Well, I titled this “2014 recipe disasters,” which should tell you how disastrous 2013 felt in the kitchen. I had so many recipe failures last year that it felt like I added a year to my life. It’s almost impossible I had that many flops, but here we are.
I say this every year, but 2013 was the worst year for kitchen mishaps so far. Early on I was finishing recipes for my cookbook, which brought a lot of self-doubt and many failed attempts. On top of that I experimented with new ideas and revisited old ones that simply tanked.
As I move into my fifth year of food blogging, it’s become a strange tradition to look back on the year’s biggest kitchen blunders. You can also find past recipe disaster roundups for other years.
And this list doesn’t even include the daily accidents: eggs smashed on the floor, milk spilled — the small tragedies that happen even without kids running around.
So, here we go.
I lost count of how many batches of coconut oil brownies I attempted. I started last December and gave up by late summer. Probably ten tries. Maybe using only coconut oil and still expecting the texture of traditional, rich fudgy brownies was my downfall. These ended up gritty in the mouth — not exactly the dream brownie experience.
I made a clementine chicken skillet in the spring that sounded promising in theory, but I kept adding ingredients — beer, peanuts, parsley, spinach — and the mix went nowhere good.
After discovering how fantastic cast-iron skillet pizza can be, I tried to make a dessert skillet pizza. It was atrocious — texturally and flavor-wise a total miss.
I also attempted mini pepperoni pizzas using a muffin tin. Spoiler: a muffin tin is not the right vessel for those.
One success amid the chaos: dark chocolate mini loaves that were genuinely delicious. Unfortunately, I misplaced the recipe and haven’t been able to recreate their moistness since.
Missing recipes are a recurring issue — more common than unexpectedly perfect loaves, sadly.
I must have had bad luck with loaf pans: a yeasted coffee cake failed four times and exploded in the oven on every attempt. Not exactly what you hope for when baking.
I tried a goat cheese alfredo that curdled and separated instead of becoming the creamy sauce I wanted. The bright side: I eventually figured out the fix, and I’ll share that one day. Also — plain tomatoes in that shot? Not my best moment.
At one point I almost shared a rice krispie recipe flavored with culinary lavender. I love lavender, but these tasted like flowers — and not in a good way. Floral rice krispies are a no from me.
I also went through a brief phase of photographing food on torn cardboard — a questionable styling choice in hindsight.
That cheesy-looking slab pictured was my attempt to recreate a Nantucket breakfast item. The result looked terrible, though at least I captured a good pouring shot.
I tried roasted cherry chocolate chip cookies that sounded incredible on paper but simply did not work in practice.
Then there were roasted strawberry marshmallows and homemade chocolate graham crackers — an awful, sticky mess that I couldn’t salvage.
I thought pesto pork chops would be a winner, but the green appearance made the dish unappealing — sometimes presentation matters as much as flavor.
My first attempt at a beloved blondie recipe was a dud — flat-out blech.
I even experimented with melting cheese on meatloaf — an idea I never shared because it turned out so poorly. Some failures are best left unseen.
One of the saddest flops was whole wheat pumpkin sticky buns. They looked promising — I even added pistachios — but they tasted like cardboard. I’d been excited to adapt a fall recipe but switching to whole wheat ruined the texture and flavor. My mom tried one and was disgusted. Big fail.
On the bright side, not every experiment bombed. A recent attempt at jalapeño jack turkey burgers turned out fantastic.
And just last Sunday, I dropped an entire sheet of cookies into my hot oven — a classic kitchen oops. I won’t show that photo; you would judge my oven’s state and my general clumsiness.
So that’s a snapshot of my year in culinary disasters. Calling it a learning experience feels like an understatement. After each fail I wonder what I actually learned, and sometimes the jury’s still out. Thank you for sticking with me through all the gluttony, the triumphs, and the train-wrecks. Now seriously — tell me about some of your kitchen fails so I don’t feel like I’m the only one. Hearts!