What did you ever make that was a disaster?

GadgetGuy

GadgetGuy

(Formerly Shermie)
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What did you make that was a pure & total disaster & turned out to be a horrible ending?

One of the times that I was making a 7up cake, it began to run over, mess up the floor of the oven, and then it sank and weighed a ton!!! I was quite confused and perplexed over how this disaster could've happened!!

Needless to say, I had no other choice but to toss the whole thing in the trash. All that butter, sugar, flour and eggs gone to bloody waste!!!

Then later in the day, I was doing dinner. I pan-fried some pork chops and was about to make the roux from the drippings for a brown gravy. Reached for the same container of flour that I used to make the now infamous disastrous cake, and was shock as to WHAT KIND of flour it was, and found out that it was SELF-RISING flour!!!

That is what killed the cake! The leavening agent in the flour. The cake rises on egg power alone - without the help of baking powder or baking soda. Lesson learned. Now I strictly make sure that mishap does not happen ever again by making sure that I use plain flour for the cake!! :eek:
 
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During my training in the culinary arts program, one of the students brought her then nine-year-old son with her to the school.

The bakery chef at times, skimps on some things to save money. in place of butter, he would use margarine. In place of pure vanilla extract, he would use imitation vanilla extract. He made some pound cakes in loaf pans.

This kid tried some of the cake when it was cooled. He said that he did NOT like it!! I asked him why. He told me that it has no buttery taste and no vanilla taste!! I just couldn't BELIEVE that he knows the difference in taste!! Now if a nine-year-old boy knows the difference between real and fake ingredients, either his mom told him so, or he must be an "Albert Einstein" or something!! Amazing little kid!!! :eek:
 
The first time I made a pecan pie it turned out horrible. Let's just say it did not taste like grandma's. I ended up leaving it in the oven to long so the pecans burnt. After I cooked it, I realized that I left out the most important ingredient that she used, maple syrup. I tasted it and threw it away because it was nasty.
 
I have to say that the day I made blackberry cobbler for the first time was a mess. The crumb ingredients didn't rise to form the cobbler toppings but instead sunk and stayed gooey! I tasted it and it was by far the nastiest cobbler I ever ate!
 
Shermie said:
What did you make that was a pure & total disaster & turned out to be a horrible ending?

One of the times that I was making a 7up cake, it began to run over, mess up the floor of the oven, and then it sank and weighed a ton!!! I was quite confused and perplexed over how this disaster could've happened!!

Needless to say, I had no other choice but to toss the whole thing in the trash. All that butter, sugar, flour and eggs gone to bloody waste!!!

Then later in the day, I was doing dinner. I pan-fried some pork chops and was about to make the roux from the drippings for a brown gravy. Reached for the same container of flour that I used to make the now infamous disastrous cake, and was shock as to WHAT KIND of flour it was, and found out that it was SELF-RISING flour!!!

That is what killed the cake! The leavening agent in the flour. The cake rises on egg power alone - without the help of baking powder or baking soda. Lesson learned. Now I strictly make sure that mishap does not happen ever again by making sure that I use plain flour for the cake!! :eek:
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Forgot to say that I DID make another 7up Cake the next day, and it came out PERFECT!!!:wink:
 
Interesting what happened to you regarding the 7-Up cake. I haven't made one in years but the recipe I used called for cake mix, pudding mix, and a can of 7-Up. I don't recall if there was even any egg in it. It came out fine in m bundt pan, but it was really really moist and sticky. It wasn't under cooked moist, it was like syrupy moist. A bit too sweet and heavy for my tastes though, so I haven't made it since.

One of the worse recipes that always comes to mind was Ina Gartens' recipe for roasted vegetables with Orzo pasta. This was back in my first apartment not long after I had moved out of my parents on my own. I had a tiny kitchen with no dishwasher, and very little counter space. The first problem, was the recipe makes an enormous amount of food. The vegetables alone took up two whole baking sheets. The Orzo pasta made a huge amount as well once cooked. I needed my largest mixing bowl to try and toss it all together. The real kicker was the vinaigrette part of the recipe. Once I tossed it in with the rest of the ingredients, mixed everything together, I nearly spit it out. It tasted like vomit, literally. And the mushy roasted veggies and cooked Orzo only added to this effect. Taking a bite of this was just like when you start to barf a little, and those sour juices and pieces of recently digested food come back up into your mouth. I tried to let it chill completely hoping it would get better, but it didn't. Plus it left me with a ton of pans and bowls to clean by hand.

Another awful one was some home made ham from thick cut boneless pork chops. The recipe was supposed to make these pork chops turn into ham chops that you could then later grill. Right off the bat the main problem with the recipe was that it called for pureed celery to act as the nitrates instead of the more commonly used pink salts. This meant the ham didn't have it's signature pink color, but rather just looked like a cooked grey pork chop. Also, the amounts and ratios of all the other spices, such as cloves and mace, were way off, and way too overpowering. I wasted an entire pack of pork chops and had to throw them all out.
 
Yup!!

Give MY recipe a whirl. Just follow it to the letter, and you just can't go wrong!

So sorry about what happened to you with the other recipes!! Hopefully, things will go better for you the next time that you try them!! :eek:
 
I once cooked a Honeybaked ham in the oven. I was unaware that they are precooked! Needless to say, I ruined an $85 ham!!! Lesson learned. :0)
 
Shermie said:
What did you make that was a pure & total disaster & turned out to be a horrible ending?

One of the times that I was making a 7up cake, it began to run over, mess up the floor of the oven, and then it sank and weighed a ton!!! I was quite confused and perplexed over how this disaster could've happened!!

Needless to say, I had no other choice but to toss the whole thing in the trash. All that butter, sugar, flour and eggs gone to bloody waste!!!

Then later in the day, I was doing dinner. I pan-fried some pork chops and was about to make the roux from the drippings for a brown gravy. Reached for the same container of flour that I used to make the now infamous disastrous cake, and was shock as to WHAT KIND of flour it was, and found out that it was SELF-RISING flour!!!

That is what killed the cake! The leavening agent in the flour. The cake rises on egg power alone - without the help of baking powder or baking soda. Lesson learned. Now I strictly make sure that mishap does not happen ever again by making sure that I use plain flour for the cake!! :eek:
Click to expand...
I have had some disasters in my time !! One that sticks in my mind is vegetable soup. I know soup is rather easy to make, time consuming, but easy. I spent most of the afternoon cutting and preparing which was fine. Now, I think this happens to everyone but I can never get enough salt in my soup. No matter how much I season, it just doesn't seem enough. We end up using it when the soup is actually on the table. :0 ( were not salt addicts... I promise :) This time though I thought I would take care of the never ending problem and put a lot of salt in to just be on the safe side!! Wrong!!!! I soup was just about done and dinner was within minutes so I tried a spoonful. OH NO!!! It was crazy salty. I panicked. There was my family awaiting dinner and not enough time to prepare anything else!

I had to keep adding water to reduce the taste of the salt! I didn't have any other options at this point. It worked out ok in the end but I will never do that again!!

Danyel :)
 
I once made some beef gravy that ended up being wicked salty!!

It was to go over some steak & rice. Put too much beef base in it and cuouldn't get that overly salted taste out of it!!
Used cut up potatoes in it, but it STILL was too salty!! Frustrated, I put the remainder of the overbearingly salty gravy in the fridge!

Then, a few days later, I was making some philly /cheessteak subs. I put the salty gravy into the shaved steak mixture and it worked perfectly with no additional seasonings!!! :eek:
 
I tried making polvoron. It's a dessert made of flour, milk, and sugar. I was toasting the flour, and I didn't know that the plastic spoon that I was using to mix it melted. My mom said that I was too silly to use it in the first place. It's safe to say that we didn't eat that batch because of the plastic essence.
 
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