The Top Five Best Cooking Flops of All Time

Every year, autumn seems to be the ideal time for cooking and baking, what with the abundance of seasonal crops and Thanksgiving right around the corner. As a certified kitchen klutz, I can tell you that breaking two bowls with one small package of caramels is not something just anyone can do, and people need to take the time and effort to honor those around them who have the remarkable ability to botch even the easiest of batches. Thereupon, we’ll start out with a couple of my most successful blunders, and then dive even deeper into the world of cooking calamity celebrities. 

Making a vegan cheesecake is harder than it sounds, and I think most people will agree that it sounds pretty hard. To transform a dessert which is made primarily out of dairy products into something completely cheese, butter, and egg-free takes some time and ingredients. First, the crust. Once it was spread throughout the springform pan, the filling—made of dairy-free milk and blended soaked cashews—was poured in. I lifted the pan to carry it to the oven. Then, with an earth-shattering crash that shocked everyone into silence, my hopes for a delicious dessert plummeted to the hard floor below. 

We ate pudding for dessert that night.

One year for Christmas, I decided to make homemade presents for everyone in my family. These mostly consisted of food items, since Hobby Lobby does not really exist here. I made chocolate citrus bark, triple chocolate Oreo cookies, and chocolate coffee spoons. In other words, the chocolate concoctions turned out successful on the whole. However, caramel is a much trickier ingredient to work with. Having almost zero candy making knowledge and nothing but a package of Werther’s, I set out to make a creamy caramel filling for my chocolate shells. I would just melt the candies in the microwave and pour them into the molds; it seemed like a piece of cake at the time. Imagine my surprise when I opened the door to find the plastic bowl blackened along one side, and the caramel diminished to a thin layer of bubbles. One bowl was dumped into the trash.

Take two. This time, aware of my past mistake, I used a glass bowl. Nevertheless, after only a few seconds, it too was broken beyond repair. When it returned from the battlefield, it had cracked completely in half, with caramel flowing everywhere. Yet another bowl was discarded, but this time, I gave up. I never experimented with caramel anymore that Christmas.

In high school, Rachel decided to make churros for some of her friends, despite having little experience in deep frying. The recipe was fairly successful, but for the fact that she couldn’t come up with any way to retrieve the fresh pastries from the simmering oil. Finally, she resolved to use her mother’s spaghetti fork—but it melted upon contact with the oil. Dismayed, Rachel snatched it out and tried desperately to return its tines to their original state. All was lost, however, for the prongs of the fork now had a permanent sorrowful sag to them. At last, Rachel had to admit the felony to her mother, Denise. Disappointed, Denise warned her to ask for help next time, but she, too, remembered her own culinary fiascos as a child…

Growing up on an Ohio farm, Denise could walk a barrel across the yard and drive a tractor at only thirteen. Therefore, it’s no surprise that she was baking her first pie in fourth grade.  However, it didn’t exactly turn out quite as she’d hoped. As all piemakers out there will know, shortening is an essential ingredient in the crust. When Denise neglected to add it, instead of being baked in a buttery, flaky crust, the pie turned out doughy and droopy. The little girl was aggravated at her failure and so upset that she threw the pie across the room, and it shattered into a million pieces. Now, picture her mother’s face when she entered the kitchen. 

Last but not least, Marti enters the scene with a hilarious faux pas. A throbbing migraine had tormented her all day, and she was in a bad mood when she prepared to cook up a grilled cheese sandwich for her husband. She procured the bread and cheese from the refrigerator and slapped it into the pan, then reached up for the oil. But in her temperament, she failed to notice that she had grabbed the wrong item. Instead of cooking oil, it was a bottle of corn syrup. By the time Marti registered that something was wrong with her sandwich—which was burnt, oozing, and stuck to the pan—she couldn’t have cared less. In the yard, her husband was patiently waiting for his meal, and she decided to give him the sandwich, despite its appearance. She went to the back door and yelled, “Come eat your sandwich!” then went to bed. The next morning, Marti felt well rested and happier, but she and her husband will both continue to remember with laughter her infamous burnt sandwich.

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