Did you ever have a recipe utterly fail?

Cafe Society
1

Not just didn’t taste very good, I mean utterly and completely fail at being what it was supposed to be.

This was a cookie recipe passed along by my sister-in-law, claiming it was wonderful and easy and all those good things.

Now, I know I followed the recipe exactly. I’m anal that way – I read recipes through at least six times before I start, and I double check the amount of each ingredient as I add them.

So, this was for a chocolate cookie. The instructions were bog standard: mix sugar and vegetable oil, add eggs beating after each, add vanilla, add melted chocolate, then add sifted dry ingredients. (Flour, baking powder, salt.) Pretty easy, yes?

Okay, after you’ve thoroughly mixed in the dry ingredients you’re supposed to roll the dough into little balls for baking.

Uh? I did NOT have anything even remotely resembling a cookie dough. If forced to characterize it, I’d say it resembled chocolate pancake batter. “Rolling” into “balls” was outside the realm of physics. :frowning:

Which really shouldn’t have amazed me. I mean, the recipe called for FOUR eggs and 1/2 CUP of liquid oil plus melted chocolate and vanilla. That’s a lot of liquid ingredients for just 2 Cups of flour.

So I guessed maybe she got the flour wrong, and started adding more flour, bit by bit. I got up to an additional CUP AND A HALF of flour – now the texture was pretty much a mouse, but the chocolate flavor was way diluted. So I added a quarter cup of cocoa, some more vanilla, another teaspoon of baking powder.

And I still had nothing at all that looked like cookied dough. :mad:

Reluctant to waste all that time and ingredients, I greased a cake pan, smeared the glop into it, and threw it into a 350 degree over for 40 minutes.

It sort of looks edible. :dubious:
So, anyone else suffered such a total failure in a recipe you followed?

2

I had a flourless chocolate cake turn to chocolate soup because the springform pan leaked and let in water (you cook it like a cheesecake in a bath of water). That is the closest I’ve got to “not coming out at all” I think. The recipe had you wrap the pan in aluminum foil, which I did, but it still let water in. Now when I make such things I use a silicone pan.

Your story made me laugh, though I’m sure it wasn’t funny at the time. :slight_smile:

3

Ewww.

4

sooooo many times.

Worst were the no-bake cookies that never dried out. They were like oily wet turds.

5

Reporting in: well, the result tastes just sorta okay, but I should have either cooked it longer (to create a cake texture all the way through) or shorter (leaving it more like a gooey brownie. Instead it’s neither fish nor fowl, and my mind tells me it’s a too dry brownie. :frowning:

But I had to feed it to my guests, so I sliced it thinnish then topped it with vanilla ice cream and hot fudge sauce. In the end it was a not-horrible dessert.

At least all my friends are way too nice to say things like 'what the hell is this abortion you’re feeding us?" even when it’s deserved. :smiley:

6

I made a loaf of bread didn’t raise properly and was as hard as a brick. I threw it outside for the wild life and a year later it was still there looking about the same as when I threw it out.

7

My mom and I once made a pumpkin cake for my stepfather’s birthday that had a texture reminiscent of a memory foam pillow.

8

I made a pumpkin pie, beginning with cooking my own pumpkin. But I let the pumpkin cool before I pureed it. The first mouthful had the texture of grass clippings. The rest went into the trash.

9

Anybody who cooks with any frequency is going to have misfires. When I was 11, I made sponge cakes all the time for my dad. One time I used 6 cups of milk instead of 6 tablespoons. Then one time at Thanksgiving a couple of years ago, my pumpkin cheesecake never did set up, so that was a disaster. And then there’s always burning or overcooking things- but that happens a lot less now that I have a meat thermometer.

10

mrAru had a division pot luck when he was in RadCon so he decided to make a chocolate cake.

Things went along fine until he finished baking it. It was rubbery and had the look and consistancy of hull coating. It was rubbery, and a small piece would bounce. Neither the dog nor the chickens would eat it.

He had forgotten to add the chemical leavening when he mixed it up.

The next one he remembered all the ingredients and it was fine.

11

My ex gf and I were really into this Chinese place we lived next to. Their chicken Lo Mein was near perfection, with one exception: the chicken were hard little lumps instead of the moist, juicy morsels of awesome they should have been. So we decided to make our own. We got some chicken breasts and cut them up. Then put some soy sauce in a frying pan with the chicken, and cooked up some egg noodles. The resulting mess was deemed unedible and thrown out. I’ve tried a few different recipes for Lo Mein since, but have yet to make one that comes even within shouting distance of anything I’ve eaten in a Chinese restaurant, or even remotely edible.

12

Well, I made my first Thanksgiving dinner this year as the host/cook. I had two pescetarians and four carnivores. One of the pescetarians is my MOTHER so I wanted especially to have nice options for the two (as the carnies didn’t really care b/c YAY FOOD!)
Did a turkey breast, the BF grilled a wonderful salmon on the grill. I made several veggie dishes, including stuffing/dressing made with veggie broth so the the two could eat it.

But to me, it’s the gravy baby! I love gravy. I’m with Erma Bombeck–gravy is a beverage. So, I try to make a from scratch vegetarian gravy.

First mistake–the first step was make a roux. I’ve managed one ONCE, making cream gravy from and for chicken fried steak (and it was kinda awful frankly). My gravy usually goes “Step 1. Read directions on packet. Step 2. Follow directions.”

I couldn’t find a vegetarian gravy packet. <sigh>

So I attempt a roux. I check several websites. Find a nice set of directions with photos, measurements, explanations of everything. (I should have practiced before the day). I had my BF check my math on the proportions, everything.
A pound of butter later, and after I’ve clogged the sink with this concrete butter/flour mixture, I scream and leave the kitchen, throwing a pot. And have my only drink of the day. (I had to work at midnite.)

So the BF has to go hit the store to get uncloggy stuff and tell him <thru clenched teeth> “Fuck it. Get me turkey gravy mix.”

Him: “Don’t we have some?”
Me: <sucking down the vodka> WHAT?
Him: <reaching in the pantry and pulling out a peppered country gravy mix> That’s gravy, isn’t it?
Me: <garbled noises that show I’m about to have a stroke> <breathing> Yes it is. But not the one I need.
Him: “Well show me the difference. I don’t want to bring the wrong thing back”
Me: “Well…<breathing> see here? where it says ‘peppered country gravy’? IT WILL SAY TURKEY!!!”

Other than breaking the sink and being so awful to the one I love, the UTTER failure of my gravy making ablities is so far the worst. Though, I mess stuff up left and right. I’m learning to cook and loving it and failing is part of learning.

(My first turkey breast went great though! My sis, the other pescetarian, really wanted some.)

13

I had a whole sequence of basic Toll House cookie-baking attempts turn out wrong, because each time I forgot an ingredient. First time, not enough flour. Second time, eggs. Third time, I forget, but there was much banging of pans and “creative” retooling of the results into something that at least wouldn’t taste too bad with ice cream on top.

One of my friends is much more creative in her kitchen disasters. She’s a very good cook and baker, but occasionally has issues, resulting in such delicacies as Fuck This Shit Cake, and the appropriately-named Apple Cinnamon Failcake. (I think there were actually a whole series of Failcakes, over time.)

14

I’ve made plenty of mistakes, but I think the OP is asking for recipes that turn out to be failures per se.

I tried a stroganoff recipe once that ended up looking like someone ate a gallon of sour cream then vomited it on a plate. I never did figure out what went wrong.

15

mrAru just reminded me of our Shrimp Sin Loi. Sin loi is vietnamese for ‘sorry’.

We were wanting something different for dinner, so we decided on shrimp eggrolls. They were going to be a thing of beauty. We had fresh not frozen tiny shrimp, hand shredded bok choy, bamboo shoots julienne, fresh bean sprouts, julienne carrots. Everything. SO I sauted them up in a wok, and mrAru went to get the wonton wrappers.

The damned things were slightly molded on one whole edge inside the wrapper where we couldn’t see it :frowning: and it was late and the grocery was closed.

SO we had to convert it to boring old stir fry :frowning:

16

I once made pureed cauliflower soup that was horrible. I still don’t know what went wrong - pureed veggy soups (like butternut squash or red bell pepper) are very easy to throw together. I love cauliflower. Something about this soup, though, made it taste like old, moldy vegetables.

I didn’t eat any, but Mr. Athena choked some down. Hasn’t asked for more though.

17

When making chex mix from the recipe on the box (usually divine), do not mistake the soy sauce bottle for the Worcestershire sauce bottle. The results are…creative.

18

I’m usually pretty good at salvaging a failure, even if the final dish barely resembles the original intent. The only true disaster in recent memory was attempting to make brownies with Splenda instead of sugar. I’m sure it can be done, but I’m guessing you need a modified recipe; I just tried a direct swap in my usual recipe and the brownies came out rock hard, greasy and flavorless. mm mmm! They went right into the trash.

19

There was the time I swapped sugar with salt in a pumpkin pie recipe (foreign kitchen, unmarked white crystalline substance in the sugar section of the pantry is my excuse). But I think that’s not so unusual.

When I was first learning how to use a smoker, I had one of those cheap Brinkman bullet smokers. The problem with these things, as I was soon to discover, is they’re not properly ventilated (no flue/vents on the lid), so all the billowy white smoke, which is full of creosote and the shit you don’t want on your food, lingers in the cooking chamber. Anyhow, I was making some rib tips, I put on a bed of charcoal, a couple fist-sized pieces of wood, lit a chimney starter and let it go.

About three to four hours later, the tips were done. They looked great. They smelled pretty good, smokey as all hell. And the first bite into them–damn these are good! And then a second later, the bitterness and smoke acridity hit me. After a couple of bites, me and my brother actually started coughing. Neither of us wanted to admit the rib tips were a failure, so we downed about four or five of them before giving up. My throat felt as if I had smoked an entire pack of cigarettes. I was burping up smoke for the next few hours. The kitchen smelled like smoke for the next few days. Awful. And it was that nasty-ass creosote laden bitter smoke, not the sweet, gentle smoke flavor you get from a properly ventilated cooking chamber. This is mostly why I despise Liquid Smoke so much, it tastes like creosote to me.

I’ve since upgraded to a Weber Smokey Mountain, so I don’t have that problem, although I know now what I would do with that Brinkman to make it work like I want it to.

20

Not mine, but my mother-in-law, who I hasten to add is really a very nice lady:

She wanted to make an apple pie. Said recipe called for quite a bit of apple cider. She got just a tiny bit mixed up and used … apple cider vinegar. Mr. Horseshoe got a phone call from his father, going: “Whhhaaaaaah! Your mother made A VINEGAR PIE!!!” Still brings tears of laughter to my cheeks.