I’m full of all sorts of bright ideas when I step in the kitchen.
There seem to be endless ways to combine butter and sugar and flour, and my brain just looooves the possibilities.
And sometimes? I fail. Hardcore. We’re talking sugar burned pans, melted goopy ice cream, disgusting brownies and chocolate chip cookies as hard as hockey pucks. These things happen. Often. You should know.
Above is a picture of the Cinnamon Ice Cream that became one big disaster. It turns out you can’t melt cinnamon candy, and swirl the scalding hot melted candy sugar into the softened vanilla ice cream. The candy seizes up and melts the ice cream. You’re left with sweet milk and giant cinnamon candy blobs.
Instead, I’ll just stick to my Cookie No-Dough Ice Cream. That stuff was rad.
I though I might be able to turn these jarred cherries into some pretty stellar cupcakes. I thought wrong. The cherries sunk to the bottom of the cupcakes and the cake was just downright icky.
Raspberry Almond Cupcakes. A classic I can believe in.
I had every intention of making these Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies and sneaking a dozen of them into the movie theater with a jug of cold milk. I was going to do that… and then I baked up cookies the consistency and texture of hockey pucks. That sucked. Movie popcorn is expensive.
Stick to Alton Brown’s recipe. The man knows science and facts.
Ooooh brownies. I thought I could save myself a trip to the grocery store and make brownies from the not-so-great cocoa powder I found in the back of my pantry. When it comes to brownies, I should know better than to cheat on the chocolate.
These Dark Chocolate Brownies? My redemption.
Low Fat Vanilla Pudding? Oooh fat and flavor… where have you gone?
Milk Chocolate Pudding. Always and please.
Tay
Makes me want to go make some ice cream, except I’m out of whipping cream.
Sara
I am so sad your brown butter choc chip cookies were a fail. Your brown butter rice crispy treats are a staple here! I did make the Alton Brown cookies today based on your suggestion. VERY YUMMY! No more nestle recipe for me. Although my cooking time was shorter but my cookies may have been smaller so I could eat more of them. Yum! Thanks and keep up the good baking.
Marie
I told you about when I tried to make an Old Fashioned Apple Spice Cake topped with Meringue! The cake was awesome but the meringue turned out spongy…not crisp and crackly.
Judy
Actually, brownies made from cocoa powder are pretty good if you use extra shortening & sugar.
Love your blog.
Jason Sandeman
Ahh, if I could only have time to write how many things I have screwed up while learning. LOL
In regards to ice cream, there was a time when I tried to make my wife Smarties ice cream. Thing is, I put the Smarties in at the beginning of the freezing cycle. LOL
I got a greyish ice cream that was sickly sweet. Disgusting, actually. To this day, my wife shies away from all ice cream that I make, even if it is good.
Randi
Thankyouthankyouthankyou for posting about your experiments that went wrong. You’re one of my favorite food bloggers, and I adore your recipes and the lovely photos that accompany them. It’s a comfort to hear that not everything turns out well for you, either. Makes me feel a little less hopeless when considering my disasters.
Nastassia Johnson
i have so many baking failures glad to see i’m not the only one :) but i am still stuck on mango pudding and can’t find a winning solution maybe you could help me with that!
Judy
Maybe getting a finer-than-coarse chop of the Red Hot candies using a blender and then mixing it into the ice cream? The candy that is turned to dust should blend pretty well, and the little chunks will give bursts of cinnamon flavor.
Twinkle
This makes me feel a little bit better about my countless kitchen flops =)
Sweets By Vicky
I completely know what you mean! I tried being smart by replacing my baking soda with baking powder since I used dutch processed cocoa instead of natural. and ooophf, I got this weird as chocolate cake with tunnels of strange honeycomb looking bits. GROSS.
Michelle and Gabby
mistakes happen all the time in the kitchen! well, in my kitchen anyways…
man, that cookie ice cream looks deeeeelicious! :)
CookiePie
I love it! Even your flops sound really good :)
Jessica Lin
Hmm would it be possible to coat the cherries in a little bit of flour and then inserting them into the batter while in the cups? I know cherries are WAY more dense but this happened when I put jam inside my cupcakes they sunk and just had sticky open chasms in the bottom so I did the sprinkle flour trick and they didn’t sink but made a beautiful swirl on top mmmmm
Rocky Mountain Woman
Ummm, yeah…I never have something turn out differently than I expected..always perfect…yeah…always….
Nice to know other people swear in the kitchen too!
Natalie
Oh wow that cookie dough ice cream loooks gooood, sorry about your disastor with the cinnamon ice cream hehe.
When Pigs Fly
My problem whenever I come here is that I get really hungry. And, I want to start eating chocolate. I can’t stop by everyday. Otherwise, I will weigh 200 pounds.
Sara
You are human! The sounds of many sighs are filling the air,you just can’t hear them :)
Paula
the last photo is great!
Fee
Joy, that first picture makes my heart swell with…joy :)
Rocio
Dude! The RiteAid by me has Red Hots Ice Cream as the feature flavor right now! I’m just in Long Beach so I’m pretty sure there’s one near you with delicious Red Hot’s Thrifty Ice Cream for youuuu….
Melanie
Not sure if you saw this darling letter to you on another blog. Hope you enjoy!
http://www.cheekykitchen.com/2010/05/banana-cabana-birthday-cake-letter-to.html
MIssyPants
I must admit….I am glad the cinnamon ice cream didn’t work out. :] Those candies you pictured are red hots, yes? They taste so artificial and bad – they ruin things.
Anna
Don’t give up on the brown butter cookies! Seriously, one of the best baking things that have happened to me so far.
http://www.recipezaar.com/recipe/perfect-chocolate-chip-cookies-americas-test-kitchen-387119
America’s Test Kitchen pulls through again with a really great recipe to start with. The mixing process is a little crazy but worth it!
loren
Yes, yes, I so agree! This is my “perfect chocolate chip cookie” recipe, too! I have cheated on the mixing time and truly, as long as you brown that butter and dissolve the sugar as best as possible once the egg is added, it’s great. My husband is stuck on them and that’s tough for someone like me who liked to bake something different every time I turn on the oven!
Danielle
Yes mistakes happen all the time! I was making mocha cupcakes once and let’s just say i put a little bit more coffee than asked for… they came out tasting bitter and disgusting. Oh well!
Anna
i bet you CAN make cinnamon candy ice cream….cuz I make a salted caramel ice cream, and it involves a LOT of melted sugar, that you then combine with lots of cream, and the whole thing seizes and is lumpy and awful and if you’re me you somehow get burned sugar on the ceiling nad your toes and then you stir FOREVERRRRRRRRRRRRR and suddenly you have this amazing caramel-y cream (and still a few lumps of burnt sugar, that i just scoop out…i’m impatient). And you set that aside and make a custard and mix the custard with the cream and let it all hang out in the fridge for a while, and then run it through your ice cream maker and its amazing.
http://www.davidlebovitz.com/archives/2007/04/salted_butter_c.html
there’s the link to the salted caramel ice cream, which you should also make because its pretty amazing. but I have confidence you can adapt it to make cinnamon candy ice cream! DO IT!!!
Anna
whoooops, wrong link :)
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/salted-caramel-ice-cream-354517
BrandiLee
Hey joy! It’s good to know I’m not the only one with kitchen disasters!!
I will say this, my own go-to brownie recipe involves cocoa powder. BEST brownies I’ve ever had!
Love your creative ideas, keep them coming!
redmenace
Oh, I fail a lot. A LOT. I think the idea of that ice cream was a stroke of brilliance. You will find a way to make it work. The cookie ice cream? FANTASTIC!
elizabeth @ sophisticated pie
Joy- seriously, thanks for sharing all that! It’s so easy to get upset at myself when some baked goods ive been dreaming about for days, that i whole heartedly through myself into making, turn out anywhere from “eh” to downright bad. it’s somehow nice to know that other people (whose recipes i enjoy and look up to)have failures too and i dont have to quit baking or turn to drinking alone (unless I want to, of course). anyhoo- thanks again!
Barbie S
Red hots and ice cream?!?!? Dude, you so have to try that again because I would love to see that recipe. :-)
dani
i am a firm believer that without failure, we learn nothing, so keep it up :) its obviously working!!!
Hannah
OH Joy.
It was last week when I was thinking that I really suck when it comes to baking. I wanted to make something delicious with strawberries and failed – failed bad. And not for the first time. It was disgusting. And whenever it comes to fondant – big fail too. Hihi.
Its comforting that even a great baker like you fails sometimes. And tomorrow I’ll try the strawberry thing again. Only fondant will never touch my kitchen table again :D
Esther
Thank you for sharing those moments, along with your successes. I still love all your pictures – beautiful as always :)
Karen Pollard
It is good to know that the pros fail too. As to the cherries sinking, would dusting them with flour first make them stay afloat??? I’ve had recipes suggest that before.
I’m still in love with the slice of tree as a charger! Great idea.
Christyna
Joy, thanks for sharing your cutting floor moments. For those of us who aspire to your level of baking greatness, it’s good to know that even master bakers will have not so great end products every once in a while.
Season
Love that plate. And the photo.
Georgia @ The Comfort of Cooking
Joy, I so admire the fact that you’re able to share your best baking moments as well as your pitfalls. It’s good to know that not EVERYTHING that comes out of your kitchen is perfect, though I imagine a large majority of it is! Anyway, the cinnamon ice cream seemed like a good idea, but sorry it didn’t work out! In the meantime, I’ll just have to drool over the rest of your awesome ice creams and baked goods! ;)
Stephanie
Thanks for sharing that you’re not always perfect in the kitchen – it’s good to know. :)
But ooooh, cinnamon ice cream?? Please try again! I would do a lot for cinnamon ice cream! :D But then, if you gave us a recipe for cinnamon ice cream, I just HAD to go and buy an ice cream maker – so.. don’t. ;) Or do you know a possibility to make good ice cream without an ice cream maker?
Granola Girl
As a college student I worked in a handmade ice cream shop. Yeah, it rocked pretty awesome. Anyway, if you still want to make your cinnamon swirl ice cream you might try adding a bit of oil or butter to the cinnamon goo. We used to melt down candy like that all the time and then SLOWLY add tiny bits of oil. It was just enough to offset the sugar carmelizing rock hard candy thing. You can then let the goo cool and it doesn’t harden down, but it still sticks together kind of like really thick peanut butter. If you swirl it into the ice cream then, it holds that really great swirlness factor.
Just a thought
Miss Candiquik
Love that you blog about not only the sucesses…but the failures! We are all human, make mistakes, etc. and that is why your blog is so successful – because you show it…express it..tell it how it is…and live life in it’s true color.
Sam (My Sugar Obsession)
this makes me feel better about myself. if a brilliant baker messes up every once and a while, then it’s okay for me to mess up on a weekly basis. lol. i always mess up recipes and get so down/frustrated with myself. example: your avocado pound cake recipe hates me! i’ve tried it twice and can never get it right. oh well. third times a charm? hopefully.
10x desserts
Thanks for sharing your kitchen disasters. I feel so much better knowing it happens to everyone, occasionally. Just last week I had a terrible orange cookie mishap. Arrrrgh.
Miriyummy
We all have our kitchen disasters. I once mistook super hot ground cayenne for my favorite Hungarian mild paprika that gets used with a heavy hand. I sprinkled it liberally over the chicken I was serving to guests. The tears streaming down their cheeks was not a “quick, get the camera!” moment.
I actually have made Red Hot ice cream. I take the cinnamon candies and grind them to dust in the food processor. Do this together with some white sugar so the whole thing doesn’t turn into red goop. I then added the dust to my go-to vanilla ice cream and it came out great!
joythebaker
that is such a super great suggestion for red hot ice cream! thank you so much!
Shari
Hey, i’m sure you learned at least one thing from each failure, which is the whole point of experimenting isn’t it?
Patty Tomaskovic
Your flopped cookies may be hockey pucks (GO BLACKHAWKS:))but I once attempted Emeril Lagassi’s infamous homemade banana cream pie with homemade caramel sauce and the pie crust was so hard….well….let’s just say you needed a jackhammer to cut through it. And, although it tasted delicious, it really was too hard to bite into.
Any ideas on how to perfect a much-too-hard brown sugar pie crust? I was even considering substituting margarine for the butter, since butter crystallizes and hardens when combined with sugar. Any thoughts, anyone?????? I would really like to perfect this recipe since, otherwise, it was quite remarkable.
joythebaker
i would stay away from brown sugar in the pie crust. thats what made the crust so unmanagable. just use regular granulated sugar, and if you’d like the brown sugar flavor, add it to the pie filling itself. brown sugar in pie crust is a no go.
Heather @ chiknpastry
good stories! i find that the recipes i fail on are the ones i get angry at and forget to take pictures of. but then storytelling is much less fun that way. i need to get better at remembering to photograph them all!
Katie @ Cozydelicious
Thank you, thank you, thank you. Joy, it is wonderful to know that even you have flops. It makes me feel much better about my very, very crowded cutting room floor. Of course, despite your own disasters, I would bet that you have not managed to set your kitchen on fire multiple times in the space of a month as I did: http://cozydelicious.com/2010/03/09/kitchen-disasters-bad-juju-and-peanut-butter-cookies/
Robin
Ok, so I know you’re amazing, and you probably don’t even NEED this, but I’ll throw it your way anyway. Alton Brown’s chewy chocolate chip cookie recipe used to be my favorite, but I still didn’t think it was chewy enough. And oh, oh, oh, I think I may have found a recipe to beat it. I found it in The Best of America’s Test Kitchen book (see here: http://www.amazon.com/Best-Americas-Test-Kitchen-Cookbook/dp/1933615540/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1275488407&sr=8-1) but if you just want this amazing cookie recipe, here’s a blog it’s posted on: http://createwithme.typepad.com/create_with_me/2010/02/perfectchocolatechipcookie.html
It’s a unique recipe because it involves melted butter (like Alton’s recipe) but you stir sugar into it in 3min. increments. By the end of this process you have the thickest, goopiest (yeah, making that a word now) mixture. Chewiest chocolate chip cookies EVER, and they were even better the next day. Like I said, you’re amazing (flops or not!) and maybe your version of Alton’s cookies taste 372 times better than mine and you don’t need this. But now it’s there for ya! :)
DessertForTwo
I’ve had some kitchen flops too. I’ve had chocolate chip cookies spread on the baking sheet so much that they looked like they were trying to become tuiles. And then I tried banana chocolate brownies. Ick. Let’s not go there.
Liisa
Thank you for this.
I am a very novice baker and I would say one in two attempts at innovation or adaptation of recipes ends in the garbage (or crumbled over ice cream).
Knowing that your beautiful creations are not always perfect makes me feel a little less useless. Not that I really care if I’m useless, as my kids and I always have fun eating the batter while we’re trying.
Shannon
I feel for ya! Happens to me all the time.. Hey…You may not be a superhero but you UP there with the best bakers. Besides, brownies are the–> best. Made your espresso recipe, just the other day. My boyfriend ate them in ONE day.
Kirstin
Recent fails of mine: strawberry muffins with goat cheese (mixed up baking powder and soda), bourbon ice cream with too much bourbon (I know, right? There is such a thing as too much bourbon) and making those chocolate cupcakes you posted Monday with what turned out to be spicy hot chocolate mix…not cocoa powder (not a true fail, because they were still delicous, just had a weird tingly aftertaste).
So, I was really happy to read that you have your baking/cooking fails as well :)
steph (whisk/spoon)
and somehow those great photos still make the flops look so appealing!
Jen-
My favorite mistakes/disasters are the ones that still taste great. At least you can eat it, and ALL of it since you wouldn’t give it away for all that UG-LY! :)
Mandie
Aww, I would have liked to see pictures of the actual outcome of your mistakes! You should take silly ones of them!
Kristan Roland
Sorry to hear about the cinnamon ice cream, it sounded delicious in theory though!! Props for the good idea!!
Samantha Angela @ Bikini Birthday
I love reading about disasters in the kitchen. It makes me feel like less of a failure to know that even the stellar bakers have screw-ups.
Rachel @ MWF Seeking BFF
Sometimes it’s more interesting to read about the failures than the great successes. Thanks for sharing both! And, of course, even the pics of the “disasters” are still gorgeous.
The MuffinTin Post
I want to serve ice cream in egg cups. Unfortunately, I only have one, and it’s stored away (way, away, over the ocean away) in a box in the back of a closet at my parents’ home. Unfortunately, I only have Ikea soup bowls.
take a megabite
Even thought that cinnamon ice cream didn’t work out, that picture is just so cute! I love that plate. So at least it’s pretty! Even if it didn’t have a good personality.
Katrina
HAHA I love this post. We all have the best of intentions, and sometimes our creative minds make unusual things. I want ice cream now…I really need an ice cream maker!
Jessie @ simplysifted
Thank you for sharing your failures. When I first started baking I would always be so upset when something didn’t taste good. I would agonize over the wasted ingredients and time. Now I realize that failure is inevitable if you are willing to try new things with your baking, but it’s still disappointing. Knowing that even a rock star baker like you makes mistakes is comforting.
Jessica @ How Sweet It Is
I did the same with some caramels last week – thought I could put them in cupcakes and they sunk to the bottom and created a huge mess.
Andrea
Isn’t it just the worst when you spend hours making something that you’ve been looking forward to all day and the smell wafts through the house and you think you have a masterpiece… and then it’s awful? Makes you want to hit that hockey puck cookie through the window. But that’s how we learn, isn’t it?
Nisrine@Dinners and Dreams
We all fail sometimes and it’s OK especially if the house would still smell like vanilla or chocolate afterwards:)
Silvia
It’s kind of a relief to know that even a great baker can have little problems, we’re not alone! But still you’re my inspiration and now my family loves you and your bright ideas.
Any idea about microwave baking? It’s starting to be hot here and I don’t feel like using the oven that much now.
XXX
lichen
I always cannot resist the temptation of desserts.They are so delicious.I love them very much.But i cannot make them by myself.I do know how to make them.
cara
wow! so good to read this. i just exploded a free form peach and raspberry tart. my most devastating disaster to date. it’s always when you expect so much that it all goes so wrong. i thought i should get back up on the horse and try some brown butter cookies…ive never used brown butter in a cookie before. so maybe to avoid another tragedy can you tell me where yours went wrong?
martina
Ah ah! same experience with melted dark chocolate over ice cream and coffee… the chocolate instantly get cold from the ice cream…and become a hard block! How stupid I was! cheers Martina
snooky doodle
it s really of great comfort knowing that even masters like you have disasters :)
peachkins
I love seeing yummy things…
Rebecca
It’s good to know that you’re human! Thanks for sharing the disasters (which I’m sure aren’t anything as bad as some of mine)…now off to make those cookies..
Wei-Wei
Ah, well. Whatever you make will be delicious, for sure. :)
Laura M
I’m pretty sure I would still think your hockey puck brown butter cookies were delicious! But Milk Chocolate Pudding!? Whoally moaly that is what I’m serving at my next dinner get together!!
Angelique
Ah it is such a relief to see excellent cooks fail (well.. you know).. as in it’s good to see that they’re human, and just because you fail once, doesn’t mean its allwwaays going to happen, it gives me a smile because it could happen to ANYONE
you see I am an aspiring cook(ima 16 years old).. baker actually! hahaaha but every time I cook at home, it turns to shit.. I either accidentally used plain instead of self raising and only realised once it was too late, or used a completely wrong sized pan and cooked it for the same amount of time.. one time I even used the same sized pan but doubled the brownie mixture.. I created chocolate butter… not good.
But in all of it, it was heeeaaps of fun (some what :P)