2015 Recipe Disasters.
And now for one of my favorite traditions! aka, I don’t know how my kitchen didn’t blow up this year.
Yes, I say it every year in my way-too-dramatic fashion, but THIS year was the worst.
I swear. And here’s why: a kid!
Adding a baby to the mix threw my balance way off as expected – and I’m still trying to regain it. In the early days, I would plan to test a fantastic recipe or two only to have a Max moment that needed my full attention and lasted three hours longer than expected. I was super rushing to make things in a fraction of the time that I used to have and this meant: massive kitchen fails.
It was funny. Not at the time, I may have melted into a puddle of tears on occasion. But now! It’s fun to look back on. Also, this is, like, 1/48th of the disasters that occurred this year – the ones that I was lucky enough to remember to capture. Ohhh good.
Also, for years of previous embarrassing disasters, you can see
Or not.
And now, let’s talk about my frenemy. PIE.
To make a good one, I’ve decided that you really need three things: time, patience and desire, of which I have none. I want to be all cool and hipstery and make an instagram-worthy pie (um, hello, why ELSE would you make one?) but I cannot.
I seriously think this looks like a scary halloween mask, like a Jason mask or something, something like leatherface with holes in it. It’s 100% awful, and the filling didn’t exactly turn out either.
Scratch that, it didn’t turn out at all. I’m pretty sure it still had chunks of flour in it. Which I tasted. Of course.
Back in early winter, I made this triple citrus relish that I saw in an issue of… not sure. Maybe food and wine? Maybe bon appetit? It sounded pretty fabulous but my execution was terrible, right down to the part where I decided to serve it with… wait for it… CHICKEN.
Fried chicken actually. Coconut oil fried chicken. Where to begin?
The relish had rind in it, it turned out terribly, I don’t know what I was thinking with the herbs and then I added way too many onions. The chicken was soggy-fried, absolutely horrible but I tried to save it by roasting it AFTER frying it and then roasting the lemon wedges too.
I tasted it and was all well this isn’t too bad, let me take a pic and I’ll test it once or twice more before sharing.
And then I looked at the pic and was like, what? This is horrifying. It really was.
I mean, do you want to eat a bowl of oranges and onions on soggy fried chicken? Sounds delish.
No words for this hideous mess of a soup. Â I made a bacon and lentil soup (why? lack of sleep in the newborn stage?!) then topped it with parmesan cheese crisps and BASIL. Why why why.
Again, it was so gross. Too many flavors, such a literal hot mess. My brain was fried.
I’m pretty sure that bacon cheeseburger quesadillas have made the recipe disaster list before – yet I keep on making them because apparently I’ve had a lobotomy.
As gross as it may seem, it tastes pretty darn close to a cheeseburger and therefore, is pretty darn delicious, but photo wise? The worst. Just no.
Never ever.
One of my saddest fails of the year was pickled brussels sprouts. I did a million things wrong, from not “canning” the thing properly because I was lazy, to making up my own mixture, to using too large of sprouts and then letting the mess sit in my fridge for over a week.
I had gorgeous high hopes for bloody marias and cheese plates but just ended up with hard-as-a-rock vinegar balls. Depressing. And very gross.
Ooooh ooh ooh the time that I thought chocolate coffee cake could be a thing?
It could not. It was so BLAH.
For Thanksgiving, I really wanted to make you french onion soup rolls! I made my own rolls with onions that had caramelized for three hours and an entire block of grated gruyere. But my recipe brain fell off there when I didn’t know just HOW to cover the rolls with a delicious soupy cheese blanket and still have them be, well… ROLLS. And not a gigantic slop pile in a baking dish.
Hurts the heart hard.
THE MACARONS.
Oh the macarons. How many batches did I make? Maybe 40? Definitely 20 in the months of November and December. It was out of control and while I’ve heard that chocolate macs are especially difficult, I had multiple other flavors fail too.
The obscenties running through my mind after batch 15 failed and I had let them sit, then didn’t let them sit, overmixed then didn’t overmix, made them on a low humidity day, banged the pan against my kitchen table… it went on and on. Just decided to bang my head on the table instead.
Finally, I tried to be all cool and trendy here and make some “truffles” out of dried figs and reeeealllly dark chocolate (like 90%) instead of using dates like all the cool kids do. These were absolutely pitiful. And tasted so, so wrong.
There were so many more in 2015, but there are the biggest and best that stuck out like sore thumbs. And of course, just last week I dropped an entire gallon of homemade amaretto on my kitchen floor less than 24 hours after making it, so major fails happen every single day. More like multiple times a day right now, since I’m still trying to maximize my time.
Tell me, tell me! What was your biggest of 2015?
87 Comments on “2015 Recipe Disasters.”
Christmas dinner… I’m not sure what happened. Instead of duck breast and scalloped potatoes like usual, I decided on lobster tail with fresh linguine in a creamy seafood sauce. Sounds good, right? But the lobster was off somehow, maybe undercooked. So we put it back under the broiler, which basically made it rubbery. Meanwhile the pasta sauce got all cold and goopy so it all just tasted gross. The wedge salad was pretty good anyway. ;)
oh man toni, i have had issues with rubbery lobster this year too! ha, it just went undocumented. thank goodness for the wedge!Â
Even your “fails” look prettier than most of my best attempts!!
jess xo
I look forward to these posts every year!! And this one definitely did not disappoint. You make me laugh :)
thanks katrina!Â
Thanks for sharing some of your human moments. Many meals in our house with 2 little ones are cooked too quickly or too long if we get distracted, so I get it. Love your successful recipes! Thanks for a behind the scenes look!
this has happened to me many times this year! i just burnt the heck out of garlic bread on sunday. ooomph.
Favorite post of the year. Love it. Dried figs and 90% dark chocolate wasn’t good? And bacon and lentils, with basil? Sounds great :-) my fails usually are of the mistake salt for sugar variety, or brownies I made with expensive, special chocolate but I forgot to add any sugar. Chocolate + Flour + Butter != Goodness.
i have mistaken salt for sugar before – ah, the worst!Â
Definitely one of my annual favorites of yours and thank you for continuing to post these every year! The 3 hour caramelized onions and pound of gruyere sounds especially painful!
I also cannot make macarons. I’d rather just save my sanity and buy them now :)
Biggest kitchen fail this year…hmmm maybe the time I was making a brown sugar and cream caramel-ish sauce and it went from creamy to smoking black tar on my sautee pan in 3 seconds flat. Pan was so destroyed that I opted to throw it out rather than clean it!
definitely have destroyed a few pots that way too!!Â
So glad to know I was not the only one. My biggest fail was probably a slow cooker cauliflower dish that had about 1/2 inch of water in the bottom when it was done!
oh my gosh, kalyn! i had that issue with cauliflower rice. so much water. what the heck!Â
Jessica, I admire your honesty and humility, and your ability to laugh at yourself! We all have recipe fails (more than we’d like to share). Even your worst disasters still look and sound appetizing to me though, just so you know. :) Cheers to a new year and many more amazing recipes!
thanks roxana! xoxo
I am SO not a pie person either, so I feel your pain! Haha! I love reading these posts every year, and it always amazes me that you’re able to make even the fails look amazing!
My biggest fail of the year was a slow-cooker vegetarian red wine and chocolate chili that I attempted to make. It was probably a failure from the get go anyways, but after wayyyy too much wine and about 12 hours in the slow-cooker to “fix” it, the taste was so appalling that it was basically poisonous.
And I agree with the other commenters- your fails still look beautiful!
this had me howling. chocolate wine veg. yes.Â
i was trying to brulee the top on some creme brulee bars, but my mini creme brulee torch took way too long, in addition to the fact that it eventually ran out of gas. on to the broiler! where the parchment caught on fire, leading the fire alarm to go off at 2am (waking up my family who at that point wanted sleep over dessert), and i got a charred parchment topping instead of the usual caramelized sugar.
oh no no no. i feel your pain.Â
Love this. My biggest fail was a cranberry-cherry pie. Sounds good, but I put WAY too much cornstarch in the filling and it was so …starchy. Why is pie so hard?
i’ve done the same with pie MANY times!Â
I tried to sweeten a sunflower seed butter with medjool dates that were all dried out, and then I thought maybe pumpkin puree would make into some nifty pumpkin spread bull***? Um, no. I tried to bring it back to life with water and ended up with this weird paste, which I then thought I could salvage by freezing and then covering in melted dark chocolate and re-freezing. Truffles! They were terrible. Total waste of a perfectly good chocolate bar.
hahaha omg. no.Â
oh god, that pie with the holes makes me itchy AHHHHHHH. I always enjoy this end of the year post, here’s to more fun!
right?! that pie crust was a mess.Â
Seriously, these are my favorite posts all year . I really appreciate knowing that I’m not the only one! My biggest fail was trying to make crockpot garlic mashed potatoes. Seems simple right? They totally ended up brown…what???
Kari
http://www.sweetteasweetie.com
i’ve failed a crockpot mashed potatoes too. crockpot mashed potatoes = lies.Â
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So these made me feel like, you’re atleast human! You make such beautiful and delicious food all the time that sometimes creativity is a killer and it happens to the best of us. I’ve been dying to try macaroons but, but I’m scared to death, especially since I’ve had Le Gourmandine’s raspberry macaroons…may just be heaven on earth!
thanks chrissy! i don’t know if i could do macarons often… they are stress inducing. ha.Â
This is hilarious and make me feel so much better about my own kitchen fails. Do you ever mess up something so badly you say “Screw it. Let’s get pizza”?
ALWAYS.
I love reading your kitchen fails every year. It’s inspired me to laugh at my own and post about my kitchen mishaps as well. (Coming soon). My biggest kitchen fail were some green tea buns filled with red bean and then cut so they would be in the shape of Yoda. I accidentally used the whole can of green tea powder which made the dough incredibly dense. Then, I filled them too much so Yoda’s brains leaked out. I tried this twice and tried to convince myself it tasted good but I gave in and threw it all out.
oh my, haha! sounds like it would be so cool though!
Thank you for keeping it real! I made some really awful fudge this year, along with some wonky pickles and salsa. Tried to do a little stepping out of my comfort zone but I’ll need a few more tries to get those right!
the pickles! i feel ya.Â
love this post! being creative in the kitchen is all about successes and fails. thanks for sharing the fails.
I just have to say that I think the bacon cheeseburger quesadillas look yummy! This little ole country girl would eat one for breakfast right now if I could! I may have to attempt to figure out what you did. Love your blog!
they are pretty tasty… just wonky in photography. ground beef, cheddar, chopped pickle… ketchup and mustard! yep, grossly disgusting.Â
Microwave French Toast in a mug. Just. So. Gross.
Though, that chicken with citrus. I would take that and run with it, it does actually look like it could work out at some point!
i need that french toast to work though.
Thank you for sharing this. It is always comical to hear how the best intentions don’t always work out perfectly!
Your failures at least “look” better than most of my sucesses. I occasionally make good tasting food, it’s just that it usually isn’t very photogenic. I have to convince people to try it, since it looks somewhat inedible. Thanks for pulling back the curtain a bit on the food blogging world. :) Happy Holidays.
the most delicious things are so rarely photogenic! i get it.Â
In the absence of heavy cream, I dug through my pantry and decided to use a cheapo can of evaporated milk to make apple cider caramels. The milk separated in the pan and some of it burned (but some did not?) and it ended up looking like vomit caramel. Yes, we still ate it all.
And I do want a bowl of your lentil soup and one of your cheeseburger quesadillas.
oh yikes. i’m making caramels tomorrow and will keep this at the top of my brain, ha.Â
I attempted to make one of my favorite foods- pad thai…… For some reason, I thought I was creative enough to make my own sauce. Then I completely over cooked the noodles, and then I decided to grate all of the veggies. OMG it was so so so so gross. Tasted like I was chomping on card board covered with soy sauce and sriracha. Gives me the heebie jeebies thinking of it.
i’ve never been able to successfully recreate pad thai either!
The first photo made me think of the term “trypophobia.” Google at your own risk.
PS I’d totally eat all of this stuff regardless, LOL. Your worst recipe experience is better than my best.
i’m not googling! i’m scared.Â
I just love your reference to maximizing your time……but with the little one it could actually be Max-imizing. Looking forward to 2016 with you. Thank you for making my dinners etc much more interesting
haha such a good pun!Â
Lol the soup rolls had me cracking up ? so glad to know that even really great cooks mess up. I think I have a recipe fail at least a few times a month, usually due to my bad habit of reading too fast and/or assuming I know what I’m doing (when I, uhh, don’t.)
i always assume. it’s terrible.Â
I look forward to this post every year! This year, there were some pretty big fails…starting with buttercream that wouldn’t spread.You’ve heard of cookies and cream…this looked like cake and cream. Not cute. Meringue that never got fluffy. But the worst…lumpy, soupy mashed potatoes on Christmas. They were so sad.
dying. hahahah.Â
Amazing disasters :)))) Chill. I would like to post some of my own, but I did not take any pictures. Still yours look like a princess comparing to them. Great idea.
Love, Denise
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I love these posts :) although some of these things really don’t look half bad! I would eat them!Â
This is one of the best posts I’ve read in a long time. Had a bad day that turned a complete 180 after reading this. Absolutely hysterical!
thanks debs!!Â
My mom used to make the best burgundy meatballs when I was growing up. I decided to make them for the blog, however somehow I forgot that because of the burgundy wine, the gravy turns purple. And we’re not talking a deep wine purple, no, we’re talking Barney the dinosaur purple or the weird Teletubby purple. There was nothing that could salvage those photos. I realized that no amount of talking those meatballs up would convince readers to look past the color of the gravy and make them.Â
Oh, and while not a recipe story, I did have a big fat fail this month while making a gingerbread house for a work competition. I don’t use royal icing to put my structures together, instead I melt sugar in a large cast iron skillet, it acts as a quick setting glue. However, this year I walked away from it and it boiled over, all over my stove. And I do mean all over! And it hardens so fast it’s not even funny. It was a real joy to clean up.Â
I KNOW EXACTLY what meatballs you are talking about!!!Â
My recipe was not a disaster so much as my photo. I had never taken the time to make a turkey for the blog; had a killer recipe we love every year and this year was it. I was tired when I finished with photos so maybe that’s my excuse but also lucky. I finished with the bird; cut it into pieces and styled it on a serving plate. I took those photos, didn’t even touch the food and wrapped everything up and went to bed.
In the light of day the next morning I opened the photos in Photoshop and I think I might have gasped. Let’s just say that the images
I thought so pretty the night before had a look I could not un-see. Not ugly photos per se but well, I’m going to give you this link and show you the photo and if you don’t see it right away, once I tell you…it is all you will see. http://www.creative-culinary.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/bad-turkey-FB.jpg
–
Doesn’t that remind you just enough of a woman having a physical exam with sage in her you know what? Right? I took a sampling of friends reactions and it was about 50/50 who saw it and who didn’t? But one was enough. SO lucky that I was too tired to eat so everything was still there and I just redid the styling and actually love the new photos better. If we had devoured that turkey you might have heard me scream all the way in PA!!
(For some reason I can not get a paragraph when I hit enter so apologize for the run on sentences!)
barb. oh my gosh. you kill me. that is hysterical.Â
How about the time I knocked a giant glass pitcher over that was drying beside the sink and it shattered into a million pieces all over my boyfriend and I, my marinating chicken, and all the fixings for a veggie stir fry we had just finished chopping up. It was awesome.
nooooooooo.Â
have you seen these?!? Â http://smittenkitchen.com/blog/2015/01/caramelized-onion-and-gruyere-biscuits/
pretty close to french onion soup rolls.
really enjoy your site. Â thank you so much!
omg no. i need to make!Â
Aww this post really made me giggle. Thank you for showing your human side in all of your posts – but especially this one :-)
OK – I’m just imaging you with a lobotomy banding your head on the kitchen table – I’ve SO been there! Thank you for the hilarity! Been following you for years!
I love that you do this. A reminder that all of us have terrible days in the kitchen. :)
Oh gawd thanks so much for doing this, I feel way better haha! Who doesn’t try, doesn’t fail I guess. Keep it up!
Glad to have company on the Fails!
My pie dough was a 5 hour struggle!
feel ya.Â
I love these posts so bad.Â
My biggest recipe fail of 2015 was actually like a series of fails because I refuse to learn from my mistakes. I repeatedly do this thing where I’m like, “Cake/muffins? Who needs to measure wet ingredients!” Then I add way too much wet ingredients and the things never bake right. Someday I’ll change my ways… but today is not that day.
DITTO. hahaha.Â
I seriously cannot get over how funny you are. I was close to tears by the end of this post. Also, those quesadillas actually look delicious. Just sayin’
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Hi Jessica!
I’m glad I’m not the only one who makes some pretty epic fails! I’ve tried making macarons, and still can’t figure out how to make them right! They either go flat or burn. So depressing. :( I’m thinking I need to start documenting my recipe fails, it would be so funny to go back and see what kind of fails I made during the year! haha