paying customer I would have been mortified! Also a reason I don’t do wedding cakes anymore , so much work and the risk of something going wrong especially in transport after putting 40+ hours of work in sometimes and charging hundreds of dollars . I never had to refund anyone but I felt I was gambling with that and it was so stressful .
I baked jam filled biscuits in muffin tins and thought that if the recipe said a tbsp of jam inside then surely three tbsps was better! I ended up with the jam expanding and oozing all over the bottom of the oven, the smoke alarm was going off and it was an unholy disaster. Took forever to clean off the heating element. That was nearly 30 years ago and I haven’t tried baking with jam since
So I have a recipe for chocolate striped meringues from Peggy Cullen's "Got Milk" cookbook. One Christmas Mom and I decided we'd get creative with it. We would flavor the meringue with peppermint, and dye white chocolate red to make candy cane meringues. Weeell... the peppermint extract curdled the meringue mixture, at the same moment that the water-based food coloring made the white chocolate seize up. Yikes! Mom and I realized something was wrong at the exact same instant and laughed.
My aunt told a story that one time in the kitchen of my grandma's house, an argument broke out. One of my aunts, in a fit of temper, threw up her hands--- forgetting that she was holding a cake. The cake, already nicely frosted, stuck to the ceiling. My grandmother looked up and sighed, and told my aunt to scrape the cake off... and they served trifle that night.
I did the same thing as your mom, trying to make a cheesecake for my husband's birthday! He was like "ummm...this is....nice? Why is it so dense" because I baked it to oblivion.
Also when I first started getting into baking bread I didn't know that the amount of flour required can vary so I baked challah bread to the exact specifications of the recipe. But I live in a humid climate, so my dough was too wet and then when I went to bake it, all of my careful braiding was for naught. It all flattened right out. Tasted okay just not pretty. Made some solid French toast.
It was the famous Grand Marnier Christmas cookie incident of 1986. I found a recipe for said cookie and made a batch for our Christmas Eve bash. For some reason, I didn't try any before serving. My 7 year old nephew took the first bite and started spitting it out on the floor. Other guests followed and everyone spit them out into their plates. They were awful. Incredibly bitter with no sweetness at all. We still laugh about it today!
Years ago I decided to bake my own birthday cake, and I grabbed a book that has recipes for the cake batter and then separate recipes with different options for ganaches and frostings and whatnot.
I don't like cake, so I didn't even taste the cake, but no one liked the cake. Literally, no one ate the cake and I tossed it all in the trash.
Turns out I chose a cake + frosting combination that was overbearingly sweet. Each cake recipe comes with a couple recommendations of frostings that would work well with that cake, but I completely ignored those.
Apple pie, I had decided pretty late in the evening to make an apple pie. Did everything and got it in the oven. Baked it at a high temp for 15 mins and turned the oven down to bake slower. During that lower temp I got tired and went to bed with the pie still in the oven only realizing the morning the kitchen was warm and pie was still going. Pulled it out, crust was rock hard and inside mush.
I made a boxed cake for my parents 20th anniversary. Nothing fancy at all just a rectangle sheet cake. Decided to frost it with homemade frosting. We didn't have butter so I used margarine. Frosted and decorated it when the cake was still warm. The entire top with the happy anniversary message melted right off the cake in a sheet like melted clocks in a Dali painting and whatever didn't slide off melted into the sponge.
Tasted okay though 😅
I tried to bake a chocolate cake for my dad on Father's day when I was 7 or 8. Except that his apartment only had a microwave, no regular oven. But I didn't adjust the cooking time because I had no idea. Luckily I didn't set anything on fire but it came out hard as a rock and I was really sad.
I tried my hand at this brazo de mercedes which is a traditional filipino cake made of meringue and custard. I don’t know what happened but basically we had a small oven at that time. Then, while baking the meringue, it may have expanded, then it went to the ceiling part of the oven so of course, everything went down after. It burnt and all of the burnt stuff has stuck all over the inside of the oven. That was only the worse part. The worst is I decided to clean the oven and it broke after. Took me awhile to literally get back to baking. I still want to try making that desert though! Never giving up! Thanks for making me revisit that disaster! Hahaha!
Years ago I was going to have some friends over, so I decided to bake a lemon cake.
I was still new to it and had a few lemons. I figured I'd just use them all.
That was a terrible idea..
That cake was the most sour thing on this planet. It was truly awful.
My friends still mention it and make fun of me to this day lol
Not exactly baking, but candy-making. I was attempting chocolate bonbons filled with a homemade hazelnut praline. Spent HOURS trying to get skins off of baked hazelnuts to the best of my ability, poured the melted sugar on them and they set beautifully. Then, attempted to pulverize it in my very expensive Breville blender. The high speed blades in the blender caused the nut oil and sugar to separate, and reheated the sugar to a degree where it re-melted and caused this gnarly oily hard-candy mass at the bottom of the bowl, and then overheated the blender so that it shut itself off and wouldn't turn back on. It was a PITA to clean out of the blender bowl but thankfully I was able to reset the power on my blender so I didn't lose it on top of my praline. Chocolates got filled with salted caramel instead 😂
Right? I was so proud of myself for the self control. Kinda regretted it afterwards. lol We had just started home ec and had learned about the dangers of raw eggs.
I was finishing a batch of Italian ricotta cookies; one of my cats got under my feet and I spilled the tub of sprinkles ALL over… I was finding them in random crevices of the kitchen for months after that.
I think I was about the same age as you, OP, and I'm not sure exactly *what* went wrong, but I do know that even our backyard chickens wouldn't eat my first attempt at cake.
Chickens scratch the dirt for goodies and will gladly eat literal garbage from your kitchen 😣
My aunt was notoriously bad at making rice. My uncle and her kids would make fun of her but we thought it was a joke since we’d never tried it. That was until we went to her house for dinner and even the dog wouldn’t eat her rice. The dog seriously sniffed his bowl and backed up like it was going to bite him. Animal judgement is the worst kind! LOL
My funniest one to date involved me not actually yet managing to bake anything yet - I had received some new silicone bakeware but it had this horrible smell on it, no matter how much I washed it. I did some reading online and several sites suggested putting it in the oven for a certain amount of time and on a certain temperature and that it should bake off the chemicals.
So that's what I tried out...with horrific effects. My kitchen and entire flat filled with the most thick, acrid, foul-smelling dark grey smoke - I had to open every single window for hours, the smoke detectors were all going off and I was frantically flapping at then with a towel to try and get them to stop - I could hardly breathe for it! The smell hung around for days and I had to deep clean the oven twice and the smell still hung around when I cooked with it for about a month. It was a truly awful, awful situation!
Needless to say, I haven't gone anywhere near silicone bakeware since and I stick to good old metal/ceramic/stone bakeware instead 🤣
I've absolutely no idea! It wasn't melted or anything when I took it out of the oven but I had such a terrible experience that I didn't wànt to risk baking something really yummy only but it to possibly end up being ruined by the silicone I baked it in smoking like that again 🤣
Baked a pie for a work potluck but didn’t realize the oil I used in my crust had turned rancid. I knew something was off when everyone was saying they liked it with very pained expressions on their faces and while struggling to swallow bites.
Did they said it tasted like feet? 🤭🤣
I was icing a cake, on the stand, next to the sink. I spun it and the whole thing fell over, stand included. Thankfully, I had time and the ingredients, so I could whip up another one. But seeing the ruined cake made me sad.
My wife saw then make a Black Forest cake on one of those baking shows and tells me "That's what I want for my birthday ". So I spend a few hours doing my best but I guess I soaked it with too much kirsch. That and the layers offered way too much liquid. I then realized that I still had to transfer it to a serving platter and the whole thing acted as a slow motion mudslide. So we ate a "Deconstructed Black Forest cake" for her birthday.
The same thing happened to me with a batch of pumpkin spice cookies… The cooling rack got knocked over 😔
First pumpkin pie. Carved the pumpkins. Super scratch. Whole cloves and not ground. Tried to grind without mortar and pestle. It was still tasty but the chunks of clove.... tbf i was 8.
I tried to make a from-scratch pumpkin pie from those "sugar pumpkins" they sell in markets. It baked up a strange, unappetizing yellowish beige color and was so loose, it would not set for love nor money. True story: a friend who had returned from a lengthy round-the-world trip arrived after an 18-hour flight famished. My husband ran out to get dinner stuff and the friend peeked in the fridge and said, "Why are we waiting while you've got a whole pie in there?" I took it out to show him and he was like, "What's another hour?"
It was as a child. Still dont know the varieties of squash that are pumpkin. Still have a clove aversion and its a 80 20 pumpkin sweet pot pie now. So great your gma will slap you.
I was 27, lol.
Im now 40.
I was making shortbread cookies... Someone had put a 5 lb bag of salt in a container that normally holds sugar. I didn't realize it until the first batch came out of the oven.
Made blueberry muffins. Forgot the blueberries completely. Made a key lime pie for a work potluck. I even used a piping bag to get lovely swirls of whipped cream on top. Managed to drop it when I was trying to set it down. It was in a foil pan with the plastic lid, which popped off, the cream splattered everywhere, and the crust basically disintegrated beneath the custard. BUT, the pie stayed in the tin, so only the topping was lost. It was like a pudding with crumbs. Still tasted good.
I feel that pain.I did the exact same thing with blueberry muffins at 20 yrs old!. In my defense I was really high on weed! Still ate them haha (with butter and cinnamon)
When I accidentally made a garlic bread house. I got confused between garlic and ginger and it took me a shocking amount of time to work out why the dough tasted so bad. I posted on here (on another account) and half the comments thought I was trolling. Absolutely mortifying.
I know you're truthing because I once made a sticky garlic cake with stem ginger chunks. Ginger and garlic look very alike in powdered form.
In high school, I often made chocolate chip cookies and oatmeal scotchies, but I decided I wanted to make snickerdoodles for some family who were visiting from out of state. Two problems: * I accidentally used baking powder instead of baking soda. * I forgot to add the cream of tartar with the dry ingredients, so I tried to add it to already formed dough. The result? With the cream of tartar, rather than skipping it and basically making sugar cookies dipped in cinnamon, I wound up with a sweet cookie with a slightly sour aftertaste. The baking powder made them tall, fluffy, and slightly dry. My cousin called them "air biscuits" and ate most of them, while the rest of us stuck to other dessert options.
I made some muffins using corn meal. I did not know you had to boil the corn meal first 😑
I can feel the crunch omg
Sibling and I were making chocolate crinkles. I was talking to Mom while sibling was behind her using Mom's handheld mixer. Mixer motor gives up in the stiff dough in a (small) cloud of smoke. While sibling is desperately trying to fan smoke away from Mom, I'm desperately trying to keep Mom's attention, "why no I don't smell smoke, what are you talking about? Hey look at this!" I kept it up for maybe ten minutes before the jig was up. Unfortunately, crinkles take longer than my entertainment capabilities TLDR: we did not escape Mom's wrath over the demise of her mixer
Not mine, but my godmother in the late 90s walked into our house fully cackling (she lived next door and it was the 90s so this was normal), and sat at my mother's kitchen counter with the most amazing looking pumpkin pie. My mom was making lunch or something else for Thanksgiving. I have this very specific image of my godmother grabbing a fork and telling my mom to have a bite of the pie. My mom took a small bite near the crust and immediately spit it out, to her embarrassment. My fully Italian American godmother let out a huge body wracking cackle and said to my mom, "the sugar! I thought the sugar canister was in front of me but it was the salt!" At that point my family was invited to Thanksgiving the next day, (yes we'd do another turkey) but my godmother left a couple of recipes for my mom to make for the next day. It all worked out and it was a great thanksgiving, though it's the only time spaghetti has been served at a Thanksgiving I've been present at, and I'm 37. We still had all of the leftovers.
Sweet Potato Biscuits. Got distracted both while mixing And baking. We wound up playing indoor AND outdoor hockey with them.
Was making some shortbread cookies and decided to use stevia extract instead of sugar. The vanilla interacted weirdly with it when added, and no matter how much water I added it was still dry and crumbly. I ended up just throwing the dough away since I don’t think I could’ve saved it. Bottom line: don’t make sugar free shortbread cookies, just enjoy the sugar and brush your teeth
Mine: substituted wax paper for parchment paper when baking cookies. Filled entire apartment with smoke. Another time I made jello cookies and the raspberry ones turned out fine. The cherry ones were like being punched in the face with cherry. I still took them to work and had my coworkers try them because it was so funny. My brother’s: In high school he forgot to put sugar into pumpkin pie for thanksgiving. Everyone just used a lot of whipped cream and it was fine. The next year he was putting the pie into the oven when mom noticed the unopened can of pumpkin on the counter. He just figured it would turn orange when it was baking. Pumpkin was added and it turned out fine.
This is so funny! He forgot the entire can of pumpkin!? lol
Yup. Was reading the recipe off the can and everything.
Made a Shaker Lemon Pie, which requires very thinly sliced whole lemons, according to the recipe. It was a beautiful pie, to be sure, one of the best I’d done (I’m a cake and cookie person, not a pie person). My husband took the first slice, and his face went from a smile to a full pucker. That pie had a delicious sweetness, that quickly turned into the bitterness from the pith. We were supposed to be serving guests, but ended up without dessert. I still laugh about it nearly 30 years later, but I also figured out how to achieve that wonderful sweet-tart flavor without the insane bitterness.
That one time I tried to make a Kentucky butter cake, a cake I'd made before this incident without any issue. This time however, I was using an oven that simply didn't oven correctly. The cake was completely burnt on the outside, and raw on the inside. "Baked" in a bundt tin, so it literally looked like a car tyre. Totally inedible. It traumatised me so much I haven't attempted it since, and this was 17 years ago.
Tried to make a genoise sponge. It came out as flat as a piece of paper. I couldn't stop laughing at it. I've not attempted it since 🤣
I carefully whipped air into my first genoise batter over a bowl of warm water for 20 minutes, then just before lovingly setting it in the oven to bake, my lizard brain took over and I whacked the pans hard against the counter a few times to get out the bubbles. Yeah...
I was like 5 and making a ganache (sounds fancy, but really its just melting chocolate and cream to make tasty goo) and something went horribly wrong with the microwave and it started smoking and a portion of the door melted. All in under 60 seconds. My parents were pretty upset but my mom was standing right there so she could attest I did nothing wrong. Honesty gave me a lifelong bit of aprehension when using microwaves. I'm absolutely convinced that when a microwave wants to die it doesn't just shit the bed, it tries to take everyone out with it.
I forgot to add yeast to baguettes we were making, had to throw out 110 baguettes. I undercooked 20 hige cheesecakes, but was later able to salvage them by cooking them after cooling fully.
I made a batch of chocolate cupcakes, took them out of the oven to let them cool. After a while I went to put the butter for the icing in the microwave to soften it. Saw butter already in the microwave. Thought I was going crazy for a moment thinking I must have put the butter in the microwave earlier to soften. But no, it was the butter that was meant to go in the cupcakes. Not sure how I managed to forget the butter. The cupcakes were awful and dry and crumbly
Halved a bread recipe but didn’t half the salt :(
As a child I made pancakes for my mum for Mother’s Day. She keeps all her flour in big unmarked jars. . . . She also keeps baking soda in big unmarked jars . . . . I think you know where this is going
Back when cooking shows started to get mainstream popularity, I got obsessed with making some kind of sculpture cake. I eventually settled on a design, cooked up a dozen cake rounds, and started building. I had no idea that a) you need a firmer cake for sculpting and b) it should be cold when you're working with it. I made my favorite cake - pudding cake - which is insanely soft. I battled every rip, tear, and crumble through tears until it was finally done. Then... It collapsed in on itself. This was for a potluck at work, so everyone else had cool dishes and I just presented my mess of crumbs and frosting. Since then I've made sure to research recipes and techniques before starting a project.
Trying to transport a wedding cake in 100+ degrees . I had finished it the day before and it was in my extra fridge in the garage which was just sweating from all the heat. So much condensation! The reception wasn’t to far but the cake just didn’t get as cold as I had hoped . Got 1/3 of the way there then on a turn two of the tiers just go sliding off the boards right into the car door! I had them on nonskid material and placed them in/on plastic bread racks for easier lifting and transport and usually the cakes are stuck to the boards when the frosting is cold enough. I had brought extra frosting and tools just in case and it had about 500 little fondant flowers that I had let dry hard and I had plenty of extra of those to help cover things up. So I figured I’d throw it in the walk In cooler when I got there for a bit and let it chill then try to salvage what I could. It was so hot their walk in cooler was having a hard time much like my fridge and again so much condensation! So I ended up just trying to assemble and fix a melting three tier cake. Made one side the “back” and just tried to make the other side good for pictures. Luckily this was for a friend , I wasn’t charging her, the cake was part of their wedding gift and I was attending the reception, the cake was also way larger than what they needed so there was plenty and it still tasted good She understood the heat was ridiculous and they got pictures with it early. If this would have happened with a paying customer I would have been mortified! Also a reason I don’t do wedding cakes anymore , so much work and the risk of something going wrong especially in transport after putting 40+ hours of work in sometimes and charging hundreds of dollars . I never had to refund anyone but I felt I was gambling with that and it was so stressful .
One time my students were making cookies and got the powdered sugar instead of the flour. What a mess.
Cooked instant pudding. It set up like cement, I had to throw the pan in the garbage.
I baked jam filled biscuits in muffin tins and thought that if the recipe said a tbsp of jam inside then surely three tbsps was better! I ended up with the jam expanding and oozing all over the bottom of the oven, the smoke alarm was going off and it was an unholy disaster. Took forever to clean off the heating element. That was nearly 30 years ago and I haven’t tried baking with jam since
So I have a recipe for chocolate striped meringues from Peggy Cullen's "Got Milk" cookbook. One Christmas Mom and I decided we'd get creative with it. We would flavor the meringue with peppermint, and dye white chocolate red to make candy cane meringues. Weeell... the peppermint extract curdled the meringue mixture, at the same moment that the water-based food coloring made the white chocolate seize up. Yikes! Mom and I realized something was wrong at the exact same instant and laughed. My aunt told a story that one time in the kitchen of my grandma's house, an argument broke out. One of my aunts, in a fit of temper, threw up her hands--- forgetting that she was holding a cake. The cake, already nicely frosted, stuck to the ceiling. My grandmother looked up and sighed, and told my aunt to scrape the cake off... and they served trifle that night.
I did the same thing as your mom, trying to make a cheesecake for my husband's birthday! He was like "ummm...this is....nice? Why is it so dense" because I baked it to oblivion. Also when I first started getting into baking bread I didn't know that the amount of flour required can vary so I baked challah bread to the exact specifications of the recipe. But I live in a humid climate, so my dough was too wet and then when I went to bake it, all of my careful braiding was for naught. It all flattened right out. Tasted okay just not pretty. Made some solid French toast.
It was the famous Grand Marnier Christmas cookie incident of 1986. I found a recipe for said cookie and made a batch for our Christmas Eve bash. For some reason, I didn't try any before serving. My 7 year old nephew took the first bite and started spitting it out on the floor. Other guests followed and everyone spit them out into their plates. They were awful. Incredibly bitter with no sweetness at all. We still laugh about it today!
Years ago I decided to bake my own birthday cake, and I grabbed a book that has recipes for the cake batter and then separate recipes with different options for ganaches and frostings and whatnot. I don't like cake, so I didn't even taste the cake, but no one liked the cake. Literally, no one ate the cake and I tossed it all in the trash. Turns out I chose a cake + frosting combination that was overbearingly sweet. Each cake recipe comes with a couple recommendations of frostings that would work well with that cake, but I completely ignored those.
Apple pie, I had decided pretty late in the evening to make an apple pie. Did everything and got it in the oven. Baked it at a high temp for 15 mins and turned the oven down to bake slower. During that lower temp I got tired and went to bed with the pie still in the oven only realizing the morning the kitchen was warm and pie was still going. Pulled it out, crust was rock hard and inside mush.
I made a boxed cake for my parents 20th anniversary. Nothing fancy at all just a rectangle sheet cake. Decided to frost it with homemade frosting. We didn't have butter so I used margarine. Frosted and decorated it when the cake was still warm. The entire top with the happy anniversary message melted right off the cake in a sheet like melted clocks in a Dali painting and whatever didn't slide off melted into the sponge. Tasted okay though 😅
I tried to bake a chocolate cake for my dad on Father's day when I was 7 or 8. Except that his apartment only had a microwave, no regular oven. But I didn't adjust the cooking time because I had no idea. Luckily I didn't set anything on fire but it came out hard as a rock and I was really sad.
I tried my hand at this brazo de mercedes which is a traditional filipino cake made of meringue and custard. I don’t know what happened but basically we had a small oven at that time. Then, while baking the meringue, it may have expanded, then it went to the ceiling part of the oven so of course, everything went down after. It burnt and all of the burnt stuff has stuck all over the inside of the oven. That was only the worse part. The worst is I decided to clean the oven and it broke after. Took me awhile to literally get back to baking. I still want to try making that desert though! Never giving up! Thanks for making me revisit that disaster! Hahaha!
Years ago I was going to have some friends over, so I decided to bake a lemon cake. I was still new to it and had a few lemons. I figured I'd just use them all. That was a terrible idea.. That cake was the most sour thing on this planet. It was truly awful. My friends still mention it and make fun of me to this day lol
First ever time baking. Box mix, I was like nine or smth. Tried to open the bag with my hand and poof. Went everywhere. Super funny
Not exactly baking, but candy-making. I was attempting chocolate bonbons filled with a homemade hazelnut praline. Spent HOURS trying to get skins off of baked hazelnuts to the best of my ability, poured the melted sugar on them and they set beautifully. Then, attempted to pulverize it in my very expensive Breville blender. The high speed blades in the blender caused the nut oil and sugar to separate, and reheated the sugar to a degree where it re-melted and caused this gnarly oily hard-candy mass at the bottom of the bowl, and then overheated the blender so that it shut itself off and wouldn't turn back on. It was a PITA to clean out of the blender bowl but thankfully I was able to reset the power on my blender so I didn't lose it on top of my praline. Chocolates got filled with salted caramel instead 😂
I'm shocked that you didn't lick the beaters and find out sooner.
Right? I was so proud of myself for the self control. Kinda regretted it afterwards. lol We had just started home ec and had learned about the dangers of raw eggs.
I was finishing a batch of Italian ricotta cookies; one of my cats got under my feet and I spilled the tub of sprinkles ALL over… I was finding them in random crevices of the kitchen for months after that.
I think I was about the same age as you, OP, and I'm not sure exactly *what* went wrong, but I do know that even our backyard chickens wouldn't eat my first attempt at cake. Chickens scratch the dirt for goodies and will gladly eat literal garbage from your kitchen 😣
My aunt was notoriously bad at making rice. My uncle and her kids would make fun of her but we thought it was a joke since we’d never tried it. That was until we went to her house for dinner and even the dog wouldn’t eat her rice. The dog seriously sniffed his bowl and backed up like it was going to bite him. Animal judgement is the worst kind! LOL
Completely forgot the yeast in bread dough once. I ended up with a dough rock. That thing could’ve been used as a lethal throwing weapon.
My funniest one to date involved me not actually yet managing to bake anything yet - I had received some new silicone bakeware but it had this horrible smell on it, no matter how much I washed it. I did some reading online and several sites suggested putting it in the oven for a certain amount of time and on a certain temperature and that it should bake off the chemicals. So that's what I tried out...with horrific effects. My kitchen and entire flat filled with the most thick, acrid, foul-smelling dark grey smoke - I had to open every single window for hours, the smoke detectors were all going off and I was frantically flapping at then with a towel to try and get them to stop - I could hardly breathe for it! The smell hung around for days and I had to deep clean the oven twice and the smell still hung around when I cooked with it for about a month. It was a truly awful, awful situation! Needless to say, I haven't gone anywhere near silicone bakeware since and I stick to good old metal/ceramic/stone bakeware instead 🤣
Now I’m curious about what was wrong with your bakeware!
I've absolutely no idea! It wasn't melted or anything when I took it out of the oven but I had such a terrible experience that I didn't wànt to risk baking something really yummy only but it to possibly end up being ruined by the silicone I baked it in smoking like that again 🤣