Crazy kitchen mistakes - what are yours?

I've been baking for decades. I don't do "fancy", but do plenty of what I call, "deserts with redeeming characteristics." To me, pumpkin pie fits that description. It has whole milk, pumpkin mush, and eggs. The honey I add, doesn't undo the healthy stuff too much!

However, I'm also not one for carefully following recipes. Usually, I get away with it. This week... well... not so much!

The recipe called for "3/4 teaspoon ground cloves".

I already had the 1/2 teaspoon in my hand. However, for some reason, I could not find my ground cloves. I know I finished a small container, but I'm sure we got some. I'm also sure that at some point when I'm looking for something else, I will find it.

But I did find whole cloves. I was in a rush - I had to get the job done. I have a small spice grinder. I put what my eyes said was a scant amount of whole cloves in the 1/2 tsp. I dropped them in the spice grinder. They whizzed wonderfully. Clearly they had aromatic oils, despite being probably a decade old. I added it to the dish.

I cooked it up, and all I could smell was overwhelming clove flavor. I *know* that freshly ground spices are more powerful, but I really thought I'd allowed for that. Alas, not enough.

So a big reminder to all my permies friends - yes, freshly ground really is more powerful than powdered spices. Use with caution!

The good news is that I left the dish sitting in the fridge for 4 days and it had mellowed a lot. This morning I baked it into squares.  The oatmeal crust is enough to balance the spice. I will eat it. I'm betting #2 Son will also. My DiL is a much bigger question mark. Hubby's away for another week, so unless I freeze some, I won't get to experiment on him, but I suspect he'd reject it on principle, but he might surprise me. I would make this recipe again... I'd just make sure I only used a scant 1/4 tsp of freshly ground cloves!

So what crazy, unexpected kitchen events have you all had?

My first time blanching tomatoes for the freezer did not go well.

I was a bit of a punk as a teenager and when I was given instructions I did not listen very carefully.

What I should of done was add salt to my blanching water to then process my bushels of tomatoes.

What I did was add salt between EVERY batch of tomatoes that went into the pot.

When we went to utilize the blanched tomatoes, it was saltier than the ocean.

Lesson learned, never going to make that mistake again!

I made one this spring. I made a pot of greens (far too much!) and then the next day added a little more greens and water and boiled it again. The same the next day—it turned out awful. I think that the stock became overconcentrated with all the greens I was adding to the point where everything tasted too much like milkweed, not to mention the texture was awful.

Jay Angler wrote: "3/4 teaspoon ground cloves".

unless your cloves are maybe of dubious providence and cut with... i dunno, flour? 3/4 t of cloves is WAY too much cloves for any pie I've ever made!!! In fact I think the only time I've ever seen 1/4 or 1/2 t (or anything greater than a pinch) in a recipe is for something like a spiced gingerbread or something with clove in the name!!! So in your defense, I'd call that a typo.

I have messed up cheese, and several times I've screwed up dill pickles (they just turned to icky mush. there's a reason people don't often do sour pickles in the tropics....)

I regularly screw up making tofu fa (a homemade tofu that you congeal with gypsum). If it doesn't set up, I make pudding wtih the soymilk. Nobody needs to know.... I do a lot of repurposing when things turn out "wrong".

I also tried making rejuvelac (a ferment thing) several times. Every time it came out smelling like something that belonged in the toilet. All my gear was super clean, so it wasn't external contamination, I just assume it is supposed to smell nasty, and I moved on to other recipes...

but the mistake that makes me maddest is marmelade, a few years ago. I used rangpurs and read about how people love bitter marmelade, and figured I'd be okay. But the bitter level of rangpur marmelade is off the stinking charts. A year and a half of rest and they're only barely edible, by people who eat bitter herbs for dessert (me), but the rest of the family puts it in poison category. I have a good number of jars still in the pantry. In 6 months i'll try again.

Not as exciting as the previous posts, just a tired brain fart many years ago. I boiled up a pan of pasta, got the colander out of the cabinet, picked up the pan of boiling water and poured it into the colander, which, unfortunately, was on the counter, not in the sink. The floor didn't need that boiling water bath (nor did my bare feet!)

After making the decision in 2013 not to have a dishwasher, this dish washer wants one though there is not room in the kitchen. So big mistake.

As for cooking disasters, I remember my first cake and my first from scratch mac and cheese.

I was probably about 12 yrs old and Mom was gone somewhere.  I found a recipe and put it together.  The cake was lumpy.  I probably did not beat it properly.

I was on maternity leave from work and I wanted to make real homemade mac and cheese.  That was my last try at that.  All I remember was macaroni and cheese with no sauce.

Tereza Okava wrote:

Jay Angler wrote: "3/4 teaspoon ground cloves".

unless your cloves are maybe of dubious providence and cut with... i dunno, flour? 3/4 t of cloves is WAY too much cloves for any pie I've ever made!!! In fact I think the only time I've ever seen 1/4 or 1/2 t (or anything greater than a pinch) in a recipe is for something like a spiced gingerbread or something with clove in the name!!! So in your defense, I'd call that a typo.

It was an online recipe for green tomato mincemeat. It called for 4 cups each of finely chopped green tomatoes and apple.

That said, I'm betting you're correct - 1/4 tsp ground cloves would make more sense. No one had rated or added comments to the recipe. I have so many green tomatoes, and years ago a friend gave me green tomato mincemeat, and they are supposed to be spicy, but... big but... I will use much less cloves next time, and check a few more recipes to see what spice they call for! The quantity would make at least 2 - maybe 3 - pies.

It wasn't my fault, honest!  
Turned to the recipe for Black Bread - rye based, coloured with cocoa and coffee.  All went well, followed the recipe to the letter, since I hadn't made it before.  Added the 300g of melted butter. . .  well, that turned out to be a misprint.  The mix went totally soggy.  I see my recipe book now has a note - 30g in pencil and underlined.  I baked it anyway, and it was awful.
Then there's my first fatless sponge cake.  There I didn't understand the instructions about beating the egg yolks. . . flatter than pancakes resulted and even the chickens wouldn't touch it.

I have also burnt an embarrassing amount of food.

The other day I was gathering herbs and vegetables, and putting them in my pocket. In one pocket I put burning bush leaf, kale, and some other greens. Unfortunately when I fried these greens it turned out that burning bush was mixed in! I did eat the greens, because I wanted burning bush for medicine anyway, but had to pick through to remove the leaves because they are potent. I don’t think it much transferred to the other greens, because I did not have any feelings or signs of burning bush working. Normally I would make a tea and take tiny sips.

Now imagine motherwort in that situation…

My biggest kitchen mistake was to underestimate the power of a Mme Jeannette pepper.
We had friends coming over for dinner. I can't remember what the dish was, but I cut and used one whole pepper.
Immediately the kitchen was filled with fiery fumes, but in my naivite I was hopeful and thinking the hotness would somehow mellow down during the cooking.
It didn't. We ended up ordering takeaway

Nina Surya wrote:My biggest kitchen mistake was to underestimate the power of a Mme Jeannette pepper.
We had friends coming over for dinner. I can't remember what the dish was, but I cut and used one whole pepper.
Immediately the kitchen was filled with fiery fumes, but in my naivite I was hopeful and thinking the hotness would somehow mellow down during the cooking.
It didn't. We ended up ordering takeaway :)

I made a chili not too long ago. I had some serrano peppers and tasted the end and thought, not too spicy. So I thought of using three, but my instinct told me only one. I cooked one and a half along with chicken of the woods and onions, and ended up picking through and setting aside about two thirds of the pepper that I had added. So in the end it was perfectly spiced!

Never have I ever ... used chocolate almond bark.

I just finished a batch of chocolate walnut bark with pumpkin seeds.

Found a recipe for melting the bark that said to add 3 Tablespoon butter.

After I got started the package said to used 1 tablespoon shortening if it needed thinning and never use butter ...

I have had the almond bark , walnuts and pumpkins seeds for several years and wanted to turn them into something edible so we will see...

My best (worst?) one was my wedding cake. I don't like traditional wedding cakes, fruitcake with marzipan icing, I wanted three layers of different sized chocolate cake with white chocolate frosting, to be served as desert at the reception. The quote I got to make one was way outside our limited budget, so I decided to DIY. The cakes were fine, so time to make the white chocolate ganache. The photo in the cookbook showed it being used for just what I wanted, a stiff textured frosting on a cake. I followed the recipe exactly, and ended up with a white chocolate pouring sauce. It would not thicken!

Back to the store to buy more white chocolate. Melted and added it. Still wouldn't thicken.

Back to the store for more white chocolate. Still wouldn't thicken.

In the end I used icing sugar to thicken it, and had a huge bowl of the most sickly sweet concoction imaginable. Even after finishing decorating the multi-layered cake with a thick layer of frosting (at midnight on my wedding eve!) I had pounds of the stuff left over.

My guess is that the recipe was really for a pouring sauce, even though that's not what they pictured. I never made a recipe from that cookbook again!