cookery 'flops'

Everyone likes my shortbread but I don't know what I did wrong one day but it was horrible. My ddil and dh loved it so it didn't go to waist but I couldn't make it again. ☺️

When OH and I were first married his Dad came to visit and the chaps went off to a football match. Anxious to impress, I made a lemon mousse for tea. Must have added too much gelatin because OH declared that it had the texture of mastic , disloyal bxxxxx.
His mother made awful gravy - pale and watery. One Christmas the in- laws came to dinner. Everything was ready except the gravy ."You pop up and get yourself ready" said Mil "and I'll make the gravy".

A Victoria sponge, which I swore I had baked correctly from the correct ingredients, came out of the oven so flat that when sandwiched, it looked like two pancakes put together. The next attempt was - though I say it myself - perfect! My unfortunate GD took a batch of cupcakes (which she had baked herself) to Scouts only to discover that she had made them with salt instead of sugar. (shock) A mistake she will never make again!

Wrong brackets:

I once made a rice cake with raw rice grains instead of rice flour. It looked, smelled and even tasted fine except for what my brother called the 'bones'.

Love reading all about these trials and errors. I've had a good many, but the first one I remember was from schooldays. We were to make eclairs, so practised at home. Even went out and bought a special shaped tin! The results turned out like chips, and trying to fill them with cream was difficult to say the least. Haven't bothered since.

annodomini - I once did the same as your GD - I was staying at my Grans, I must have been about 12. She left me to get on with it and I used salt instead of sugar in a sponge. To make it worse, you don't know about it until it's baked and you take a bite.

I was about 9 years old when I tried to make a sponge. As there was no caster sugar I was about to substitute granulated plus a big glug of castor oil, my mother just stopped me in time. My spelling has improved.

OMG at least I'm not alone, one C**** I made a Raspberry Mouse which I had made many times before. I got to the end of making it & realised I hadn't put the sugar in!!! I quickly added sugar, result, tasted perfect

We've all done it, haven't we? Decades ago I had a go at making pancakes, something I'd not done before. I followed the instructions but as I was about to 'flip it' I got hold of the handle forgetting that it would be hot - I let go again pretty damn sharpish and the pan quickly fell to the floor!
Yes, lovely pancake all over the floor. Pancake Day may come and go but I have never, ever made one since. I doubt that I ever shall again.

My mother had to make tea for a meeting in her first job. She was only fourteen. She carefully carried the tray into the meeting room, and began to pour the tea. However she soon realised she had put no tea in the pot and was pouring hot water!

Have had many disasters, sugarless chocolate muffins anyone? DD aged 9 made a tuna pasta salad using mayonnaise and vanilla yoghurt under the belief that it would be the same as natural yoghurt. It was unbelievably horrid. ?

Couldn't resist contributing to this topic could I. A couple of incidents came to mind, like the time I decided to cook chilli for tea for my husband and daughter. Within a couple of minutes they were gulping water, and complaining of streaming eyes! Neither finished their food! Moral of the tale.........don't cook chilli from scratch when you have a dreadful head cold and can't taste a thing!
Second occasion was years ago when I was a kid. My older sister and I decided we would cook a Victoria Sponge to have with our tea on Saturday. You know the recipe 4:4:4:2. But when we took them out of the oven, they looked like a flat biscuit, crunch on the edges and raw in the middle. But it tasted delicious!!! For years after we tried to replicate what we had done, to make it again because it tasted so nice, but had no luck!

DH made liver and sausage casserole while I was out. Got home to a strong smell of coffee. We had recently moved and the coffee jar had been broken so I put the coffee in an empty gravy jar...

I have had few complete diasters, but last month made fish cakes from some fish found at the bottom of the freezer. One bite and they went straight in the bin - not even in the dog. Have made bread in the bread maker and forgot the yeast - that hit the bin with a loud thump.

First time I made a cake for for new FIL and MIL, I decided to make a vanilla buttercream filling to the beautiful chocolate cake I had made, sadly I picked up the wrong small brown bottle and the cries of surprise were quite loud when I cut the cake to reveal the cerise buttercream! I had used cochineal in error, but it was very striking!

When I read the heading 'It started flowing out of the bottom onto the floor' I couldn't image what the thread was about. However, having found out what it was about, my mishap occurred at my very first dinner party when I decided to make Baked Alaska for dessert. The problem was I didn't whip the meringue enough and the ice cream wasn't solid enough. When I took it out of the oven it looked more like Melted Alaska as it dripped off the dish.

I've made too many disasters to put on here but I get full marks for perseverance. My mother's famous c* up was when she was first married and baking a pie. Searching the house for something to use as a pie funnel she used an apple corer. Unfortunately it had a plastic handle! Apparently my father was non the wiser as she just duh out the molten plastic and served it up for his dinner!

Goodness, there are too many to count!!

I am usually a good cook but have been known to take my eye off the ball (or entirely miss out lines of a recipe!) from time to time.

I think possibly the worst flavour sensation I have created by accident was mixing up the salt and the sugar in a sweet fruit

Salty pastry with a sweet filling is not good, I assure you!

For a while we had a system at work whereby one of a group of five of us would cook each day, which was great - no traffic jams in the kitchen at lunch time, only have to think something up once a week and bring the ingredients. I once did two baking trays full of pizza. To save time,as it was at work, I had ready-made pizza bases, which you can buy rolled up. Only when I took them out of the oven did I notice that I'd forgotten to take the paper off one of the bases, and had distributed the tomatoes, cheese, salami etc, on to the paper.

I just scraped it all off whilst trying to pull the paper out like the trick with the table cloth, which, fortunately, worked. It didn't make much difference to the taste, which was a good thing, because there was nothing else to eat, of course!

My worst flop was literally just that.
Not long after one Christmas I had made a mincemeat and apple pie - a nice layer of each, with pastry top and bottom.

How it happened I shall never know - we had guests but I don't think I was particularly pissed - but just after I took it out of the oven the whole thing slid off the pie plate, into the dog's bed, where it broke up and mingled with dog hair and her rainy-day Bonios, etc.
Luckily the dog was not in it at the time, since it was very hot.

Having bothered to make a pud - quite rare in this house - and actually made the pastry from scratch, I was monumentally hacked off.
For some reason everybody else found it very funny....

I'm not allowed to cook meals. Had the fire brigade out twice. First time I was boiling eggs to go with a salad on an electric cooker top and turned on the wrong ring that happened to have plastic kitchen scales sitting on it. They flambéd well. DH and small DS came home from the library to find even smaller DD, the dogs and me on the front lawn, two fire tenders and all the neighbours gathered to watch. The second one wasn't quite as spectacular. My lovely next door neighbour said she wasn't too sure about living next door to an arsonist ?

I can do cakes though. Am famous for my bread pudding too