Lola’s Kitchen: Cooking Disasters

Posted October 9, 2015 by Lola in Lola's Kitchen / 34 Comments

LolaKitchen

Lola’s Kitchen is a feature on Lola’s Reviews where I talk about all things related to food, cooking and baking. These posts can be recipe posts, tens list posts about food or recipes or more discussion type posts about food. I love cooking and spend some time in the kitchen almost every day, so I wanted to give it a place on my blog as well. The banner for this feature is designed by Michelle from Limabean Designs.

Today I don’t have a recipe post for you, but instead I am talking about cooking disasters. While often cooking goes right. I also have had my fair share of cooking didasters. Sometimes the recipe just isn’t for me, sometimes they need a lot more tweaking and other times I messed up. Sometimes the end results looks horrible, but is still edible. Unfortunately I don’t have pictures of all my disasters, but I do have pictures of some of them. I’ll try to remember to take pictures of my disasters for future disaster posts ;). The pictures are bewlo the item if I have a picture.

My Cooking Disasters

  • Cauliflower Mash. This was a case were it just wasn’t a dish for me. I was going to make this as lunch during last year’s christmas for my boyfriend and I. I like this indian Cauliflower mash that involves potatoes and caulifower, but I hadn’t tried a cauliflower only mash. So I followed the instructions and when it was ready, I gave it a try and bleigh. It was realy bland and gross and we just threw the whole thing away and ate bread for lunch instead.
  • Boston Cream Pie. I made this long before I started cooking and baking frequently. I think I just started blogging and I wanted to make an american pie. I stumbled upon this recipe for Boston cream pie and I had to give it a try. I am still not sure why I made it myself instead of asking my sister to make it, which was more normal for me to do at that time. But I gave this one a try, everything went pretty well. I made the cream and the pie was cooling down. Then I sliced the pie in two, so I could put the cream between it and it turned out it wasn’t fully baked in the middle and was all soft and fluidly still. I asked my sister for help and the only thing we could think of was put it back in the oven for longer. So we did. Eventually it was baked long enough and I finished the pie. And it actually turned out delicious, even though the dough was weird. So we managed to save that pie, even though it was one big disaster and the pie wasn’t as well done as could have been, the taste was still good. It also could’ve used a bit more chocolate topping, but hey at least it was yummy.
    Boston Cream Pie
  • Vegan Green Bean Casserole. This is one of those recipes that sounded good, until I actually made it. The sauce was bland and all it tastes like was cripsy fried onions. After a few bites we threw it out and ate instant noodles for dinner instead.
  • Sweet Potato Casserole. This one wasn’t actually too bad, it involved sweet potatoes mash with sugar and then crumble on top. And it was way too sweet for dinner. I had already reduced the sugar and it was still way too sweet. It was a good idea, but it didn’t work out. I don’t mind when a dish is slightly sweet, but this one was too sweet for dinner for my taste.
  • Lemon Meringue Pie. This one failed so badly it’s not even funny. The Blind baking went wrong, I put some rice on the bottom, but the sides still fell down, so it was just flat in the end. Then the meringue failed, because the egg whites didn’t get thick. So I decided to make it without the meringue. I made the lemon filling and then put on the crust and sliced it in pieces. I already noticed that the lemon filling was too soft and it sort of dripped of. Still optimistic I took a bite and ugh it was bitter. Not sure what I went wrong, but it was gross! The lemon filling didn’t taste sweet or lemony, but very bitter and disgusting. My boyfriend didn’t even gave it a try after seeing my reaction and in the trash bin the whole pie went. So I basically messed up the crust, lemon filling and the meringue, yeah no pie for me. This is one of the reasons why I hate making pie.
  • Brownie Cookies. These turned out yummy. The only problem is, that it looked like I was trying to make very flat brownies instead of cookies. In this case a picture says more than thousand world. These are the brownie cookies:
    Brownie Cookies
  • Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies. Let’s say that after these I run very hard to other way when I see flourless cookies being mentioned anywhere. Let’s say I definitely prefer my cookies with flour.
  • Vanilla Cookies. My boyfriend his parents had bought vanilla powder for me and I wanted to make vanilla cookies. Let’s say these were a total failure. They looked weird, got flat and didn’t taste good. I actually tried a few other recipes and they just didn’t turn out. I gave up on experimenting with vanilla cookies then.
    Vanilla Cookies
  • Chocolate Crinkle Cookies. They looked great, but tasted bland. A bit too bitter and not sugary enough. Too much cacao powder and too little sugar. Will need alot of tweaking if I ever dare to make these again. But they looked amazing!
    Chocolate Crinkle Cookies
  • Japanese Curry. I spend 1.5 hours in the kichen for this and it failed horrible. The curry roux/ paste smelled horrible when I was making it and when I gave the curry a try, it tastes just as bad. Ugh it was so bad, so gross. I am not even sure where things went wrong, except for the curry roux. I am 100% sure something went wrong with the curry roux, but not sure what. We threw it out and had instant noodles for dinner. Let’s say I won’t be making this from scratch again soon. I’ll buy a package next time I want to make this.
    Japanese curry
  • French Bread. One of the things I hate baking is bread, the waiting and all the opportunities for me to mess it up. I thought French Bread would be easy enough to make. I guess that was true, but I managed to mess this up by killing the yeast. The recipe said very warm water, which translated in my head as boiling water, I mean boiling water is very warm right? Right? I guess it was too warm as the yeast didn’t work. My dough didn’t rise at all. The taste was okay, but it was a hard flat chunk of bread, ouch! At least it still looks normal?
    French Bread

What are your cooking disasters?

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34 responses to “Lola’s Kitchen: Cooking Disasters

    • I always keep my eggs on room temperature. I know it’s important to keep the bowl free of any fat as else the egg whites don’t get thick, so maybe something went wrong with the bowl? And the filling was tunny for me as well. I am glad my sister made one one for me after that so I could still ate it.
      Lola recently posted…Lola’s Kitchen: Cooking DisastersMy Profile

  1. I have had my share of disasters, I once made Chicken Cutlets for my family and if you took a bite of them they could break your teeth. I am pretty sure if you string them together you would have a really good armor going into battle. It was terrible 🙂

    Great post Lola! 🙂 The Boston Creme Pie does looks very good 🙂
    Michelle@Because Reading recently posted…The Sing Your Heart Out blog tourMy Profile

    • I feel really sad when I have a cooking disasater, but they sure make for great stories afterwards. I had to laugh about your comment of how you could make armor from those chicken cutlets.

      I am really happy we managed to save that Boston Creme Pie as it was really good, it’s a shame I have no clue which recipe I used, I definitely have to make it again eventually.
      Lola recently posted…Lola’s Kitchen: Cooking DisastersMy Profile

  2. The one I remember best was from when I was a kid. I found a recipe for butterfinger bread on the back of a package of butterfinger bites (It’s a candy if you don’t have it there? Crunchy peanut layers covered in chocolate.) Everything went well until I misread tablespoon instead of teaspoon. For the salt. It looked perfect, smelled wonderful, and then I tried it and threw it all away. Had I not done that, it would have been this wonderful sweet bread made with the candy.

    A few years ago I came up with my own recipe for fruit scones (made a cinnamon sugar one too). And the trial and error on those was fun. Always edible, but not always sweet and sometimes flat like cookies instead of fluffy scones. But I finally figured out what went wrong and they’re quite tasty.
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    • Nope we dont’t have butterfingers over here, I had to google it to find out what they were, they look yummy! That’s such a shame a small mistake like that messes up your whole bread :(.

      I like a bit of experimenting and even if some go wrong, at least you can figure out how to fix them. I have had lots of curries where I add the spices, think it’s doesn’t taste strongly enough and then add more and can still save them.

    • Buttercream frosting hates me too, I once tried it and just nope. I usually just skip the frosting or make penaut butter frosting, which does tunr out good.

    • Same here, I hate baking bread or anything similiar because of the yeast and the waiting, gah I hate the waiting. Or those cookies that require cooling the dough, I usually get them out sooner and they still turn out great.

  3. Well, I messed up a Boston Cream Pie and a Sweet Potato Pie and a Pumpkin Pie, but I do great with fruit pies, go figure.

    I’ve killed several cooking and baking projects over the years. Some it was just that I forgot to include things, but others, I have no idea to this day what I did wrong. I’ve learned never to try out a new recipe for holiday family gatherings b/c then I’m almost guaranteed a disaster.

    I’m pretty cautious about trying new recipes so I haven’t tried many that were fails because I didn’t like them, but there was a blah chicken pot pie and a blah shepherd’s pie. Some super tough wheat waffles and a seasoned roast that could not be sliced it was so tough. Ugh! 😉

    • Seems like we both messed up a boston cream pie, they are quite difficult to get right, but so yummy! I don’t think I have ever made a fruit pie, with the exception of apple pie.

      The ones where I forget somethign are less bad than those where you have no clue what went wrong as then you have no idea how to fix it. So tricky. I also learned to never try out new recipes for gatherings or anything like that and to only make pictures for a recipe post after makign it at least once.

      I am always open to tryign out new recipes, but try to have a mix each week of more recipes I already know and then one or two new ones. Those dishes that just aren’t to your taste are too bad too, at leats you know how to avoid thsoe in the future.

  4. Bread can be so hard to make. I’ve really thought about getting a bread machine to do it at home. lol

    Bummer on all the fails. I’ve made a few of those and enjoyed them but they can be tricky to make right or season right. I love sweet potato casserole but yeah it’s typically fairly sweet. I like it as a side dish having that sweet/salty combo 😀
    anna (herding cats & burning soup) recently posted…#CountdownToChristmas–A Bad Boy for Christmas (Second Chance #3) by Jessica LemmonMy Profile

    • My sister had a bread machine and it made making bread so much easier, I never used it, but I did see her make bread in it regulary. I might have to get one eventually. At least the fails make for fun stories.

      I think the sweet potato casserole could be great as a side dish indeed, but not as the only dish for dinner. It was just too sweet for dinner to me. I have a carrot souflé I like and I made that with less sugar and a bit more salt.

  5. LOL no prob! It’s hard sometimes when you’re snagging recipes from other countries. I’ve done that myself once or twice. I think that’s why the cauliflower mash works for me too. It’s not a main dish but a side dish to replace mashed potatoes. So to compliment others but not be the show stopper.
    anna (herding cats & burning soup) recently posted…#CountdownToChristmas–A Bad Boy for Christmas (Second Chance #3) by Jessica LemmonMy Profile

    • I often snatch recipes from other countries, so it;s always a bit figuring out how it works. I usually prefer to only make one dish for dinner, unless it’s a special occasion. And some side dishes work greta as main dish if you make enough.

      I think the cauliflower recipe I had just didn’t work for me, but I might try it once with a different recipe and as side dish it might work better than as a main dish.

  6. Lol. The photos of the uni-cookies are great. That’s totally happened to me. I pull the cookies from the oven and it’s like one large cookie blob. I have tons of cooking disasters, like the time the kids were fighting in the kitchen and I set fire to a wooden spoon. Ah. I am obviously an awesome cook. You are not alone!
    S. J. Pajonas recently posted…Book Chat #20My Profile

    • Those uni cookies happened to me quite a few times, at least the brownie cookies were still edible, those vanilla cookies were a total fail. Oh that must have been quite the scare when you set the spoon on fire. And even awesome cooks have a failure dish now and then 😉

  7. The Chocolate Crinkle Cookies do look delicious, I think it would be worth trying this one again with more sugar as they make such an impressive looking Christmas treat.
    I made a Chocolate Christmas Log one time that was way too heavy, I knew even as I was making it that there was too many rich ingredients but I went ahead anyway! Bit mistake, it was sickly sweet :O
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    • The chocolate crinkel cookies looked so pretty, it really was a shame they didn’t taste as well. I definitely will have to give them another try and tweak the recipe so they do taste good.
      I also have a few failures where I was making them and wondering if this would go right and then went ahead anyway. I googled chocolate christmas log and yum those look delicious, but also like they are a pain to make.

  8. The biggest one I had was making crab cakes. When I put the crab cake in the oil to cook, it totally fell apart into the oil. I ended up just leaving the crab in the bowl without cooking it and calling it crab salad. lol It was very tasty.
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    • That’s a nice way to save that crab and still make a nice dish, it might have been a different one than planned, but it’s great when you can still save your dish like that.

  9. Red Iza

    Yes, the water for the bread should be warm/lukewarm rather than boiling – maybe it killed the yeast ? I’ve had my fair share of disasters, mostly first tries, but if you don’t try, you’ll never know, right ? 😉

    • Yes I think that I killed the yeast with the boiling water. My first tries usually aren’t perfect and then after some tweaking it get’s better and sometimes I tweak even before the first try. And I agree if you don’t try you’ll never know.

    • That’s good you haven’t had any disasters yet :). I agree every cook has some mess-ups, not everything can go right. And the cooking disasters make for fun stories afterwards.

  10. My dinners are always miraculously tasty, but I’ve had some dessert disasters. Chocolate chip cookies are so fickle– who knew?! They either have too little flour in them or too much. They usually taste fine, but the texture is just wrong. So wrong. And then last Thanksgiving I decided to make this amazing recipe that one of my co-workers mother’s made. The original recipe was in Swedish, she he had to translate it for me. I don’t even know how to describe it…a butter cake or short cake covered in meringue, topped with strawberries and cream. I had never made meringue before, and I made the mistake of making it by hand instead of with a mixer. It was agonizing, and it didn’t even turn out right. I still tasted good, at least.
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    • Most of my dinners taste good, but ther eare always soem that don’t turn out as I planned or hoped. Chocolate chip cookies definitely can be tricky, I don’t think I even have made the standard chocolate chip cookies ever. And even when the taste is right, the wrong texture can really ruin a cookie.

      Meringue is hard to make, I can’t believe what an effort that must have been making it by hand. But that’s great it still tasted good!

  11. This post made me smile, Lola. If only because it’s nice to know that I’m not the only one with cooking disasters. 😀 I’ve made a chili before that was so spicy, no one could eat it. Hubs valiantly tried to, but I didn’t want him to torture himself. And my cakes and pies never turn out very pretty. I live at altitude (8400 ft – not sure how that translates in metric) so recipes have to be altered. Even so, things don’t always turn out right. I made a chocolate pie for my daughter for her birthday…a pie you had to eat with a spoon. It’s been lovingly coined ‘liqui-pie’ *haha*
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    • As I always share the succes recipes, I thought it would be interesting to share my cooking disasters as well. I don’t do hot food well, so I am always very carefull with adding too many hot spices, but I’ve also added a bit too much and made the food unedible to me because it was too hot. Cakes and pies are the hardest to make and I usually go for the simpler ones or cookies instead. me and pies don’t go well together, although I can make apple pie, but that’s about it.
      I didn’t realize living at altitude meant you have to alter your recipes. I converted the ft to metric and wow I didn’t realize you lived that high. My sister once made a tiramisoup instead of tiramisu as it didn’t got thick.

  12. Um, I would TOTALLY eat those brownie cookies, they look like they’d taste great! And the chocolate crinkle cookies really do look amazing, pity they didn’t taste too good! There’s one cooking disaster I remember very clearly… I was staying with my friend’s family in Switzerland over New Year’s and everyone made some food to contribute, so I thought I’d try my grandma’s Snow White cake as it’s a family recipe. I thought the dough would be hard, but it actually turned out perfectly. Then came the cream. I still don’t know why – it might have just been to hot – but it turned out HORRIBLY and the whole cake was ruined basically. My friend’s aunt sooort of managed to save it the next day by just leaving out the cream and putting chocolate over it, but it was nowhere near what I’d imagined. I shamed my family. 😀
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    • The brownie cookies tasted great even though they looked a bit weird and we ate them all. The chocolate crinkle cookies really were a shame, I had so many of them and they looked amazing, but they didn’t taste well and we had to throw themm all away.

      That’s weird that the dough which you thought would be hard turned out great and then the cream didn’t turn out well. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten a snow white cake, it sounds yummy.
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