Comments on: It’s that time again: (April) fools in the test kitchen

By: Kat

Kat — Sat, 16 May 2009 16:38:04 +0000

I’ve noticed many of these stories are newlywed stories.. same with mine.
My husband was working second shift, and I thought it would be nice to have a sit down dinner together during the week, rather than him heating up leftovers when he got home. I left work early, made this beautiful pork roast, with gravy that came out amazing. Proud of my work, I packaged it up and poured the gravy into a plastic container and secured the lid so it wouldn’t spill. Good thinking, right? Wrong. I left it on the counter and starting packing things up. I didn’t notice the lid starting to bow a bit from the building steam and pressure. The “POP!” startled me, the as the lid launched off, at just an angle to also send the bowl portion flying. Gravy was now everywhere - the counters, floor, fridge door, me, walls - everywhere except the meat. Thanks for bringing a smile to my face. Mary @ KAF

By: Kathy W

Kathy W — Tue, 12 May 2009 19:33:37 +0000

Never, never try big cooking projects while potty-training a toddler! The first time I ever tried to make jelly, I strained the juice out of the plums, got everything combined, got it on the stove to boil…little kid had large potty accident, after handling that, discovered that the jelly had boiled over, and INTO the stovetop and the pan-thingy under the burners… Know what sugar does when boiled enough? You guessed it…it caramelized!! I spent the afternoon pouring boiling water down into the stovetop, and scraping up the resulting goop. Boy, howdy!
Hi Kathy,
As my dad would say when he was trying to hide cuss words “oh my. Golly gosh darnit”. Poor you! ~ MaryJane

By: marianne

marianne — Wed, 06 May 2009 22:24:27 +0000

As a newlywed a batch of my grandmother’s bread dough didn’t rise. She was embarrassed and didn’t want her new husband to think that she couldn’t make bread (this was in the early 1900s) so she took her dough out to the field, dug a hole, buried it, and started over. My grandfather decided to plow that field later in the day and was completely stumped by the bizarre sticky, clumpy mass that caught his plow. She didn’t confess until years later that the mystery substance was her dough.

By: Sue Epstein

Sue Epstein — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 15:55:40 +0000

When I woke up this morning I discovered, much to my joy, that my house was clean, the laundry was done, and I had extra space in my freezer. The weather had cooled off and it was the perfect opportunity to do some baking. I didn’t even have to go to the grocery store first since I had plenty of any ingredients on hand that I might need.

I should have stayed in bed with a good book! It was definitely a bad baking day. Now I don’t claim to be the world’s greatest cook and baker, but I have been doing it for over 40 years. I’ve cooked for my family and friends, I’ve done catering, and taught cooking - so if I must pat myself on the back, I’m pretty good at it.

First, I made a Brownie recipe that I’ve successfully made many times before. It has a layer of brownies, a layer of white chocolate and a layer of peanut butter frosting. What could be bad about that?

I put the brownie batter in the oven and set my timer for the correct time. When the timer bell rang I checked the brownies. Done on the edges but still raw in the middle. Back to the oven again for five more minutes. Well done on the edges but still not baked in the middle. Back in the oven for five more minutes. Ohhhh, definitely well done on the edges and barely done in the middle. I decided that I would just finish it as usual and salvage what I could.

The white chocolate went on okay but for some reason I couldn’t get the frosting to the consistency I wanted. What happened? I don’t know. I made it EXACTLY as I have in the past.

Instead of giving up then and there, I decided to make lemon bars. It was a new recipe but I had made it last week for a friend’s daughter’s engagement party and they were a big hit.

The ingredients went into the food processor and they were supposed to be crumbly. They were creamy instead. I realized that I had put 1 1/2 times the amount of margarine in it than I should have. Into the oven the crust went and I proceeded to make the filling in my food processor. Evidently I didn’t put the bowl on tight enough because all the lemon cream came oozing out the bottom of the bowl and all over my kitchen counter.

Okay Sue, clean it up and start again. This time I put the bowl on tightly and everything seemed to be going okay. After the final step I was positive I heard the bell go off from another room, signaling that they were done. I opened the oven door and started to pull out the rack to check the bars. It hadn’t set yet and the lemon cream spilled out all over my oven. I checked the timer and found I still had 8 minutes to go. No wonder it wasn’t set.

At this point I really wished I had stayed in bed! I finished the lemon bars, ended up overbaking them this time, cleaned up, turned off the light and walked out of the kitchen.

I took the tray of Brownie bars to the canteen for soldiers where I volunteer, thinking to salvage as much of it as I could. Much to my surprise, they were the hit of the day. My partner asked one soldier how he rated these brownies on a scale of one to ten. His reply was that they were off the charts delicious. Which reminded me of what my instructor used to say when I studied catering - caterers don’t make mistakes because they cover them up with frosting.

Nicely stated; some days you are the windshield, some days you’re the bug. We are glad to hear your chocolate adventure turned out well, now if we could only remember the mixing of that recipe to duplicate your results?!* Many recipes have started out just this way as a “food adventure” instead of “intended results”! Keep experimenting! Irene at KAF

By: Mariann

Mariann — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 19:41:25 +0000

Also, to Kay, 2 comments above me? We live in teensy, cramped government housing as we are an Army family. We don’t have enough cupboard space for any of my big pots and pans so I started putting them in the oven. Since we moved here in May of 2007, I have torched 3 big skillets, 4 cutting boards and 2 big, deep pots we use for cooking pasta. One of these days, I will write myself a note to place on the setting knobs for the oven that says “Look inside before you turn me on!” :o)

By: Mariann

Mariann — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 19:37:54 +0000

Hello! I LOVE your website. I pride myself in being a very good cook but baking has always been a bit of a challenge for me. So, while my husband is deployed and I am bored, I have been cranking out the desserts for our 5 kids. Last night, I attempted my very first banana cream pie. It looked firm and beautiful…and then I cut it. It was more like banana cream chowder. But the kids loved it and it TASTED wonderful. I’m just not sure what I did to it exactly!
But my favorite cooking disaster ever was when I was a newlywed and decided to suprise my husband with ribs, baked to tender goodness just like his mom made…or least that was my intention! I didn’t have a pan big enough for the ribs so ingenious 20 year old me lined the rack with layers of tin foil and put the ribs on top to bake. Well, fast forward about 30 minutes? The weight of the ribs had caused little tears in the foil which allowed the juices and oils to drip down…onto the electric stove’s coils. It started a fire and the house was full of smoke for hours. Luckily, my husband took pity on me and we went out to eat after cleaning the mess.

By: Katherine

Katherine — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 20:28:53 +0000

This last weekend I made waffles and forgot the oil. D’oh! There was actually enough on the iron that until the last waffle, they came out okay with only a bit of sticking. LUck was on my side!

And then there’s the time I made chicken pot pie with bad crisco, thinking it was just a little funny, that crisco “never went bad”, and that the taste would cook out.

Way to ruin a chicken pot pie…

By: Kay

Kay — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 17:02:25 +0000

Some time ago I was preheating the oven for a cake, timing crucial as it was for a catering, and got started on the batter. After a little while I smell something wired but since we live in an area where windows are always open I’m used to a smorgasbord of smells from other apartments.

At that point I spilled a bit of egg white on the floor and one of our dogs, always at hand to clean up any spills, was coming and had to be evicted from the kitchen as raw eggs are off limits.
When I return from the kitchen door I get the feeling that there is some light haze in the kitchen but can’t see any reason for that so I figure its nothing and continue with the cakes.

My habit is to check the oven temperature on a thermometer inside the oven just before pouring the batter in its baking receptacles as this allows any necessary corrections until the moment the goodies go into the oven.

Bending down to the oven I found, to my great surprise, my large silicone cutting board (restaurant size) inside the oven, where my husband had put it the night before when it bothered him while doing the dishes.

Needless to say that silicone cutting boards don’t do well in a heated oven and mine turned into a rather interesting sculpture that is now a pantry decoration to keep hubby reminded not to store things inside the oven.

It took us about an hour to get the oven cleaned up and luckily no smell stayed behind and the cakes came out well.

By: Tom Burt

Tom Burt — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 12:28:20 +0000

Just last week i was making some sundried tomatoe & aged provalone French bread at work and i was rising them in my home made bannetons lined with cheap canvas. apperantly i didn’t flour them enough because when i tried to turn them out onto the peel they stuck to the inside and deflated. determind to try to get them in the oven quickly to still get a little oven spring out of them i turned to the oven with a mighty jerk of the arm to slide them onto the baking stone and hit the side of the oven with the peel. of course being close to April fools day the bread gods laughed and after picking up the sagging mass of dough that was hanging off of the side of the oven door, i transfered the bread dough into the fryolator and made fried dough out of it. i guess when the baking gods give you lemmons you should make lemonade?

By: Francesca

Francesca — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 01:54:30 +0000

My baking mishap came just 3 days ago! I was trying to get one more loaf in before Passover began, and wanted to bring it to the office. I was using the recipe from KAF Baker’s Companion, page 80, you know, that wonderful banana bread–the one that calls for lots of liquid–vegetable oil instead of butter, plus a cup of yogurt. I measured all the ingreds. carefully. But because I tend to keep low-fat yogurt in the house instead of the normal stuff, the bread was too liquidy and already filled the bread pan before baking. Well, you can guess that it spilled all over the side of the baking pan (a glass loaf pan). Fortunately, I had put one of those foil trays underneath so there was no oven mess. We did the clean-knife test, removed it from the oven and let it sit overnight.
The next morning, I cut half of it out of the bread pan, and the rest came out normally. The story has a happy ending. We ate what spilled over, cleaned up the appearance and the people at my office gobbled up the rest of it! But–what would you advise for the future. Use butter instead, or reduce the yogurt quantity? Or yet another solution?

Francesca, I’d use a bigger loaf pan. If you don’t have a bigger pan, fill the pan you have about 2/3 full, then bake the excess batter in mufin cups. I think that would be the best solution. Thanks for sharing your “disaster”! PJH