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The first time I ever tried to bake something, I didn't have any eggs for a cookie recipe so I basically made paste. I was 7 so I think I deserve to be cut some slack.

I was making chocolate chip cookies. I have a big plastic container of flour, and inside, a half cup scoop with which to dig it out. I wasn't paying attention, and instead of adding 2 cups of flour, i only added one scoop.

my cookies spread all over the baking sheet, like some sort of crunch chocolate chip brittle!

I tried making the family "fool-proof" buttermilk chocolate cake. To this day, I have no idea what happened, but it somehow separated into two distinct layers; one choclate and one vanilla.

It was not tasty.

I spent hours making homemade donuts and when I put them in the oil to fry them, they sank to the bottom and just sat there. They were like hockey pucks! Total disaster.

making irish soda bread and forgetting a fairly pivotal ingredient...the baking soda!

I made a delicious lemon cake and tried to unmold it too soon. I now had half a delicious lemon cake in the pan and half on the plate. Ooops.

Oh, that's easy. A blueberry sour cream cake that half baked until someone turned the oven off, then sunk, then baked some more when I turned it back on, then stuck to the bundt pan. We ate the delicious odd dense gooey mistake out of the pan.

Just this past Christmas I was in the process of making almond biscotti, had everything ready for the oven, and noticed that I had forgotten to add the almond extract to the dough. I carefully pour the extract over the top of the dough, hoping it would soak it. It actually came out pretty good.

Not sure if its quite a disaster, but a few years ago, I decided to make sugar cookies for Christmas. The recipe said that it made approximately 5 dozen cookies - I thought there was no way that'd be enough....so I tripled it. Rolling out, icing & decorating almost 200 cookies??? No fun!! I finally got fed up and trashed some of the dough. I had cookies for months.

Long before I understood "creaming" I just thought of ingredients as a flavor. Period. One day when the recipe called for dark brown sugar, I opened the pantry to find a hard rock. I added water and stuck it in the microwave, then added it to the recipe. Needless to say, the cookies were flat crisps.

Baking is so much easier...
Now that I understand some of the science behind it.
;)

I leave my washed dishes in my oven sometimes when i run out of space. One time, I was baking a cake and left a spatula at the very back. I gave a bit of the cake to my dad before he spit it out when I told him that rubber had been burning in the oven with it.

Strawberry rhubarb pie - salt instead of sugar. Surprise!

I was trying to make scones using home-made baking powder. This was my first time trying to substitute commercial baking powder with home-made. The formula for the home-made baking powder used both baking soda and cream of tartar but I got the ratios mixed up. The scones turned out tasting like soap and no amount of butter and jam could hide the taste. I now have the right ratio posted on my fridge so I'll never make that mistake again!

Using raspberry jelly as the filling for a friend's birthday cake. That's what the recipe called for, but I didn't make the best choice at the store. I could probably make an easy raspberry filling now.

Placating my now-husband's desire for 5 different Thanksgiving pies, I served a elegantly decorated pumpkin pie...with no sugar added.

His aunt gagged, and then told me it was delicious. Since we had so many desserts from which to choose, I didn't find out until a day later. I sort of wondered why that one was nearly intact when I put it away.

The funniest baking disaster would have to be trying to make monkey bread...on the grill! Total hockey pucks. Never did try that one again....in the oven or the grill!!!

a cake that my cousin and i made when we were ten years old that somehow turned into a volcano in the oven. we spent the rest of the afternoon not having a teaparty but scrubbing crud off of oven racks.

share your funniest baking disaster.
My first time making ladyfingers I made entirely inedible pieces of cardboard...

That would be the time I stretched out on the couch for a little rest, and woke up several hours later. Let's just say that it brought a whole new meaning to "overbaked."

Well there have definitely been a lot of "ohhhh noooo" moments, but one that sticks out in my mind happened right after Thanksgiving one year. I was on a mission to make really creative use out of each and every ounce of leftovers and decided I would use the cranberry orange sauce to make scones.

So I mix up the batter, grab the sauce from the fridge and add it, make the scones, bake the scones.... wait patiently with mouth watering... finally they are done and I bite into one.... and get a mouthful of onions, jalapeno and cilantro amongst other flavors!

Two bowls in the fridge - cranberry orange sauce... and cranberry chutney! Nooooo idea why I didnt notice when I was mixing it up....

I left the eggs out of Nigella's chocolate loaf cake. It was undelicious. I had to appologize....for something chocolate...

a blender malfunction caused the lovely butternut squash pie filling i was just finishing to gush out the bottom of the blender jar, all over the blender base and counter. some of it even made it into the cranberry sauce that was cooling nearby. we had breyer's ice cream for thanksgiving dessert.

the first time i ever baked a cheesecake, i decided to make a caramel sauce to go along with it... i heated the sugar and butter in a pot, but when i added the cream, i didn't know it was supposed to add it slowly, so i poured it all in quickly... it made a loud hissing noise and exploded everywhere.. a very messy experience!

I was in college and made my dad strawberry shortcake and whipped cream for Father's Day. I must have been very distracted because I doubled (tripled, maybe) the amount of baking soda in the recipe. When I took the cakes out of the pans, I knew that they were dense, but I hadn't made it before, so I thought it could be right... My parents and brother were very sweet and tried to choke down the cake - with TONS of whipped cream. I was horrified. I offered to never make my dad strawberry shortcake again.

When I was 9 or so I attempted to make peanut butter cookies. I mixed up the baking powder with baking soda and ended up with something that didn't resemble a cookie at all. Into the trash they went...

I decided to make a mille-feuille. After carefully converting metric units, measuring by weight down to .05 oz, tediously resting and rolling out a cocoa powder puff pastry I made by hand, from scratch over a 2 day period of time - adhering strictly to the specifications in Pierre Hermé's "La Pâtisserie de Pierre Hermé" I entrusted my good friend Geoff to pop them into the pre-heated oven while I worked on the pastry cream.

Little did I know at the time that I should have included "remove moist wax paper" as step 1 in my instructions. What do you think happens to puff pastry covered in wax paper on a half sheet pan in a 400 degree oven? Uh huh.

The one time I tried baking, I burned Pillsbury Cookie Dough. Bye bye, new cookie sheet.

My daughter's sleep over friends asked for brownies. They kept watch as the timer ticked away, even though I told them they'd have to cool first. They were huddled around as I opened the oven at the sound of the alarm and we all were aghast at boiling chocolate liquid. I quickly realized I had forgotten to add the eggs. I grabbed a couple from the fridge and scrambled them into the boiling cauldron to the squeals of the girls. Ah, chocolate scrambled eggs. They actually tried to salvage what they could and I made a new batch. They still talk about it.

Last year, I made a huge batch of chocolate chip cookies for an elderly friend's birthday. It's not like me to not sneak a cookie, but I was good. They really looked perfect and I did keep a few back for later. I put them in a tin, wrapped in a pretty bow and presented them to the birthday boy. Hours later, when I got home, I grabbed a cookie, took a huge bite and horror of horrors - the flour was rancid. I called and he hadn't sampled any yet - told him to throw them all away. I tasted that horrible rancidity for at least a week. Now, I taste flour before I bake, and I check off ingredients as I add them so I won't forget eggs. Live and learn! ;-)

I was making some cookies at home with a coconut caramel topping and forgot to add in the milk after I melted my caramel and added the coconut. So once I got it on the cookies and it cooled, I took a huge bite...and just about broke my tooth. It was hard as a rock.

I've had dozens, and I've still never succeeded in making proper buscuits. I'm convinced that anything I make that involves a rolling pin, kneading, or handling of dough will turn out chewy or impossible to chew.

I baked a lovely lemon meringue pie in a cracked Pyrex dish. When I put it in the fast oven to brown the meringue, after 5 minutes I heard a a loud pow and crash! In the oven was a perfect lemon meringue pie held together by its crust, and broken shards of Pyrex covered the bottom of the oven. We ate the pie. Carefully...

When I was little, there were more than a few unfortunate incidents of my family being forced to eat desserts that I had finished off with cornstarch, not powdered sugar... haha!

When I first started baking I decided to try my hand at French bread. My first efforts were OK but they lacked that lovely crust. I read about how to create a steamy environment by spritzing water on the oven sides and using a hot baking pan on the lower rack to pour water in right when you put the loaves in to bake. Not really thinking it over I used a Pyrex baking dish for the water.....KRAAACK followed by Hiiiiiiiiiissssss and lovely blue shards of Pyrex all over the oven, oven drawer, and floor. Threw that batch away and got out the shop vac......sigh.

One time I didn't realize my oven mitt was wet in one spot, so when I reached into the oven to get out a sheet of oatmeal cookies, I burned my hand. I quickly dropped the entire sheet of cookies down the front and sides of the oven and into the drawer beneath. I tried to get most of the mess out of the oven while it was still soft, so I just used a spatula to fling out the bits I could reach. Our dog thought it was a great game and tried to catch the pieces as I flung them out. Luckily, the cookies were not chocolate and the tiny bits were not too hot, so he did not get hurt.

I was amazed that my new breadmaker had a cake setting so I gave it a whirl. After three hours(!) of mixing and baking it produced the weirdest creation I've ever seen. Sort of like sponge cake with a nice crust of unincorporated flour. From now on the breadmaker is for bread only.

I store my flour in its bag in a plastic shoe box sized bin. Space being a premium I keep that box in the cabinet above the fridge. Twice, in an effort to save time, I have attempted to wiggle the box with my finger tips to encourage it out of the shelf. The first time there were no problems. The second time the lid was not securely fastened and the flour emptied all over me and the floor.

I now get a chair first.

i was making banana nut muffins, and my Mom called. Of course I can make muffins and talk to my mother and the same time, i thought. 45 minutes later, she puts my Dad on the phone as I'm taking the muffins out of the oven. the first words out of my mouth after my Dad says Hello are "Oh Sh__". While talking to my Mom, i'd forgetten to put any butter into the batter. no oil either.

When I was 14, I substituted melted butter for buttermilk. Butter comes from milk, I thought. Turns out....well, it turns out a rather moist and oh-so-underdone chocolate cupcake. Luckily I had time to plead with mom to go buy some before my birthday party started.

I was making muffins, and I somehow managed to drop my cell phone from the counter and into the bottom of the gas oven. I spent about 5 seconds thinking about whether I should do it or not, and I went for it. I grabbed the phone. I will show the scar upon request.

I was making red velvet cake for my mom's bday and forgot to add the baking soda/vinegar step so the cakes came out really flat and dense. they still tasted great but it was the most compact looking 2-layer cake ever.

When I was somewhere in my single digits, I decided I wanted to make cinnamon rolls, so I found a recipe, mixed up all the ingredients, poured them in a pyrex, and let it cook. It was sometime during the baking process that it dawned on me that it might have been wise to follow the directions.

A few years ago I made a pineapple-chipotle cream tart for a family gathering. Instead of 2 teaspoons of chili-in-adobo, I used more than 2 tablespoons. Luckily, my family likes it hot!!

One of my first attempts at making homemade pumpkin pie saw me leave out the sugar...yeah, not so tasty...

I don't know how funny this is, but I once made banana bread with self-rising flour instead of AP flour, and it came out SO SALTY! I still don't understand why, but I always make sure I use the right flour now.

My OCD baking habits usually prevent me from making huge mistakes in baking, but I will say that I have never, ever successfully made fudge. I don't know if my thermometer is off, or if I'm not boiling it long enough, or what. But I can always turn the resulting fudge sludge into truffles and no one knows the difference. Once I did that at the last minute, and I had nothing to roll the truffles in. I used a packet of Nestle hot cocoa mix, and everyone at the party thought they were great! Go figure.

Tried making a pizza crust following Alton's recipe in I'm Just Here For More Food. Unfortunately, there was an error in the recipe that listed the flour as twice what it should have been. I was suspicious, but followed blindly nonetheless. Things did not turn out well.

I tried to make a 5-minute microwave brownie, but didn't realize that cocoa powder (what was in my pantry) is not the same thing as hot cocoa mix (what the recipe called for). The brownie came out bitter and dry, but the look on my boyfriend / standby taster's face was priceless as he tried to pretend it was nummers.

I guess that wasn't serious baking, though, since I was using a microwave. The funniest baking disaster is when I tried to sift baking powder and flour together for a pound cake. I kept on spilling a little white substance on the counter and freaking out that I spilled the baking powder, which would completely screw up the recipe. I started over 3 times before I finally gave up and used a fork instead of a sifter. (The pound cake came out fine, but the trash can contained 3 pounds of flour when all was said and done.)

I tried making cornbread using as few dishes as possible to make cleanup easy (I lived in a tiny apartment at the time). So I figured I'd mix the whole thing in the baking dish and pop it into the oven. You can see where this is going -- the cornbread stuck to the pan because I completely forgot the minor detail of greasing the pan. And while I had fewer dishes, I spent most of the night scrubbing at the sink.

so David Lebovitz said hey this pistachio chorizo cake is really good and I said wow that looks tasty i'll try to make it but use reconstituted and unseasoned dried tomatoes and soyrizo and semi-stale pistachios and surprise surprise it turned out pretty gross.

The time that I accidentally dropped the cake on the ground trying to get it out of the pan. Such a waste.

i was inspired at the last minute to bake a cake for my friend's birthday during college. the recipe happened to have all of the ingredients by weight -- and i didn't have a scale. so instead of being intelligent and just finding a different recipe, i was like "ok this SEEMS like it would be 5 grams, right?" and winged it. i ended up with a scorched-edged-gloppy-inside waste. it was a BITCH to clean too!!! :)

I made almond cookies for my Dad for Father's Day and accidently left out half of the sugar. After everyone who's eaten them before bragged to him about the recipe, he had to stomach through a cookie and pretend to like it. I tried one right after him and was mortified. Poor guy.

Sad to say, I have left out the sugar from a cake recipe twice.
Once I dropped a bundt cake when turning it out of the pan, luckily I caught half of it.

I was still new to baking bread. While watching Madeleine on PBS one Saturday morning I was inspired by the way she mixed the dough by hand right on the counter by mounding the flour into a pile and then making a well for the wet ingredients. Brilliant I thought! So I pulled a recipe out and mounded up my flour and the rest of my ingredients. Poured in the water and watched it run in rivulets through the flour and onto the floor! I hadn't thought about all the nuts and raisins I put in with the flour and how they would make little holes through which the water could run out! After I quit laughing at my lack of knowledge of building piles of flour, I spent 15 minutes cleaning up the mess and finally just dumped that batch!

When I first got married I had never baked bisucits, cornbread yest, biscuits no. Well I'd watched my Mom and Grands many times and decided I'd try. We I accidently grabbed the all purpose flour instead of hte self raising and my biscuits looked like cookies. My husband's cousin actually liked them and asked me to make them again.

My softened butter for a packaged sugar cookie mix was too soft and it come out burnt yet greasy on the outside and still undone on the inside. So much for holiday cookies.

I'm an almost unplugged baker - I live in a tiny NYC apartment with a eensy meensy, windowless galley kitchen. I do have a small hand mixer, but I have no room for a stand mixer, food processor or other equipment that it seems contemporary cookbook authors assume everyone has. In my never ending quest for storage solutions, I decided to relocate the mixer, cookie cutters, lemon juicers, tongs, etc. to shoeboxes that I stowed in the oven, removing them before I turned it on. This worked very well for almost a decade, I was overcome with a baking frenzy right before the holidays a few years ago and forgot to remove the boxes when I turned the oven on to preheat it. At first I thought someone down the hall have burnt something on an ironing board; then I saw the smoke coming out of my kitchen. Not only did it take days and days for the stink to clear, I had some neighbors knock on my door to ask if I fell asleep while I was cooking and to make sure if I was all right (they were ready to call 911 if I didn't answer).

BTW, This is a WONDERFUL concept for a cookbook - for baking, I often use a Joy Of Cooking, the original NY Times and some other cookbooks from the 60's & 70's that my mother handed down to me because they don't assume the full spectrum of modern conveniences. I have quite a few other food-processor-stand-mixer-less friends here in NYC and in other cities as well that I know will get a lot of use out of this book too.

Super acidic lemon squares. After one successful attempt with lemon squares, my roommates and I decided we were good enough to tamper with the recipe. We felt it could be tangier. We must have doubled or tripled the lemon zest as well as the lemon juice asked for in the curd.

The result: super sour, acidic, burn your tongue lemon squares. No one would touch them after the first bite, and they ended up sitting on the dining table for a week before we tossed them out.

Tried baking a simple pound/tea cake in a round pan - rose beautifully, slightly pulled away from the edges, golden brown. Checked it with the tester...clean all over, middle included. Pulled it out of the oven and left it to cool for 10-15 minutes. Came back and the middle had sunk a little. Turned it out and had a handful of very hot batter from the supposedly cooked middle. Made a lovely tea ring after that.

One 10-year-old+2 of Mom's brand new ovens+One uncooked Chocolate Maple Pecan Pie=One Tough Christmas Eve

Just yesterday I accidentally added egg whites instead of lemon juice to my tart - they're the same color!

The first time I made biscuits, the recipe was old and the baking powder was older. We thought we followed the recipe, but we ended up with the prettiest golden brown hockey pucks you could imagine. Even the birds couldn't break them down, although you know the crows tried. Crazy smart crows.

10 years old. Making clove cookies. (Why cloves? No idea.) Used 1/4 cup cloves instead of 1/4 teaspoon. Yum!

To this day, I despise the smell of clove cigarettes.

Making Gougeres in my new propane gas oven. We were having a party, and that was just one of many disasters that day.
They were more like weird blinis.
Not good. I have since learned that Propane does not burn as hot

I made a triple-berry pie and entered it in the state fair a few years ago. I don't care for berries, so I hadn't tested it myself. Hubby tried it when I brought it home and declared it the tartest, sourest berry pie he'd ever eaten. But he kept going back for more, saying it was like a car wreck, he just couldn't stay away from it.

The first time I ever baked anything by myself, I was eight and trying out a chocolate chip cookie recipe. I accidentally read "1 cup" rather than "1 teaspoon" for the amount of baking soda, but being completely inexperienced, didn't think anything of it. When the cookie dough was mixed up, I decided it needed sampling and was puzzled by the extremely soapy taste. I knew something was wrong, but didn't want to give up at that point. I think I tried to convince myself that the odd taste would go away once the cookies were baked. Being the lazy child that I was, I decided I wanted to make one big sheet of a cookie rather than individual rounds, so I scraped the whole bowl of dough onto the pan and spread it out. Some time after the thing went into the oven, it started smelling really good and I rushed over to the oven door to take a peek, only to watch in horror as the cookie dough actually bubbled up and over the side of the pan like molten lava. The bottom of the oven ended up caked in scorched cookie dough and my mom was not happy.

forgetting to add baking powder to blueberry muffins

I made biscuits for a Sunday dinner. It was a special dinner for an Aunt. The biscuits came out of the oven looking beautiful, but were hard as rocks. Till this day the kids still call them rocks. The biscuits have improved. They are light and delicious Rocks!

I was making a friends wedding cake and was using a self-made pre-mix for the many many layers. Usually works fine right?
Well, in my haste I did not add the second addition of sugar in the steps to mixing, and after baking they tasted like baked wallpaper paste.
Luckily I had time to redo them all, but the worst was I had done ALL the cake this terrible way...did not even check them after the first baking to be sure they were okay...and I know better!
See what stress will do to you? Eek.

In light of today's post:

The one and only time I tried baking for the SO, for Valentine's Day, I attempted his favorite -- pound cake. It was my very first time baking, and my very first time using an oven. Everything was going swimmingly. Batter smelled great, went in the oven, left the kitchen to do something for the 45-minute wait. 30 minutes later, wandering into the kitchen for a glass of water, I was greeted with billowing clouds of black smoke.

At the time, I was a senior in college, living in the sprinkler-equipped, smoke-detectored student apartments. We'd all been warned that the sprinklers would leave two inches of water on the carpeting (hello mildew) and damage the suite below. The smoke detector automatically sent a $150 truck from the fire department. So, a suitemate and I ran around frantically commandeering our fans, opening the windows and doors...

When I finally opened the oven door, pound cake innards were everywhere. Everywhere. It looked like the cake had burnt to a crisp, then erupted liquid batter -- took about three days of periodic cleanup before everything was back to normal, my fear of ovens included.

As for Valentine's Day, I'm glad I did a test run. I got another gift instead.

The first time I baked after moving to a new neighborhood in high school I decided to make some cookies for my friend's birthday. I didn't have any measuring cups, so I basically just used a little bowl and eyeballed it.

The cookies turned out like gooey, poisonous little puddles. They got warm after I carried them to school and spread out and started dripping and melting out of the package I'd wrapped for her. She ate them nevertheless (she's far from picky) but it was by far the worst thing I've ever baked.

I was watching Martha Stewart and saw her decorate a cake by piping a giant sunflower on the top. My sister loves sunflowers and it was her birthday so I thought "I can do that!" I'd never held a piping bag before and pipiing wasn't at all easy like Martha made it look. One of my cats was sleeping on top of the fridge, something happened in the apartment upstairs which caused water to pour through my ceiling, my cat freaked and jumped off the fridge landing in the cake, buttercream and cake splattered all over my kitchen and my cat was soaking wet and covered in cake and buttercream. Right after all of the commotion, my sister walked through my front door to see the aftermath. She asked what happened and all I could say was that I baked her a birthday cake. I have never seen her laugh so hard.

Fatal mistake #1 - moving into a basement apartment
Fatal mistake #2 - watching Martha
Fatal mistake #3 - thinking I could do what Martha did

I forgot to add the sugar to the Tollhouse cookies. Whoops.

I was about 9 or 10 years old, coming home from the grocery store, very excited to bake. I decided to walk into the house, carrying a gallon of milk on my head. It seemed like a fantastic idea at the time. Apparently, I wasn't as strong as I thought. I lost hold of the milk, and the gallon broke all over the floor. I spent the afternoon frantically searching for beach towels to clean up the mess!

The BF and I were so proud of ourselves for making a pumpkin pie from scratch for dessert for Christmas a couple years back. Every time someone called to say what time they would be there, she told them about the homemade pie for dessert. Unfortunately, little miss Lucky dog ate a good half of the pie before anyone even made it to the house. We spent the whole night answering the question "So where is this pie I heard so much about?"

Well a few weeks ago, I decided to try out this recipe for oatmeal lace cookies, they looked different and interesting - something I hadn't tried before. The recipe called for equal parts oats and chopped nuts, but not being a nut lover, I figured I would just leave them out. I leave the nuts out of chocolate chip cookie recipes and brownies, so I decided I could do that here too. Of course, the batter was thin and delicate, and really needed those nuts to hold the cookies together. The first batch came out of the oven, and were impossible to lift on the baking sheet, even after I left them to cool a while, they just disintegrated and crumbled into an oaty pile.
For the next batch I figured I should add extra oats to compensate for the missing nuts, and I managed to scrape a few of those cookies whole off the pan, those even half of those ultimately crumbled and fell through the cracks of the cooling rack.
But wait, the story isn't over. Once I had salvaged a handful of delicate, translucent looking cookies, I stored them in a plastic container in the corner of my kitchen. However the kitchen tends to get very hot and I came back that night to find the cookies had basically melted into one giant cookie mound. At that point I just laughed it off and picked a piece off to nibble on. Chalk this one up to absentmindedness.
Best part of the whole story? I came down the next morning - the whole container was empty. Guess I've created a new delicacy!

I was making almond cupcakes and for the icing I used granulated sugar instead of icing sugar. The icing was just awful, it was runny and crunchy. My brother ate them anyway!

Sally's cheesecake is legendary in my family. A family wedding brought Sally to my grandmother's house and with Sally came the promise of the fluffy, amazing cheesecake. Two went in the oven and as the first was exiting, some miscommunication led to paths crossing and a flying cheesecake... in ...slow .... motion. And splatted on the floor.

Lucky for my family, we aren't picky people and Sally's lone cheesecake was not going to feed the whole family. It was only decorum that kept us from eating it right off the floor. Like I said, we're not picky. There were no leftovers, fresh or floored. Some who tell the tale swear that the floor cheesecake tasted better than any other cheesecake, but that might be to save face.

I was making sourdough starter one summer and we had a few moderately warm days followed by a temperature spike, then a return to more moderate temperatures. When I went to use my finished starter a few days later, I was about knocked over by the fumes because, instead of starter, I'd managed to make moonshine on my kitchen counter.

I was trying to impress my mother-in-law. Enough said, right?
We were visiting with my husband's parents for the week and I thought it would be a nice gesture to cook dinner for everyone one evening in return for their hospitality. Now, I am known to be an excellent cook, but somehow, my mother-in-law had never sampled my cooking. I really wanted this first meal to be something to knock her socks off. Well, the meal was great, and for dessert - grilled peaches in a sweetened lemon sauce with whipped marscapone cheese. Mmmmmmmm!
My father-in-law took the first bite, "This is... interesting." My husband: "Uhhhh..." My daughter was next, "Bleccckkkkhhhh! Mom, this is gross!" Nobody else said anything...just vain attempts to keep the grimaces off of their faces as they tried to swallow. Finally, my turn: Oh no!
I sat there in dismay. I couldn't figure it out - what could have possibly gone wrong?! It was my father-in-law who finally deduced what had happened. He pointed to a rather large container on the counter. "Did you use any of this?" "Uh...yeah?" He nearly fell over laughing.
Yes, that's right. The container that looks like it's filled with sugar? Uh huh, the one right next to the flour? Yup, that's the salt.
Who keeps that much salt out on their counter?!!!!!!!
Talk about making an impression! I will never live that one down.

Worst baking episode - unexpected company - Firemen. One should never allow the distraction of TV when cooking, getting engrossed an then wodering where the smoke was coming from. I don't recall what was in the pan that I threw out.

Red velvet cake. Still don't know what happened to this day.

When I first started baking I thought that flour was flour. I was making some almond sugar cookies and it required 4 cups of flour. I only had 2 of regular flour. After looking through the pantry I found pancake mix. Well, flour being flour, I though I could use that to complete the 4 cups that I needed. Oh boy.... those were the worst tasting cookies I have ever tried. My family laughed so much that it was years before I baked anything.

About two years ago there used to be this deer that would come to my back porch every day and eat pieces of bread out of our hand. Well one night i made a batch of cornbread and forgot to add in the baking powder. Needless to say it turned out dense and heavy. I took the ruined cornbread and threw it over the porch into our backyard. That one deer ATE THE WHOLE THING. I am sorry to say but we never saw her after that. i think she died of a bloated stomach!

as a 12-year-old baking a batch of at least 3 dozen icebox cookies for a school bakesale, despite my mother's protestations, i insisted that my grandmother dictating the recipe over the phone had said '1/4 *cup* salt...'

When I was about five years old, I managed to burn a (store-bought) chocolate chip cookie in the microwave. The thing looked like a hockey puck.

Then, after about seven years in the food industry AND graduating from culinary school, I made a chiffon-style bundt cake.... mistaking baking powder with baking soda. The end result? A bitter, messy, and disastrous mess.

We moved into this house and the floor in the kitchen was uneven, so when I baked my first cake, it was completely lopsided.

My focaccia turned out to be a giant cracker

Years ago I left the eggs out of a brownie recipe. But my sister loved them more than ever and ate the whole pan.

I was a newbie and didn't realize that hot liquids in a blender meant an explosion. I was prying dried blueberry off the walls for years.

I can't choose between the shortbread tasting like salty Playdough, or the chocolate cake bubbling over the cake pan rim and making a mess of my entire oven...

I tried to make marshmallows but when I added the simple syrup to the mixer, it blew all over the kitchen!

I, as a budding young baker of eight, would often help my mother make chocolate chip muffins. They weren't too sweet for me, and they had chocolate in them which appeased my father. It's a very, very, very simple recipe. You take all the ingredients, toss them in a bowl, mix, by hand or by mixer, and put the batter in the muffin tins. Then you bake them.
It was the first recipe I ever made by myself, but I added baking soda instead of baking powder (or vice versa. I don't recall).
So, we got really thick cookie cake things. While this isn't so interesting a cooking mishap at nine or ten, I continued to make the very same mistake with that particular muffin recipe until I graduated from high school (about three years ago). I could make chocolate angel food cake and cream puffs and make big family meals that were timed perfectly.

But those muffins were truly my downfall.

one afternoon, my friend and i couldn't decide which cake to make, so we attempted to make both the pine nut and pistachio loaf cakes in the Italian (two?) Easy book.. We were also cooking dinner, and somehow.. between three dishes in progress and several French 75s, I caught an oven mitt on fire. Threw it in the sink. My husband threw it outside...neither of us doused it in water. That evening, the boys were cleaning up the kitchen before bed, and smelled smoke. opened the door to the deck and found an oven mitt-shaped hole. The mitt burned a perfect hole through the deck and smoldered itself into oblivion. just soom soot on the ground beneath. We were celebrating our new house. We had been there maybe a month, and almost burned the place down.

I was fixated with having a proper tea and eating scones after reading Victorian literature in high school. I tried making scones one day but they turned out to be more like dry hockey pucks.

The first time I made brownies, I think I was around 10. I forgot to add any type of leavening. I think that recipe called for baking powder. Anyway, they set up like rubber. My brother kept bouncing them on the kitchen counter. Needless to say, it was awhile before I tried anymore baking.

Oatmeal lace cookies - not only couldn't I get them out of the pan, but I couldn't get the pan clean! I still don't know what I did wrong, but they're one cookie I'll never try to make again.

While making a cake for my daughter's 1st. birthday , my back was really starting to bother me . So , when it came time to frost , I transferred the slightly warm cake from the counter to the table , so I could sit while frosting . Unbeknownst to me , the warm cake had created a dampness on the plate . As I transported cake to table , it slid off the plate , turned over and hit the floor .......NOT splitting into pieces .....but disintegrating into a pile of crumbs ! I laughed ! I cried ! and with NO WAY to repair this mess , and guests arriving in an hour , I cleaned up , got dressed and headed out to get a store bought . My party guests had a good laugh when I explained why we had a GENERIC cake .

I was making a cheesecake for Christmas Eve dinner with my husband's family. I was putting so much care into this cake--everything was mixed so carefully, poured so gently, all the tips on preventing cracks were followed religiously. While the cake was baking it didn't look exactly right, but I was still optimistic. As the cake began to cool there was no hiding that it was flat and misshapen and cracked like mad. I was standing in the middle of the kitchen--confused and wondering how this could happen when I was so conscientious about my cake technique--when I saw it. A bowl of carefully measured sugar, sitting on the counter, just waiting to be added to the cheesecake.

I had forgotten to add the sugar (ANY sugar) and essentially baked whipped cream cheese and vanilla extract into a completely inedible, time-consuming mess.

Oops.

In Junior High, a friend and I wanted to make pancakes for breakfast. Her Mom let us have free reign in the kitchen. Everything came out great until we tasted them. We used salt in place of sugar......

Oh wow. My first baking disaster happened when I was five. I should have known then....Anyway, I was making chocolate chip cookies with my mom. At the time, my hair was loooong. I leaned over the electric mixer to get a look at the delicious churning batter, and whoosh. My ponytail got stuck in the beaters. Seriously. If you can imagine that right now...it was traumatic, but I lived, and I'm still baking. Advice, don't lean over the bowl to much. You never know what you'll find yourself mixed-up in.

I was making a berry-stuffed shortbread. My friend recommended using frozen ones, as they seem to hold up better while baking. I kind of forgot about the temperature differences, resulting in a sort of nice and crispy outside and a nasty, doughy inside. It was kind of bad.

I have no funny baking accidents. Most of them were rather sad and pathetic.

the first time I made fudge and it never harden - it was still good eating it out the pot with a spoon!

the first time i ever made chocolate chip cookies, i dumped everything in all at once. they were not very pretty.

I actually tried to make this pound cake last night. I was such a lazy dumbass that I melted some of the butter to soften it up instead of letting it soften on its own. I know this is wrong. the cake was bubbling with butter and separating from the flour. The butter oozed out and I was left with this stiff eggy yellow ring. It was terrifying. Going to make it the right way tonight.

forgetting baking powder in a recipe nasty

for a company charity bake sale...i made brownies that ive memorized the recipe to....only to find completely over cooked and burnt brownies when i opened the oven. it was a complete disaster, and a horrible cleanup at that. still dont understand what happened.

The funniest thing I ever did whilebaking was to accidentally put Cumin instead of Cloves in a pumpkin pie. It tasted terrible, and my family loves to bring it up every year at Thanksgiving.

When I first started baking in high school I didn't always pay close attention to what I was doing and once made cookies with half the flour. They spread out all over the pan, but I just called them cookie "chips" and ate them anyway!

I tried making no-knead bread, but somehow the recipe and my high altitude didn't agree. I ended up with a dry, crumbly, yeasty brick with a fallen center and a rubbery crust.

can't hink of one at this second but would love the book

I think this happens every time I try to bake a chiffon cake (or angel food cake, as some may call it), but it just. won't. rise. It doesn't matter how much I whip the egg whites, or the amount of baking soda, or if put meringue powder in it... They always end up flat and dense, sort of like a Baumkuchen.
However, the miserable chiffon cake fails make wonderful bread pudding so I don't mull over it too much.

The local newspaper had a recipe for shortbread. That used a mix master. It ... wasn't good. Eventually, the cookies melted/melded into a gooey mass in their container. They didn't even taste good.

This year my roommate and I were having a pizza party. We used old flour that I brought from my parents house to make the dough. After the 2 hours of rising, a few glasses of wine each, and very hungry guests, we realized there was some sort of insect infestation in the flour we used. We then picked out each grubby little thing and proceded to make the pizza. This could have been a disaster but my roommate and I just went with it. (Gross?) If the guests found out it would of been a complete disaster.

I can still remember my first attempt at making a vegan pumpkin pie and watching in horror as it erupted and spewed within the first ten minutes of baking. Thank god for self cleaning ovens.

my worst disaster was when i tried to surprise my girlfriend with a cheesecake after she had been away for the weekend.

it was going well until i dropped it before i was about to put it in the oven! she walked in then and saw pans/utensils everywhere, a messy kitchen and cheesecake mix ALL over the floor.

Oh...this is too easy. Instead of using sugar. yes a cup of sugar, I of course used salt instead (forgot the purpose of the red dot on my canister). Yes, the muffins came out to be a savory meal instead, but chocolate and salt just isn't my idea of dessert.

We had a neighbor, a bachelor, who loved to be invited over to our home for dinner. I loved feeding this guy!!! He always went back for 3rds and 4ths! One night I made a pumpkin pie for dessert. I served up the pieces and saw everyone's face...they looked like mine. I forgot the sugar!! But, our neighbor LOVED the pie! He ate half of it! I kept apologizing and telling him he didn't have to eat it.
This past summer, he passed away unexpectedly. His nephew told us of finding diabetes syringes and medicines...none of us knew he was diabetic. I have since wondered if the pie without the sugar was something he could eat without worry...I don't know if that's so, but I'm glad my mistake made someone happy!

I made a beautiful cake and and didn't notice until serving it in front of guests that it had a very long hair (mine) baked into it. How embarrasing!

Thank you!

I used the box of baking soda instead of the box of cornstarch when making a custard pie for a dinner for my boss and his wife.

When I was little, my grandfather and I used to make breakfast (usually pancakes) together on Sunday mornings. One day, we decided to make muffins, but didn't check to make sure we had all the ingredients. I was about seven at the time, so there was no running out to the store. We decided to substitute leftover oil from frying chicken the night before (instead of vegetable oil) and extra baking soda for baking powder (the recipe called for both). Result? The world's most pitiful, over browned, completely unrisen muffins. And they tasted like chalky chicken.

Many years ago, after thinking we'd mastering chocolate chip cookies and brownies my friend & I decided to make cinnamon rolls.

We'd never worked with yeast and had no idea what we were doing. Our yeast never rose and when we were done we had round hockey pucks that had a little cinnamon flavor.

1st time baking cookies, didn't realize that cookies should come out of the oven soft- completely over baked and crunchy

When I was a kid, my mother worked full time and had a long drive to work so my brother and I did a lot of the cooking. One day we decided to make a "jam-cake." We had seen one on television or in a restaurant or somewhere but had no idea how to make one.

So we just made some cake batter, poured half of it into a loaf pan, put in a layer of strawberry jam, and poured the rest of the batter on top.

When it was baked, what we got was a crust around the bottom and sides filled with something that resembled strawberry pudding.

It was a total mess but it tasted delicious. So we served it in bowls and called it strawberry bread pudding.

I can't think of one, but I thought I'd enter anyhow!

I was making a chocolate cake from scratch and I misread the liquid amounts and forgot to add the oil. It had very little moisture and when I used the electric hand mixer all the batter got stuck to the beaters and overheated the mixer. I never finished the cake but I did get a nice new mixer out of the deal.

When I first started baking at around age 9, my mother (who was NOT a baker) only hand a handheld mixer with one functional beater and a broken "on" switch, and I used it to make everything. I used it for years before someone finally bought me one for Christmas. These days I really appreciate my stand mixer more because of my painful memories of sticking a chopstick in the "on" switch to turn on my half-beater.

My first loaf of homemade yeast bread was a real disaster. After hours of work I took it out of the oven and dropped it! It cracked the asphalt tile!!! I laugh now thinking about it and have gained a reputation of being a great bread maker.

When I was a kid, I was trying to help my mother out with the Thanksgiving baking. The recipe called for cloves, so I added cloves. It didn't say ONE word about it needing to be ground cloves. I think we all ate apple pie that year :-)

Martha Stewart's Crepe Cake. Not so much funny, especially at the time. I remember the so-called cream filling turning into a goopy mess. The end result was a crepe cake that sloshed and slid around. I had to dissassemble the entire cake (which was not yet frosted) and cut small rounds, fill, and stack from there. Never. Again.

I actually tried to make a strawberry cake for my husband. It was his birthday and he really wanted one. I had never even had a strawberry cake before, so yes, it was a disaster. The icing turned out as pure liquid.

For me, baking is the disaster.

Watching Pastry Cream boil all over the stove becuase baking soda was mistaken for cornstarch!!!!!

Forgetting baking soda. Not good!

I left out the sugar in a strawberry cheesecake and served it for a friend's birthday, not realizing the error until I tasted it. People still raved that it was good which now leads me to believe that people are just liars or have no taste...

Every time I make oatmeal scotchies I eat just about half the dough. That's a disaster.

My first baking experience as a child was to make chocolate cookies. I didn't know there was a difference between baking powder and baking soda. They looked lovely, but ...eww, they were inedible. So disappointing.

I cooked a turkey and had no idea there was a bag of guts in it. It was cut in front of company and I was so embarrassed.

I baked a pumpkin pie and forgot to put in the sugar - not so funny, BUT the next week, my son in law baked a pumpkin pie and was remarking that the spices seemed off. It turned out that he, too, forgot the sugar. Then my friend was baking pumpkin pie after I told her the stories and she also forgot the sugar. This is a virus.

accidentally used cornstarch instead of flour

I once accidentally put in a bit more salt than was called for...like 2 tablespoons instead of 2 teaspoons. It was pretty awful tasting. The consistence was bad too.

making some cookie dough, and not paying attention at all. I had the tv on and the kids at my heels, and for some reason thought I would triple my usual recipe... so not paying attention, poor math skills, and a somehow added an extra 50% of the needed butter, and 3 times the eggs. What came out when baked were not really cookies, not really cake, but a strange sort of combination that did not look appealing.

Although new to baking, I was emboldened by my successes with the recipes in a new cook book I received as a gift, so I decided to tackle "Chocolate Roll Filled with Chocolate Ganache". The disaster occurred when I was trying to "spread the ganache on the chocolate roll and roll the cake into a log". What an utter mess, with ganache and cake failing to cooperate. I ended up with this somewhat layered lump that I tried to disguise with more ganache. I dubbed it "Ugly Cake" and served it anyway. Fortunately, it tasted very good and, encouraged by my husband and friends, even attempted the recipe a couple more times - of course, never managed a pretty "roll", ending up each time with "Ugly Cake"!

I made pear cheddar pie for thanksgiving...
trust me, when the recipe says to use BUTTER... USE BUTTER !!!
Margarine just doesn't do it.
Nothing like having pear soup pie for thanksgiving dessert !

When I was 9 I made some cupcakes to sell to the neighbors (my money making plan). I made my own frosting and decided to color it with food coloring---a real yucky looking green. Our next door neighbor felt so sorry for me, he bought all my cupcakes, saving all the other neighbors from having to look at them. They tasted great...but looked horrible!
Thanks for the contest, I love to bake!

My funniest baker disaster would be if I attempted to bake anything. That's why I need this book sooooooo much.

Weevil Brownies.

i under-baked some sweet rolls and thought i could salvage it by steaming them. they turned in to soggy lumps and then when cooled were like bricks.

The first time I made cornbread. Perhaps taking a few ears of field corn and pounding them wasn't the right way. I was 6.

love new recipes and if i dont have an ingredient, i will substitute something else...my mom always boasts about how we could never get the same recipe twice, especially if they like it.

Had a bit of an episode in college when I was "experimenting" with Marthaness. Tried to make the buche de noel.... 13 hours, 2 dozen egg, untold amounst of butter, sugar and cream... and youve got one half crazed woman trying to make the merange mushooms look realistic with a bic lighter. The worst thing was it was too rich to eat. Never Never again

when i was baking something sweet, i added too much salt when only needed a pinch..

Oh, jeez. This is easy. I once made a pumpkin cake for a party, and just... left out the flour. All of it. Bundt pan full of black, simmering sugar, that's what I pulled out of the oven.

I was making cupcakes for my son's birthday party. I was out of oil so I used olive oil. They were horrible. We ended up going outside and having a food fight and then playing in the sprinklers.

My first TWD entry, rugelach. I didn't roll the dough out enough, didn't make enough filling, didn't have to right chocolate, didn't roll them right and then burnt them. It's amazing I didn't quit right then.

I am not so good at baking and have therefore had many baking mishaps. But I keep on trying. Perhaps the worst was the birthday cake I forgot to put sugar into.

This is not my story, but my father's. My father is a chemist by profession and is given to experimenting with anything and everything. Sometimes this works out well (his patents for drug companies), and sometimes not (baking disasters).

When my mother and father were first married they often had friends over for dinner. One such night after dinner my father, well-lubricated by alcohol, decided to make a chocolate cake for dessert. Everyone was enthusiastic about the idea, but were dismayed when my mother reminded my father that they had no flour. No problem, my dad said. He rummaged through the cupboards and came up with a year-old box of Bisquick. He threw some of the mix into a bowl with an egg, sugar, and some cocoa, mixed in some milk, and let 'er rip in the oven. What came out 40 minutes later was a dense, dry, crumbly brown loaf that nearly split the kitchen counter when my dead pried it out of the pan. It looked, my mother said, like something you would punish unruly prisoners with. No amount of milk and sugar poured onto it could make it edible, and after my mother poured another round of vodka tonics everyone forgot about it except for my parents' friend Marty, who sat down at the table and methodically worked his way through the entire horrible cake.

I wish I had a baking disaster but baking intimidates me. In college I did attempt to make beer batter bread out of the Moosewood cookbook and the bread never rose and was like concrete.

For Father's day a couple years back when I lived in Oregon, I decided to bake an apple pie. After almost an hour of messing around with the dough, I produced a rather nice looking lattice top for the pie, and it entered the oven. I couldn't be happier, but about ten minutes into baking, the power went out thanks to a rain/wind storm that swept through my city. I tried to re-bake it when the power came on the next day, but the apple juice made the bottom crust very soggy overnight and the was-supposed-to-be-my-beautiful-creation-to-impress-my-family pie ended up very blah. Since then, I've moved to a more weather-friendly California. =)

Everything I made during my last pregnancy. Every time I made a batch of cookies, I would inevitably leave out an ingredient- salt, baking soda, eggs. Luckily, with my daughter almost a year old, my baking is getting back to normal.

When I made flat cream puffs... that squished.

While this wasn't funny, it was tasty. Was making yeast rolls for Easter lunch, they never rose, wrapped the ham in the dough, baked the ham and the dough together, and both were fabulous. In fact, my wife requests my failure each Easter.

I need this book bc I am so bad in baking....I turned choc chip cookies into muffin tops by using cake flour instead of all purpose

the inevitable rite of passage: as a young, novice baker, I mistook salt for sugar and made an inedible batch of brownies. And then I ate them anyway.

The classic - lifting up the mixer arm to check the cake batter while it was stuck in the on setting with the motor going full blast...in my defense, I was only 8.

For my daughter's 2nd birthday, I attempted to make my first cake, an all-homemade 2-layer carrot cake with fancy decorations. The cake was gorgeous! After my baby had blown the candles, I started to slice the cake and all the guests were anxiously watching and waiting. Well, the cake was rock hard, the knife couldn't go through at all. What a disaster! Now whenever we got together with the same group of friends for Christmas dinner each year, I never get assigned to make a cake and the story of that disastrous carrot cake keeps getting retold every year! I have since found the best carrot cake in Honolulu and just buy it... but who knows, there may be hope for me yet!

Wait, tofu isn't baking. Scratch that last comment.

My mother taught me to cook when I was a young teen, but we hadn't got around to mastering bread baking before I left home. So I thought I'd teach myself, just as I'd taught myself many other things.

Well, for the life of me I COULD NOT get a single loaf of bread to rise. Made and threw out many doorstops until I went back to mom's house for a workshop.

Turns out I'd been killing the yeast with hot water. It needs to be just a titch hotter than lukewarm, like a baby's bath. And here I thought it had to be about coffee temperature. Who knew?

I'm a queen at the chocolate souffle.....now. My first attempt was for my new boyfriend. While carefully trying to transfer the pan to the oven, I poured the entire contents into the oven. Trying not to panic, I quickly tried to clean up and whip up another batch before our romantic dinner was set to begin. I got it accomplished, but little did I know I didn't clean it all up. And while sitting enjoying a very good dinner, smoke began to seep into the room in which we were eating. The entire kitchen was filled with smoke. I tried to retrieve the souffles before they retained that nice smoky flavor. only to spill them all down my front and burn the piss out my thighs. I sat on the floor and cried, while he tried to choke back his laughs. Oh, well. We are still together.

Once upon a time I whipped up an enormous cheesecake, but for some reason put it in the oven and didn't set a timer and couldn't remember what time it was when I started baking it. I was so fearful of over baking it that I ended up removing it FAR too soon. It seemed a bit jiggly but I convinced myself it would 'set up' or something. After cooling, I unhinged the springform, lifted out the cake, and topped it with a gorgeous crown of 15 dollars-worth of lightly glazed fresh-from-the-farmer's-market-raspberries. It looked pretty good - but when I sliced it, it became very clear what I had done (or under-done...ha!)....it was like fondue, oozing everywhere. Such a sad mess. But the edges tasted pretty good. ;)

I recently tried to make a raspberry red wine reduction and the recipe called for butter but I the smart one thought, oh I'll just use olive oil which probably would have been fine but the heat was on high so the olive oil heats up then I add vinegar and I have an explosion of oil and vinegar all over the counter but luckily not on me. Oops. At that point I decided to serve my dessert without a sauce. :)

this story is a baking disaster in the sense that if i'd had an oven, things would have been much better. my freshman year in college, i lived in dorms, as most freshmen do, and was not allowed to have any special appliances other than the dorm microwave. so not having a toaster/toaster oven, I decided to warm up a bagel in the microwave, and i happened to have some cheese (but not cream cheese) so i put the cheese on top to melt. This was apparently a really bad idea because i had started doing something while the bagel was in the microwave and didn't see the whole thing CATCH ON FIRE, but i could smell it pretty quickly, as could everyone else on my hall...for a week...

I've never been able to make a lemon chess pie. I remember reading a recipe years ago in the Washington Post food section and thinking it would be easy.

I followed the recipe to the letter. I pulled the pie out of the oven--and it sloshed. The oven was hot but for some reason the pie didn't set up properly. I dumped the whole thing in the trash and started over again. Same thing. I never figured out what was wrong with the recipe but I never tried to make chess pie again.

It is a tradition in the department of anthropology that doctoral candidates bring refreshments to the doctoral exam in order that committee members do not have to suffer the tedium of their academic obligations. My mother has a brownie recipe that everyone agrees is nothing less than divine, and naturally, this was the recipe I wished to reproduce for my defense.

After e-mailing me the recipe, my mother called to emphasize that the recipe was no good without the right pan. I focused on the pan and that afternoon went out and bought the best brownie pan Bed Bath and Beyond had to offer. It was a welcome relief from revising my presentation, nevertheless I was distracted, and was probably rehearsing the opening statement when I was bringing the recipe together. To begin, I didn't notice that the rack in my oven was positioned on a diagonal with one side a notch above the other. Second, in the process of melting the chocolate and butter over low heat I inadvertently doubled the butter.

When I went to check the brownies I noticed that they'd cooked for 18 minutes on a diagonal and assured myself that the best thing would be to continue on the slant and get them to cook at least. But they never actually rose the way my mom's did. When I gave my boyfriend a taste, in his infinite generosity, he declared them fine, so I cut them up into an assortment of thicker and thinner slices.

The following day at the defense I handed out the brownies and put one on a plate for myself. In accordance with the ritual, everyone took a perfunctory taste. That was when I noticed that I'd produced a concoction of butter on top of chocolate on top of butter. I commented, "These are my mom's rich brownies!" My committee members nodded and dutifully nibbled at their chocolaty butter nuggets. At least I hadn't poisoned anyone, I thought, and decided no one would dwell on the cooking misstep, if they even noticed. Halfway through the exam, however, to my horror, I noticed that the paper plates on which I'd placed the individual brownies had contracted brownie-wide blots of butter oil.

In the end I passed and one of my professors, for reasons that I've come to understand as related to memories of the 'gentile poverty' of graduate life, ate a total of three brownies and declared them the best ever!

My funniest baking disaster was when I baked a cheese & onion pie for my friend, but instead of using regular pie crust, I accidentally used graham cracker crust instead. It was awful. Thanks for the giveaway!

Not really baking, but a disaster nonetheless: I made peanut brittle for the first time and when I was instructed to pour the lava-like brittle onto wax paper to cool I discovered I had no wax paper. Hey, no problem. I poured the mixture onto plastic wrap instead. But guess what? The hot mixture melted the plastic and it was absorbed into the brittle. The truly shameful part is that I served it anyway. . .

When I was first starting out I made my grandpa browines or something. I used the wrong type sugar which made them very gritty. He said they were the best he had ever eaten.

I was baking a pound cake and when it was in the oven I looked over the recipe again and realized I forgot to add the baking powder. I took the uncooked cake out of the oven and threw it away.

A few years ago, a friend of mine in the Netherlands posted a recipe for pepernoten, a traditional holiday cookie. So I decided to whip up a batch to give me fiance's parents for Christmas. I think the recipe mentioned that the cookies would be a little hard - I imagined them to be like hard biscotti.

These were jawbreakers. Gingery, cinnamony, jawbreakers.

I accidently mixed up sugar and salt. I won't even say what the recipe was, but lets just say it didn't turn out well.

When I was just starting to cook, I'd follow recipes to a T. Sadly, I can be a little dyslexic. I'd skip whole ingredients and end up with cookies that had no baking soda or brownies without sugar.

used cinnamon instead of cocoa powder in a brownie recipe.

I made cookies with cornmeal instead of flour because I scooped from the wrong jar. Needless to say, the cookies were a bit on the grainy side.

I substituted almond oil for almond extract and made the world's nastiest cookies.

During a middle school home ec class we were supposed to make chocolate vinegar cake. Well, I guess somewhere along the line my group forgot to add the sugar to the cake. Of course, the end result was not particularly great tasting.

Ok, I don't have anything funny. Sometimes I forget the salt, sometimes my breads turn out as hard and flavorless as rocks. I rarely find any amusement in failed cooking and baking experiences!! ;)

I forgot to add sugar to my sugar cookies. IT was a disaster :(

I made cherries jubilee but didn't realize that when alcohol was old that it wouldn't light. I don't drink so I had a bottle that had been open for years. My dad went and got a blow torch and it still wouldn't light. I have the greatest picture of my dad trying to light the dessert and my kids standing there cracking up laughing.

One of my biggest disasters was attempting to frost a uncooled cake with buttercream frosting. A real mess...

I was once in a hurry to get a cake made at the last second as I was headed to a party. In my attempt to cool the cake a bit faster, I immediately removed the cake from the pan right after it was removed from the oven. The cake broke in half and it looked terrible.

Frist time I baked anything was in 4-H, i think I was about 9? Me and my partner made chocolate chip cookies except we forgot one thing, flour! So when we pulled our proud creations from the oven it was one giant melted otgether in the shaped of the pan with no rise. Baffled our teacher since the dough looked perfectly fine. I heard about that for many years.

I was making my tried-and-true birthday cake using a recipe from the NY Times magazine. Somehow, I forgot to add both the baking powder AND the baking soda. Needless to say, I had a flat and not very tasty pancake instead of a fluffy, yummy birthday cake.

it was more scary than funny but we were making tacos and my daughter put the shells in the oven on the top rack to heat up..ON BROIL..needless to say they all caught on fire :(

I was making a sugar cookie pizza base late one night (basically, sugar cookie dough on a pizza stone). I put it in the oven and then began cutting up fruit and other things. I soon forgot about the cookie dough because I was sooooo tired. I went to bed, but awoke when, in my dream, something sure did smell good! Needless to say, the cookie was ruined and I had to start over.

When I was 8, I made my first batch of brownies by myself. Instead of one cup of sugar, I added on cup of salt. Needless to say, I have never lived that one down!

My grandmother made the best classic country apple pie. Her recipe is a family institution, and no one can imagine Thanksgiving without it. A few years ago, I was in charge of bringing the apple pie. Being so wrapped up in holiday preparations, I thought I was following the recipe to a T. Turns out I not only FORGOT the sugar, but I also put in way too much cinnamon. The pie looked fine when we sliced it, but after everyone took their (huge) first bites, it became pure disaster. Have you ever seen anyone try to eat a spoonful of cinnamon? It's awful! My entire family was suddenly gagging, spitting out my pie and trying not to vomit. I am still not allowed to bringt he apple pie for holidays.

I hosted a White Trash Christmas party and some people were offended that I served refrigerated cookie dough for dessert.

Thank you for participating, and congratulations to our winners:

momtimestwo
lisaxp
ConcordiaSalus
bobfole
arm1970

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