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Cooking Mishaps | Pad Patter 9.28

bellbird

bellbird

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Have you or your family had any interesting incidents in the kitchen recently? Maybe you invented a new taste sensation by mixing up a recipe or it was just dismal?

So this week, DS was reading a baking recipe and told me to add a tablespoon of bicarb to a pot of butter and syrup on the stove. I should have realised it probably didn't need that much before adding it in but the lesson he learnt was about recipe abbreviations, teaspoons versus tablespoons and we basically made a volcano (and we learnt after the fact that honeycomb is created in a similar way, lots of bicarb to a molten sugar solution - not that we were planning on any of that).
And before that, in a labelling mishap, DS added taco seasoning to his breakfast rather than cinnamon - and FYI taco porridge is not a taste sensation
 
ha ha.. so sorry re the mishaps but they make fun stories, and even if you do not have the photos you should scrap a photoless page to remember it!!

I only had an issue one year back in 1987 in my parents rental house before moving into their house that was being built, I was making Christmas cookies.. 1 I miss measured the butter and 2 I preheated the oven however didn't realize there was a seperate switch on the oven for preheat vs temperture ... Our oven in our old house never had a preheat.. you just turned on the oven and waited until the oven thermometer got to temp... anyway the combo with both the butter and the preheat, I could not understand how these butter cookies were not baking right..some were burnt some were raw based on the cooking time and then realizing the butter cookies really weren't butter cookies but drier.. LOL

My Mom and I laughed when we realized the oven was still on preheat .. we threw out and had to remake the batches!
 
Lol! Those are quite funny stories Justine. I can't think of anything specific, but usually when I mess up it's because I double most of the ingredients but not all... or I halved the ingredients, but not all... or I've forgotten one key ingredient altogether. There was one recipe that I made three times this time last year before I actually made it correctly! It was a pumpkin dump cake type recipe and for some reason the way it was written didn't match with my ability to take in the information because I kept skipping a step and it was a different step both times. Thankfully it didn't ruin the dessert, just wasn't quite as good as it could have been.
 
My cooking mishaps tend to be injuries rather than ingredient mistakes. I make mashed potatoes every week. For many years, I have. With that much experience, you'd think I could peel potatoes without ever slicing a finger, but I did it again last week! :cornfused
 
You know those microwaveable rice cookers? Well I got everything together for it and popped it in the microwave - but followed the cooking time as per the box instructions. Totally forgot the fact that the microwave cooks so much quicker. We had our windows open for like 3 days - the smell was hideous and the microwave was charred. I"m pretty sure I have long term lung damage from that! That is one my family will never let me live down and with good reason. I'm not allowed to buy a new one or ever cook rice in a microwave again.
 
Karen said:
Lol! Those are quite funny stories Justine. I can't think of anything specific, but usually when I mess up it's because I double most of the ingredients but not all... or I halved the ingredients, but not all... or I've forgotten one key ingredient altogether. There was one recipe that I made three times this time last year before I actually made it correctly! It was a pumpkin dump cake type recipe and for some reason the way it was written didn't match with my ability to take in the information because I kept skipping a step and it was a different step both times. Thankfully it didn't ruin the dessert, just wasn't quite as good as it could have been.
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we have a family tradition oatmeal chocolate chip cookie recipe, and every year my mom and I double it when we make it. After YEARS of screwing up the doubling (forgetting to double something!) she finally created a new recipe card on the computer and it has the recipe listed out as "single" and "double" and she LAMINATED it! smartest move ever!
 
Oh were to start.... Probably the biggest mix up was that I keep my flour and powered sugar in plastic, sealed containers. Not labelled because you know I know the difference. While, apparently my young daughter and my dad do not. They made his famous banana bread using powered sugar instead of flour. What a mess...
 
michelepixels said:
My cooking mishaps tend to be injuries rather than ingredient mistakes. I make mashed potatoes every week. For many years, I have. With that much experience, you'd think I could peel potatoes without ever slicing a finger, but I did it again last week! :cornfused
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I feel your pain, I grate a lot of veg & the grater gets me everytime!
 
jenn mccabe said:
You know those microwaveable rice cookers? Well I got everything together for it and popped it in the microwave - but followed the cooking time as per the box instructions. Totally forgot the fact that the microwave cooks so much quicker. We had our windows open for like 3 days - the smell was hideous and the microwave was charred. I"m pretty sure I have long term lung damage from that! That is one my family will never let me live down and with good reason. I'm not allowed to buy a new one or ever cook rice in a microwave again.
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I'm sorry to laugh but that's so funny (I'm sure I wouldn't be laughing if it were my lung damage but it makes me appreciate my plug it in rice cooker! I do burn the bottom of the risotto pretty regularly - cleaning that pot is nearly as bad as cleaning up after making that bicarb volcano! )
 
BevG said:
Oh were to start.... Probably the biggest mix up was that I keep my flour and powered sugar in plastic, sealed containers. Not labelled because you know I know the difference. While, apparently my young daughter and my dad do not. They made his famous banana bread using powered sugar instead of flour. What a mess...
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Lol (genuine question -does that make like a banana pudding ? It'd be like warm slush without flour?)
 
My aunt was known for mishaps. Once she made a cake and forgot to add the sugar, so she grabs it out of the oven (it had been cooking for about 10 minutes) and mixed it in. She wondered why it didn't rise...

Another time she "substituted" salt for sugar in a pound cake recipe...
 
This was years ago. I have a favorite cake-like chocolate drop cookie recipe. I was making the cookies for some event but I was totally angry about something that had happened that day. As I was dropping the cookies onto the sheet, I realized that there was something off about the cookies. So I read back over the recipe and realized that I forgot to add the 1/2 cup of milk to the batter before adding the dry ingredients. I scraped all the dough back into the bowl, added the milk, and stirred it all up again, then went back to dropping them on the sheets. The cookies looked like they had white flecks in them instead of all chocolate. I ended up making a second batch correctly and kept the odd looking ones for us at home because they tasted fine but looked strange.

The important lesson was don't try to bake when you're angry and not paying attention.
 
HA! That's awesome! My daughter forgot to add the majority of the flour when she made cookies awhile back, and added too much salt. They were NOT good! ;) She's learned her lesson tho- her last batch she just made last week were PERFECT! :) Learn from your mistakes right!?

As for me- I tried my hat at French Macaroons the other day... persnickety lil things! No wonder they are so expensive here- they are TIME STAKING & there is about a zillion things that can go wrong. I had one tray of cookies that turned out PERFECT and the second tray were hallow & had no feet. NO clue- after research I think my oven had too much humidity for the 2nd batch. SMH. They did taste delicious tho- so there's that!
 
BevG said:
Oh were to start.... Probably the biggest mix up was that I keep my flour and powered sugar in plastic, sealed containers. Not labelled because you know I know the difference. While, apparently my young daughter and my dad do not. They made his famous banana bread using powered sugar instead of flour. What a mess...
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My daughter who loves to bake is very curious how it turned out and how it tasted . . . ?
 
amien1 said:
As for me- I tried my hat at French Macaroons the other day... persnickety lil things! No wonder they are so expensive here- they are TIME STAKING & there is about a zillion things that can go wrong. I had one tray of cookies that turned out PERFECT and the second tray were hallow & had no feet. NO clue- after research I think my oven had too much humidity for the 2nd batch. SMH. They did taste delicious tho- so there's that!
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My daughter is trying to perfect them. Each attempt is better, but they are hard.... My page on one of her attempts.
 
BevG said:
My daughter is trying to perfect them. Each attempt is better, but they are hard.... My page on one of her attempts.
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SO hard! I was surprised I had any that turned out right- so there's that! ;) AND they took forever too- If I have another day of no plans (as if!?) I want to try again! We'll see! Good luck to your daughter! :D
 
I'm someone who likes to have all my ingredients out on the counter before I start cooking. It's just nice to know I have everything before I start (yes: once I didn't have a key ingredient so I started prepping like this). Once I was cooking dinner and I wanted to treat myself cuz DH as out of town, so I got out a Coke to drink with dinner. I put it on the counter, got out everything else, and set to work. When I needed to open a can for the recipe, I grabbed the nearest item to open with the can opener. While looking at the recipe instead of at my hands, the can opener bit into the can and SQUIRT! ... out shot Coke. All over. Instead of opening the can of corn, I'd used the can opener on the can of Coke. :duh Did anyone eat a meal containing coca-cola? Nope. But did I feel like an idiot? Yup.
 
bellbird said:
I'm sorry to laugh but that's so funny (I'm sure I wouldn't be laughing if it were my lung damage but it makes me appreciate my plug it in rice cooker! I do burn the bottom of the risotto pretty regularly - cleaning that pot is nearly as bad as cleaning up after making that bicarb volcano! )
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I can laugh about it now - but it was something at the time! Hopefully no more unexpected kitchen volcanos for you either!
 
amien1 said:
As for me- I tried my hat at French Macaroons the other day... persnickety lil things! No wonder they are so expensive here- they are TIME STAKING & there is about a zillion things that can go wrong. I had one tray of cookies that turned out PERFECT and the second tray were hallow & had no feet. NO clue- after research I think my oven had too much humidity for the 2nd batch. SMH. They did taste delicious tho- so there's that!
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I tried 3 times to make them, I finally took a class with my daughter. Fun times!

My younger daughter was using the microwave without her glasses on....she read cook on high for 1 - 2 minutes as cook on high for 12 minutes. It didn't occur to her that that was way too long. We had a similar outcome to Jenn's, LOL.
 
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