Today, I was meant to be sharing a recipe for pecan pie with you. But I ruined it. Not just a little bit. I added one too many eggs which resulted in pecan omelette pie. It's easily the worst thing I've ever made. I've got enough ingredients to try again, and this time I'll go easy on the eggs.Hehe! Omelette pie! I don't get stressed about baking disasters. Sure, I'd like to be eating pecan pie right now, but messing up sometimes is fun. Even though Domestic Sluttery HQ smells of scrambled eggs and maple syrup. Yucky.
So c'mon, share with us your baking disasters! Tell us just how much of a mess you've made in the kitchen. And then laugh at everyone for messing up. I bet even Delia does it.
What's your biggest baking disaster?
I've had my fair share - rock cakes that resembled rocks in more than name, scones that could be used for hand to hand combat, donuts that became dog biscuits but the worst one was probably the time I forgot the sugar in my massive Rhubarb crumble on my first week as a prep chef in pub kitchen!
ReplyDeleteThankfully, we had enough apples that it became Apple crumble on the menu and the customers were none the wiser!
My brother cooked carrot cake the other day. It looked LUSH, but when we ate it we couldn't figure out why it tasted so disgustng. Turns out he followed a dodgy recipe and put a TABLESPOON of salt in it! ALL OTHER RECIPES say something like half a teaspoon. Sadly we had to chuck the whole thing away :(
ReplyDeleteMy mum and I managed a classic one last summer. My parents have an Aga, but it was turned down for the summer so the ovens were too cold for baking. Luckily, they also have a combination microwave/convection oven, which is really good for cakes. So we set the convection oven to pre-heat and mixed up our cake batter - we were making a lovely lemon sponge. When the oven had pre-heated, we put the cake in, set the time and pressed 'Start'. Half an hour later, the cake was looking decidedly uneven and the top was black - and when we opened the door, awful black smoke poured out. Turns out we'd forgotten that when the oven finishes pre-heating it resets itself and you have to press convection-temperature-time-start all over again. So we were just microwaving the cake - in a metal cake tin! Goodness knows how the microwave didn't explode! We ended up with a block of disgusting rubber instead of a cake - and the kitchen absolutely stank for days afterwards!
ReplyDeleteEverything I try to bake is a disaster!
ReplyDeleteI love cooking and experimenting, which is fine for pasta sauce or curry, but not with cakes!
I have learnt that baking is an exact science, and I am just too slapdash and heavy handed to master it.
So far I've made muffins that rose and burnt on top then collapsed into themselves, sponge fairy cakes that were hard as rocks, and cardboardy shortbread :(
However, I have mastered the american pancake!! Lovely with maple syrup, no matter how misshapen!
Lo, Ive had a few, making a basic sponge cake using salt instead of caster sugar and yes... I baked and eat it too...:(
ReplyDeleteFirst time I made this Lemon & Sea Salt Foccaccia (http://www.domesticsluttery.com/2010/04/baking-for-beginners-lemon-sea-salt.html), I was converting the measurements from American cups to English grammes. Somewhere along the line, I screwed up majorly, and put WAY too much salt on the top of the dough. And then, rather cleverly, decided to serve the first piece to my Dad. A man who was recovering from a heart attack and so couldn't eat too much salt in case it caused his heart to play silly beggars. It wasn't my finest hour, I must say.
ReplyDeleteAnd then there's all the times I've had to get mine and Mr. Cay's tea from the chippy because I've gotten distracted and burnt our dinner...
My best friend and I once got the grand idea to make truffles, even though we had no idea what we were doing. We seriously over-liqueured the filling for the centers, and couldn't get any of the chocolate to set up again after we'd dipped them. In the end, it devolved into drinking the rest of the alcohol meant for the truffle filling and dipping random things from the fridge and freezer in chocolate and making my ex-husband eat them. The next morning, we had a fridge full of half-set truffles reeking of amaretto and peppermint schnapps, and I was still finding chocolate and truffle filling on the ceiling/walls/backsplash/lightfixtures.
ReplyDeleteOh yes, the Disastro Buns as they became known... I tried to make the French Toast Cupcakes from Cookie Girl's book, 'Eat Me!'. Um, they rose, then fell spectacularly to resemble some sort of cakey toad in the hole and also welded themselves to the teflon pan which was a feat in itself. I'd already made the frosting at that point - so started over. Don't know what I'd done the first time, second lot were fine!
ReplyDeleteAnd don't get me started on the Hummingbird Coconut Cake...
I once made a disastrous cake and couldn't work out what had gone wrong. It came out all flat and greasy - like a slippery pancake. It tasted nice but looked absolutely foul. Then I noticed my careful measured eggs still on a bowl on the worktop...
ReplyDeleteI had a total shocker trying to make fridge cake: http://katarney.wordpress.com/2010/02/14/it-doesnt-always-work-out/
ReplyDeleteHow hard can it be? Too hard for me, apparently - and I'm someone who usually laughs in the face of baking challenges
When I was about 15 my friend and I decided we were going to bake a cake - the instructions said to melt some chocolate and I vaguely remembered that to melt chocolate you had to put it in a bowl over some boiling water. So we put the chocolate in a bowl over a GLASS bowl of boiling water on the hob. Luckily neither of us were stood near the hob when the GLASS BOWL EXPLODED EVERYWHERE!
ReplyDeleteA courgette soup - somehow I had a fight with the hand blender ended up in hospital, surgery, finger bandaged for months and left with a crooked middle finger. Worse thing was? Coming home from hospital and the soup was still there. It was promptly thrown away, along with said hand blender... I shall stick to baking.
ReplyDeleteI am one of those irritating people who has a natural flair for baking (this is the only way I can explain it - I can measure things haphazardly, forget to set the timer until halfway through baking, substitute to my heart's content and still end up with something that looks and tastes beautiful). However this does not save me from mere clumsiness - a couple of months ago I was making some cupcakes and managed to drop one tray of them whilst turning them round halfway through baking. I ended up with cake batter all over the inside of my oven, which then baked on as I finished baking the other tray of cakes (which turned out lovely). I have learned that when turning cakes around, use two hands!
ReplyDelete