After reading a few of the funny disasters i decided i would share a hilarious disaster from my childhood. I am 38 and have been cooking since my grandmother( who raised me) would let me stand in a chair and help her cook. Well i was about 11 or so and decided to make a favorite cake my aunt would make me. It is called a "Black Magic Cake". I thought i was doing great i was following the ingredients like it said. Well there are 2 different types of suger. Powdered and granulated. Well as i got to the sugar part i added 2 cups of pdr sugar. Then it said to add 1/4cup of coffee. I added coffee grounds. Then after putting in all the other ingredients i thought "oh no it meant granulated sugar and added that to the cake. I mixed it all up just as happy as i could be cause i had baked a cake from scratch without any help from my grandmother. Well needless to say the cake felt like it weighed a 100lbs and it was soooooo horrible the dogs wouldn't even eat it. My grandmother asked me what all i put in the cake and started laughing. And proceeded to let me know where i went wrong. To this day everyone in my family brings up that story, especially at gatherings. I now laugh at it. Everytime i make the cake now i remember back when.....and chuckle a little. I know everyone has a story like this they can relate to. Just wanted to add my famous Black Magic Cake story.

Great story...Write it down so your children and children's children can enjoy. Maybe attach the story to the recipe card.

This story makes me a little sad. Did you make great cakes for your family after that one? Are those remembered? Since I'm a mom now I try really hard to bring up the good stuff my daughter does and let the mistakes go...

(I won a free vacation for my family in an art contest when I was 12 sponsored by Rath Weiners. My mother still "teases" me by calling me a "Rath Weinie Winner" 35 years later. Ugh.)

You are a real sport to be able to laugh about it when you're teased. With best wishes,

Cheers, from
SwampWitch

I had a similar happening that you've reminded me of. I used to do a lot of cake baking when I was younger. I couldn't reach the top cupboards so I used to jump up on the worktops and reach them from up there, sitting on the worktop to do the stirring etc. Once my Nan came round and freaked out that I was on the worktops and made such a big fuss about how I would fall off and hurt myself. (She was the interfering Nan type rather than the soft cuddly sort.) She decided I couldn't possibly make my cake without her hovering under the workstops waiting for me to fall. This got me more and more annoyed. Time came in the recipe (gingerbread) to add a pinch of salt, which I did. She exclaimed 'You can't add salt to a cake it will be disgusting,' which was red rag to a bull at this stage so I added a whole tablespoon and said I always did that and it always tasted fine.

I realised straight away that the cake would now taste horrid and was irreversibly ruined but I couldn't bring myself to admit that Nan was right. I told my Mum who also found Nan very annoying and my whole family colluded with me and we ate that cake in front of Nan to 'prove' that I knew how to cook a cake. ugh. poor family!

Nan's now busy in heaven, probably hovering round tutting even now when I'm baking!

Nothing to do with cakes but when I was very little I did not like the idea of used loose tea in the teapot being thrown away. Without telling anyone, I used to pass it through a tea strainer, onto a bit of kitchen towel and left it to dry in the sun. When it dried up, I put it back in the tea caddy. I kept doing this for about a week until mum found some tea drying in the back yard. She asked me what was I doing with it and when I explained she just burst out laughing. She had been wondering all week why no matter how much tea leaves she was putting in the pot, the tea was so weak. Needless to say she kept a real good eye on me not to get up to mischief. My sisters still talk about it now, after about 40 years.

Nothing to do with cakes - but what a fun thread - About 5 years ago when my husband and I were first dating, I wanted to cook him dinner at his place. So I decided to cook him beefo stroganoff (my favorite and something I could cook really well). I knew I had bought the tomato paste for it but when we got back and it was time to add it, it was nowhere to be found.

I begged him to run back to the store and get me some and when he got back, I was so flustered I added the whole tin of paste instead of the 2 tbsp. it called for. Needless to say, it was a very bad tomatoey tasing stroganoff and to make matters worse, my then boyfriend decided that ti hurry the cooking process he would help by cooking the noodles in the microwave.

They came out stuck together and horrible and topping that mess of with my salty discusting sauce made for a dinner my husband has never let me forget.

I love the stories. Here is one for you. when I was about 5 years old I had an idea to make peanuts. yes I thought I could make peanuts from peanut butter. LOL I made small peanut shaped mounds out of peanut butter on a paper plate and placed it over the stove. Needless to say it went on fire and my mother came rushing in. After I told her I was trying to make peanuts she laughed. But I still got punished for touching the stove. To this day its a joke for my family and yes I still laugh at it also.

I remember one time when me and my cousin were about 10 or so and we were going to make fortune cookies because we found a recipe in my mama's cook book. Ok we got started added flour and all in the bowl, then the recipe called for corn starch, I looked and looked in the cabinet for some and did not see a box that had that wrote on it to save my life! Then I suddenkly remembered that I saw a container with corn starch wrote on it somewhere else. Me and my couson then proceeded to go to the bathroom and get the "baby powder" cornstarch! Needless to say the cookies did not turn out good at all!

I love remanissing (spelling)

When I was about 10, i was convinced I was going to make pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving. Well, off we went to my aunts house, with my pie in hand...looking beautiful I might add....well everyone took one bite and spit it back out...seems I forgot the sugar!!! Still trying to live that one down, think i'll take a CAKE to thanksgiving from now on and wow them all!

the stories like that are what makes life rich and colorful. Definitely not sad.

When I was about 9 or 10 a friend and I got together and while our mothers talked we were going to bake them cookies. Peanut Butter cookies to specific. We were SO proud about how good they looked with the little fork design pressed in and all. They came out tasting horrid and that's when I learned the difference between the T and t in recipes. A full tablespoon of baking soda in cookies is so bad that horses will not even eat the cookies!

Okay, this is has gotten me to laughing! It reminds me of the time when I was 11 years old and my mother decided that it was time for me to get up early in the morning and help her make the stuffing for out Thanksgiving turkey. Well, she got me up and went into the kitchen and when I walked in she told me to go light the oven. I knew how to light the oven, I had done it a hundred times before. Well, I guess I was not fully awake and I turned the gas on and went to get the match, lit the match, opened the oven door and WHOOSH! No more eyebrows! I wasn't hurt, but my pride sure suffered! And to top it all off, Mom wouldn't let me out of cooking! Sheesh! However, to this day we all laugh about that day. My sisters and brother have never let me forget!

Reading these stories remind me of the time I made my first "Sheet" cake. I was 17 and at the time I was living with my aunt. It was her birthday and I found a recipe called " Texas Sheet Cake". Basically it was a chocolate cake. Well I looked at the instructions not really paying attention to the demensions of the pan that I needed and just assumed that a sheet cake was a cake cooked on a cookie sheet. So I poured the batter onto a cookie sheet and baked it in the oven. Thank goodness it was a big cookie sheet or otherwise I would have been scraping burnt cake off the bottom of the oven. LOL my aunt took a look at the cake and told me that it was sweet to think of her but was wondering where I had gotten the idea of what a sheet cake acturally was!

Hi ya'll! This is my first post but I have lurked here forever!
When I was 19 and newly married I moved across the country and had to teach myself how to cook.I wanted to make my Grandmother's peach cobbler so I wrote her and asked her for the recipe. She sent me a recipe card from my Aunt Minta Maude but also she sent a paper with ammendments on it as she had changed the recipe up a little.
As I was reading the paper I got to the part where she wrote,"Now, with your CLEAN hand, squish up the peaches." LOL. She underlined CLEAN!
There I was 19 years old pregnant with my first baby, running my own home and my Grandmother was telling me to wash my hands!
I lost my Grandmother 8 years ago but I still have the card and the paper. I am making family scrapbook recipe books and I made copies of that note for my family.
It is my treasure.

Cricket

This is a great thread!

I was probably 15ish when baking Christmas cookies and putting together a sugar cookie recipe. The story is similar to the Friends episode with Rachel making the "meat trifle", but somehow 2 different sugar cookie recipes were on each page, stuck together.

The cookies are still known as "the best sugar cookies ever!" but we cannot replicate them and have no idea where the recipes became tangled up!

A great outcome but it's awful that the family remembers them and I can't duplicate it!

Back in 1981, 20 years old and newly married, one of my new husbands favorites was SOS, (creamed dried beef).

I have never made this, and was not something that was made at my house growing up. But I figured I would give it a shot. So I am adding all the ingredients (including lots of garlic salt which I included in everything) and cooking away.

Put it in a serving dish. Within about two minutes it transformed into this blob. So as we are looking at it, we decide well it's just a little thick. We can deal with that.
So we each take some. One of his friends was there also. OMG it was HORRID. Salt City to the max., and thick as wallpaper paste.
And the whole time his friend is sitting there politely chewing away saying "this is really good", looking like he is going to barf at any second.
My husband looks at him and says are you out of your *** mind. Give me that before we have to take you to the ER!

Sooo.....we went out for lunch.

I think I was around 12 when this happened, my family was gathering at my grandmas for Sunday dinner and of course grandma was making her famous chocolate cake with a marshmallow fluff icing (she refused to give out this recipe so no one knew how to make it but her) anyway this was an awesome cake and it was the highlight of the Sunday dinner well....lol she was bringing the cake from the counter in the kitchen to the table in the dining room (can you see where this is going...lol) well it hit the floor and we all gathered around the cake we looked at each other and then picked it up off the floor and we ate it anyways we weren't about to let the cake go to the trash haha from then on the cake was simply called "floor cake"

All of your stories brought me back to the day that I decided to make brownies. I really can't remember how old I was but I couldn't have been more than 8 or 9. Well, I wanted to make these ALL BY MYSELF. I remember my brother who was a few years older than me laughing at me and telling me that I was stupid and I couldn't do it, blah, blah blah. So this made me even more determined to make the best brownies in the whole wide world. Well, I was doing great, measured out all of my ingredients just perfectly. Man, I was on a roll. Well, then it came to adding the eggs to the mixture. The instructions said to add "whole eggs". OK. whole eggs, that means the "entire" egg, right????????? Obviously, something just didn't sound quite right about adding the "whole egg" so, I yelled out to my mom and asked her if in fact I do add the whole egg and she said YES. I remember again repeating, the whole egg???? So in goes two "whole eggs". It took a while to crush up the shells but I finally got it to the consistency that I thought looked pretty good. Boy did they smell good baking in the oven. Couldn't wait till they were done, I just knew my brother would have to eat his words. I remember taking them out of the oven, letting them cool and cutting them. I was so proud of those brownies UNTIL my mom checked them out and asked what the hard, crunchy stuff was inside the brownies. Well, that's when I learned that the "whole egg" means both the white and the yolk Mom was so sweet about it, she even ate around some of the egg shells and told me that they tasted better than any brownie that she had ever eaten and I did a great job. But she did suggest that because there were so many shells that we dispose of this batch of brownies and I could make another batch soon. Well, I made sure that I did save a large piece out for my brother before I tossed them. When he came home from playing baseball, I handed it to him and told him that I had added nuts in there just for him

Lol butternut!

I cant remember any cooking disasters of my own but I remember one of my little sisters. I think she was about 8yo when it happened. She was trying to make Jell-O. I was in my bedroom and she came running down the hall screaming her head off that the stove was on fire. I ran into the kitchen and found a plastic salad bowl sitting on one of the stove burners spewing Jell-O water and fire everywhere. I grabbed the bowl off the stove with a pair of tongs and luckily the fire came with it and threw it in the sink and turned on the faucet. We were home alone and I knew my dad was flip out if he saw what shed done so I told her to clean up the mess herself and Id never say anything about it. To this day my dad doesnt know but I still poke fun at her for using a plastic bowl on the stove.

I so far haven't had any cake disasters except a carrot cake that sunk. Not sure why because I followed the recipe. I've had a few dinner mishaps.

Dh still teases me about the time I added sugar to the koolaid in a canister, you know the already sugar added ready to use mix? I made it and added water, the mix and a cup of sugar. He asked me why it was so sweet and I told him I only added 1 c. of sugar. He burst out laughing at me. We don't buy it in the canister anymore

I can't remember any of mine, but I do remember a sweet old boyfriend who loved egg salad and thought he would make himself some......... poor thing didn't realize you boil the eggs first! LOL

My real disaster was the first meal I cooked to impress my inlaws.

We were all in the kitchen laughing and talking while I made my lasagne. And I had just popped my garlic bread under the broiler when my mother-in-law remarked that she wasn't a very good cook because she always burnt the green beans.
I told her not to worry--I always burned the bread.
The words were still hanging in the air when I looked at the oven and smoke was billowing out, then the smoke alarm started blaring.
I rushed to take the bread out of the oven and the garlic toasts were literally ON FIRE!

I just looked at my startled inlaws and said, " I told you I always burn the bread!"

We all had a good laugh!

Couturiere we must be family as I have never put any bread product in the over for a family meal that I didn't either burn it to a total crisp or get someone else to watch it.

For years the family meal bell was the smoke alarm.

I have teenage grandkids and even they do a better job of rolls and garlic bread than I.

There is hope for the future generation of this bread burner.

Love this site and all of the wonderful information you guys are so kind to share. Can't believe it took me so long to post.

Mel,

thanksgiving...
mom's house...
salt cured ham....

GAG!!!

oops...she forgot to soak the ham to get the salt out!

I made cookies once and instead of putting 1/4 tsp. of salt I put in 1/4 cup.

On our honeymoon my DH wanted hamburger helpers chili-mac. So I made it for him. He couldn't eat it. The noodles were still crunchy and it was like colored water had been poured on it. He laughed and grabed the camera just to get some film of the mess. He then told me "wow, I'm in trouble, don't worry, we'll just have to have dinner at my mom's everynight." ----- 9 years later and I cook all the meals and have improved greatly. Thank goodness or we would starve to death!