JFF: Hockey Puck Biscuits and Kitchen Fails

Years ago I made a batch of cookies to send to my then boyfriend (now husband) who was away at college.
Normally I bake a great cookie - I've had rave reviews from crowds of people.
But for some unknown reason this batch came out harder than quik-crete.
They looked great - they smelled great - there was just no way to actually eat them!
My boyfriend told me they ended up hammering paper clips into them and hanging them on their Christmas tree as ornaments.
To this day I have no idea what I did wrong with that batch.
He married me anyway!

My best cooking mistake turned out wonderful. My family loves scalloped potatoes and ham, but I didn't know how to make it. My Mom always made it. So I ask Mom how to make and it's easy peasy, cut potatoes and ham, add a basic white sauce toss in oven till done.

OKAY ------

Well I added too much milk to the pan and ended up with ham and potato soup. I had never baked soup before but it was sooooo good I get repeated requests for it.

My SD's Sweet Sixteen party was last Saturday night so had to make a cake for 50 people. No problem, I've done big, multi-tier special event cakes before. Normally I bake the cakes and freeze them and make all of my frosting and fillings a few days before the event so all I have to do the day before is torte, fill, frost and then make fondant if using and decorate. Well with Thanksgiving thrown into the mix, I didn't get to start until Friday for a Saturday event...

At a about 12:30 AM on Saturday, I was ready to torte and fill the layers. As I was slicing through them (two 10-inch pans of chocolate cake, 2 6-inch pans of vanilla) I realized that one of the chocolate and one of the vanilla cakes were both over-cooked on the outside and *totally raw* on the inside! I was out of the ingredients to re-bake from scratch so I went to an all-night pharmacy for boxes of cake mix, came home and baked more cake, going to bed after 3 AM.

The next day, nothing went smoothly - I was short on frosting so had to get more butter, my strawberries for the filling were moldy so I had to buy frozen ones, and my fondant was too dry and kept cracking. I went out to Michael's at 2 PM (party was at 6) and bought fondant and pre-made decorations to the tune of $68. At the end of the day, I finished the cake and got there on time. It looked great, the kids ate every bite and said it was delicious so it was a success but boy did I learn my lesson. I will never, ever start a special event cake the day before it's due. I could have gotten a lovely, tasty cake from the local bakery for about $60 and saved myself two days of stress and trouble!

I tried to make an Alfredo tuna helper once when my husband and I first started dating...

It somehow came out as soup.

IN MY DEFENSE... I had never really cooked much before, and it was my first time using an electric stove instead of gas...

I couldn't eat it, but hubby (then boyfriend...) managed to choke down a bowl... Even though I told him to throw it out and we would get pizza instead. I wasn't even upset at the time, I thought it was hilarious... But he insisted on eating it. Gotta love him! Lol.

Also,
My cousin and I spent 3 days trying to make chocolate chip cookies one year, but they kept coming out tasting like rancid bacon. We found out the culprit was that we were using 5 year old vanilla! The first batch we did with fresh vanilla tasted amazing. :)

When I finished college and moved out of my parent's house I had a small thanksgiving at my appt. with my sis and her kids.

Microwaves were newish, ok. Can you say, microwaved turkey?

Yeah, I went there. Awful! Lol, and never allowed to forget it!

When we first got married I had very little cooking experience (I've improved a lot, although I'm no Martha Stewart). I decided to make one of his mom's recipes, since she ever so thoughtfully gave me a book of them when we got married. Recipe called for minute rice, I didn't know that was different then regular, so I used plain old rice. We had a very crunchy skillet posole. Hubby was smart enough to not say a word and crunch his way through a serving.

Two valentines ago, I thought my oldest and I would make pizza for dinner. I make pizza all the time, no big deal.

Well. I went off to do something after preheating my oven, and when I came back, the kitchen was filled with smoke. Old bread was on my stone, and I literally filled the whole first floor with awful smoke.

We had no dinner. I had a crying toddler and fussy 3 year old. It was a nightmare.

I laughed hard, but I have yet to make pizza in the house again. As it turns out, we prefer pizza on the grill :-)

The first turkey I ever made I asked my husband to turn on the oven for me in our new house. I didn't realize he turned it to broil, not bake. The top half of the turkey was cooked, but the bottom was raw.

Well I have been baking pumpkin bread lately. It kept burning just a tad bit, and when I would pop it out of the pan, some would stick and I'd have a big hole in the bottom of my loaf. So I had bought some cheap store brand sugar, so I was so sure this was the culprit. Well, come to find out, it was the Pam spray that I was using in my pans. I read something where it can burn stuff when you bake with it. So I decided to go back to my tried and true shortening and flour in the pan thing. No more burned bread. Now I have to put shortening on my list, because I think mine is 2 years old!! Hope you have a happy Saturday!

Many years ago, in another house, we invited my husband's aunt & uncle over for Thanksgiving. The oven in the rental was pretty bad with inconsistent temps and uneven heating.

The turkey came out pretty and brown, looking just as it should. Any longer and it would start to burn. When we cut into it, we found it was nearly raw in the middle. At the time, I was inexperienced with turkey and threw the whole thing out. I now know that you can carve an undercooked turkey and return the parts to the oven. Back then, we just ate the sides.

In the same oven, I once managed to turn pork chops into jerky. My little brother was visiting and was about 9 at the time. He still taunts me. lol