So I want to start off with a brief note that I am a pretty good cook. I usually don't do much beside bake, as by the time I come home from work, Mom has supper almost ready to eat. But on the nights when my parents go out together, or if I feel like cooking, or if Mom doesn't feel like cooking, I can whip up something edible and tasty.
But I have also had a number of cooking incidents, which I will now proceed to share.
The Constantly-Expanding No-Bake Cookies
My first baking incident was probably around 2014. I was staying at Sarah's house for a weekend, and while we did lots of fun stuff, we also made no-bake cookies. Well, Sarah made them; I mostly provided moral support.
But I loved those cookies and of course asked for the recipe.
Sometime later, Sister 1 and I decided to attempt making them ourselves.
To this day, I'm a little hazy about the details. Apparently Mom didn't help us? I'm not sure. All I know is that we started off with the small pot, it overflowed so we got the next big pot, which also overflowed...and we basically went through all the pots until the cookie stuff we were heating up was in the largest pot.
It being quite the ordeal, Sister 1 and I were traumatized and agreed that we weren't really bakers.
The Radioactive Banana Pudding
I'm surprised we were allowed to bake something after making such a mess with the cookies. But as I said at the beginning, we're not bad cooks. We have made lots of successful meals. But sometimes things go wrong.
I was going through a banana pudding phase. No idea why, tbh. But there it is. And so I found a recipe.
Oddly enough, the recipe told me to bake the thing. Like, it's bananas and cream and those vanilla wafer things, what could possibly need to bake??
But I followed the instructions. Heated up the oven. Put in the pudding. Set the timer.
Then I was washing the dishes (I like to wash dishes asap, so they're not just sitting around) when suddenly a bright light flashes in the kitchen, followed by a loud POP. Smoke comes out of the oven.
Once the panicking is completed, we realize the heating element in the oven blew up. Mom's been wanting a new oven anyway, so this is the perfect excuse.
But what to do with my half-baked banana pudding?
Well, there's only one thing for it, lads.
I microwaved the thing.
Which, we assume, caused the rubbery consistency of the pudding, wafers, and banana pieces.
My family shunned the desert, and it would likely have sat forgotten in the fridge except we had a guest over. As usual, my Dad gives the "make yourself at home" speech, to which Mom adds, "Help yourself to anything in the kitchen."
Well, the guest got up in the middle of the night and was hungry and ate like half the banana pudding. And still lives to this day.
So at least it didn't all go to waste. I emailed a friend and said something like "So I blew up the oven today making banana pudding." And she laughed and was like "ah, you're too funny."
Then while we were chatting a few weeks later, I made the comment "Well, we got the new oven installed today."
And she was like "wait, you actually did blow up the oven?!"
Haha, yes I did.
The Emergency Cookie Stash
A few years back, my dad got a great deal on an entire pallet load of emergency food. Basically canned and freeze dried foodstuffs that you use whenever you get snowed in, attacked by zombies, or don't have time to go to the grocery store.
One of the cans included a recipe for snickerdoodle cookies. To this day I can't remember what was in the can, or even if they were for snickerdoodles or just another kind of cookie. Snickerdoodle is what pops in my head, and that's what I'm running with.
What I do remember is that the cookies turned out rock-hard. They tasted fine once you ate them, but then had a bitter aftertaste that stuck in your mouth for hours after eating a cookie. And the recipe had made like, 200 of them.
So we basically had a week's worth of rock-hard, sadness cookies. And we ate every single one of them. It was hard. But we did it.
The Almond Flour Cookies
So a friend asked if I could bake him a cake for the surprise party he was throwing for his fiance. She has a sugar allergy, so he gave me a recipe for some sugar free peanut butter cake that called for almond flour. It was something I didn't have sitting around, so I bought some for the cake.
The surprise birthday party went well, and the cake was a success. :)
Time passed, and we had guests over, and I offered to make cookies on a cold, winter Saturday. I didn't check what ingredients we had. I just started on my usual sugar cookie recipe (this being the year I did nothing but bake sugar cookies and had memorized the recipe). I started on the dry ingredients, and realized I didn't have enough all-purpose flour. But I did have enough of that almond flour still hanging around. So I just threw a couple cups of that in instead.
Better bakers then I probably already know my mistake. (Better bakers then I probably actually measure things, too.)
All seemed fine and dandy until I checked on the first batch in the oven. They weren't rising and getting baked. They were melting. Running into a thick goop and filing up the baking pan like some kind of albino brownie.
I whisked the first batch out and discarded it in horrified silence. After checking to make sure the oven hadn't blown up again or something, I put in a second batch, which also did not turn into proper sugar cookies. Embarrassed, I explained to the guests that the almond flour was not baking right, and it was a disaster. Then I teased that I could offer them raw cookies.
They instantly jumped at the idea, claiming they loved raw cookie dough, and so I spooned the remaining batter into dough balls and served them to the guests. They were a big hit.
The Lemons, the Water, and the Sugar Glop
Years ticked by, and I got better at baking. I also got a phone, so I could quickly look up substitutes and find recipes (and text Sarah for advice, haha). I'd hoped my disaster days were behind me.
And then I started getting the Pixie Dust book crates, which include recipe cards. And, as you might have guessed, the recipe for The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe was for turkish delight.
The first step was "pour three packets of gelatin in 1/2 cup of water." And I messed that up - I was so busy looking for "something that has markings for a cup of water" and so I pulled out a large measuring glass, measured a cup of cold water and dumped the gelatin in.
I was doing the second step (boiling 1/2 cup of water with the sugar) and realized I'd made a mistake. So I rushed over to the solidifying gelatin and yeah...I quickly poured out half a cup of water/gelatin goop, and then added in the last packet, just to "be sure" of things.
Then I boiled the water and sugar, added the gelatin goop, and let it simmer for 20 minutes.
Well, I'm elbows-deep in the cabinet, looking for my 6'' pan, getting annoyed because it's gone, and finally I think, "huh, Brother was messing around in here earlier, maybe he pulled it out for me." So I stand up and...the liquid sugar has been boiling over onto the stove and there's basically more on the stove then in the pot. I quickly whisk the pot of the heat, and in mere seconds the liquid hardens into a sticky goop. It's sticking to the pot, the oven, the burner, everything. So I quickly pour the remaining sticky stuff into another pot, set it on the remaining burner that is mess-free, and set that to simmer again (on a lower heat, lol).
I spend the next 20 minutes cleaning the stove top: one swipe with a hot washcloth to get the sticky stuff less sticky and more liquidy, and then a swipe with a paper towel to get it off the stove while it's not in a goopy mass. (Sadly, this is not my first time doing such a thing, thanks to the infamous honey incident which happened in 2011 or so, and would require another blog post altogether.)
So I finally get the kitchen cleaned, the stuff has simmered nicely, and it's time to add in the lemon flavor. The recipe called for lemon juice and lemon extract. Well, I didn't buy lemon juice because mom always keeps lemons and lemon juice for her water, right? So I got the lemon extract, which is like 83% alcohol (I'm surprised they didn't card me when I bought it).
Turns out the recipe calls for 3 tablespoons of lemon juice and just a dash of the extract.
I have in my hands an almost empty bottle of lemon juice and a full bottle of lemon alcohol.
So I squeeze in as much lemon juice as I can get out of the bottle, and toss in as much lemon extract as I can handle without worrying I'm going to get everyone drunk or something.
Then I pour it all into the 6'' pan (which has been sitting in the counter watching all the excitement) and let it sit overnight.
This morning I've completely forgotten about it all until I'm about to walk out the door. "THE TURKISH DELIGHT" I yelp and about drop my purse and rush to the counter. The gelatin sugar lemon booze goop isn't interested in falling out of the pan and dropping onto the powdered sugar, so I scoop out two helpings, roll them in the "poof" sugar, and take a sample as Brother and I head out the door.
Not bad. I mean, tastes like lemon jello with sugar. Certainly edible, though maybe not sell-my-siblings-to-the-white-witch-in-return-for-more-edible.
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Again, let me repeat that I am (usually) a good cook. I have countless success stories. These are the few incidents that I've had in my years of cooking. I am merely sharing for your enjoyment. Hopefully you laughed!
