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Mince pies for the house gathering in December, I was in a rush and read just 15 on the instructions on the box (no I don't make my own!) pushed a piled plate in the microwave for 15 minutes on high - they looked fine, duly dusted with icing sugar they were passed round and munched in silence but returned to the plates after one mouthful which was chewed for some minutes! Yes 15 meant seconds and the insides of the pies had been turned to a solid sticky concrete concentrate. All too polite to tell me and I only tried one myself after they had left and felt...so bad!

Trying to make chocolate cake for my mum as a child.. I put the mixture in a blender and turned it on.. without the lid on. The cake mix went everywhere, covering the kitchen in brown sludge!

Learning to bake by trial and error - I didn't know flour and water pastry could make jam tarts hard enough to break my nephews tooth! God bless cook books.

I once set the oven on fire trying to grill some chicken for dinner!

When slimming, I once tried to heat up a lemon meringue pie in the oven which had a jelly filling for calorie counting. The jelly quickly reverted to it's liquid form and was flowing out onto the bottom of the oven before I realised my mistake!

When my brother complained that the shortbread biscuits I had made were too soft and tasted "different," I put them into the fridge to firm up. When he continued to complain, I had a strop.
Much later that evening, I realised that I hadn't actually COOKED them....it was raw mixture !

I was asked to bake some pies, quiches and pastries for a party.
I was happy to oblige .. especially, as I had a batch of previously made pastry in my freezer.
I wondered why guests were pulling weird faces after nibbling my quiches, pies etc.
However, no one needed to tell me .. it suddenly came to me!
The pastry from the freezer was sweetened with sugar .. I had forgotten that!!
I took a bite of quiche just to confirm .. yes, the filling was savoury .. but, the shell was sweet (very sweet).
How embarrassing!!

Cupcakes are supposed to be chewy, right?

When I was a teenager, I decided to help my Mum out and make her an Apple Pie to come home from work to. So I made the shortcrust pastry, took 2 bags of Apple out of the freezer, thawed them out and made the pie. I then made some lovely thick custard to go with it and served it for tea. It wasn't until we all bit into my amazing pie that I realised instead of using two bags of apple from the freezer, one of the bags were swede. So I'd not made Apple Pie but Apple and Swede Pie. It was horrible. Thank goodness I have now improved in the kitchen and now teach my grand daughters how to bake.

I was making a delicious couscous. Put all the grain into a bowl and added the water, expecting it to swell up as usual. I thought it was taking a long time to do this but decided to taste it anyway. Oh dear! I'd made it with oatmeal which I do NOT recommend.

A couple of years ago we decided on a big family Christmas dinner and bought a huge turkey. It took two of us to remove it from the oven but as we did the tin buckled. Juices splashed into the oven, which caught on fire and the turkey skidded across the kitchen floor. I ran to the oven and turned it off but the commotion alerted everyone to come running into the kitchen and hit the oil slick on the floor. In a slow motion comedy moment people started skidding, colliding with each other, arms flailing etc. After everything had calmed down the decision was made to pick up the turkey, run it under the tap, carve it and have dinner. The floor was greasy for days after that and funnily enough we haven't attempted a big family dinner since but we still have a good laugh about it!!

Setting the kitchen on fire grilling sausages, luckily we only had to replace one unit and repaint. I am so glad we have a fire extinguisher in the house.

I was once attempting to bake muffins for some guests to a party that night. I decided to bake them late that afternoon so that they would be fresh as could be. My oven is a pull down door at chest height. I carefully placed them in and stood back proudly. Then it dawned on me that I had forgot to add the oats that were to be sprinkled on top. I carefully removed them, sprinkled the oats and went to carefully put them back in. However, I caught my oven glove on the door handle, the tray went up in the air and I watched in what seemed like slow motion as the tray flipped over and landed upside down on the door! An almighty sizzle followed. I was left shamefaced and with an oven door that I couldn't clean until had cooled! And yes, I dashed out to the supermarket, bought some muffins and claimed I made them....

my worst ever cooking episode was about 20 years ago when I was cooking Christmas dinner for 12 people and I accidently picked up the washing up liquid instead of the salt to season the vegetables

My limit to microwave cooking is warming stuff up, defrosting what I have forgotten to defrost and cooking microwave meals burnt a few pizzas in my time and got a few flat Yorkshire puddings that's a disaster esp on a Sunday

When I was very young I decided to treat my family into a Chicken roast. But chicken was frozen, so I did put it into a water and on top of the warm radiator. My mum got so mad she came back and saw it! So embarrassing now!

Not long after I married, I cooked the Christmas turkey with the giblets left inside.

We were having friends round for dinner and I decided to come up with a different dessert. I found a recipe for a maple and pecan dessert, based on a bread and butter pudding but using croissants instead of bread. It all went really well and was just finishing off in the oven. I opened the door to take it out and then somehow managed to tilt the dish and, having greased it thoroughly, half the dessert slipped out onto the floor, to be cleaned up by our golden retriever. Our kitchen is next to the dining room and one of our guests heard the commotion and took photos of the dessert on the floor. I hurriedly added some fresh ingredients and put it back in the oven to cook. My guest, however, insisted on telling everyone that I had scraped the dessert back off the floor!

I once made pancakes for my husband and decided to give him a real treat and use a fancy bottle of oil that we had been given for a Christmas gift! Unbeknown to me it was chilli flavoured oil and gave my usually sweet pancakes a terrible burning quality! My poor husband ate two and didn't say anything but just drank several glasses of water! As soon as I tucked in I knew something was wrong and we realised what the problem was!

I was cooking using the microwave I had to pop out so asked one of my sons to take over told him what to do numerous times ok I know I was told come home from the shop he,d only blown the door off the microwave and the bag inside was nowhere to be seen again heavens know where it went luckily no one was hurt except the microwave which ended up in the bin now hes banned from even boiling an egg hed probably boil it dry oh well he tried

I was boiling a can of condensed milk to make dulce de leche and it exploded!

I baked a cake for Father's Day, a lovely sponge cake with icing on the top, it looked lovely, however, I hadn't had it in the oven long enough, and unknown to me, the centre of it was still soft, and uncooked! Luckily, everyone thought that I'd just cleverly put a fondant centre in it!

I was boiling up eggs to make egg sandwiches and put the timer on and left them to cook. I noticed my neighbour outside and went to have a quick word with her which carried on for much longer than I'd expected. The next thing we heard was a loud bang and I ran back into the kitchen to discover that the water had run dry and the eggs had exploded all over the kitchen. It took quite a while to clean up and get rid of the smell!

I remember using a packet mix and adding ingredients to the topping sachet rather than the cake sachet. It didn't look quite right but the family dutifully scoffed the lot - although of course they never let me forget it!

Tried to make chocolate brownies & they ended up being rock hard on the outside nearly breaking your teeth. And raw in the middle, maybe oven on too high.