It’s my annual recipe disaster round-up!
Some years feel like a string of kitchen misadventures, and 2021 was one of those. Each year I collect the recipes that didn’t go as planned — a lighthearted look at the flops, the near-misses, and the experiments that simply didn’t pan out. I’ve been sharing these annual round-ups for over a decade, which is wild! If you want to see past posts, they’re available as a running series on my site.
This post is just a fun way to celebrate the messy parts of cooking. I test and retest recipes constantly, and with so much time in the kitchen, plenty of things go sideways. Here are the highlights — or lowlights — from this year’s pile of failures. Share your own recipe disasters in the comments below!
The banana bread pictured at the top was clearly not a winner this time around. It’s one of many loaves that didn’t behave the way I expected.
I was excited about a focaccia topped with burrata, but the result looked more like a focaccia topped with egg whites. Nice idea, disappointing execution.
Attempted cinnamon swirl bread — ended up flat and uninspired. Bread experiments make up a large portion of this year’s disasters.
Some recipes just deflate or collapse, and this is one of those moments. It happens more often than you might think when working with yeast and delicate structures.
Not every imperfect bake is inedible — sometimes the appearance fails but the flavor still hits. This one was questionable, but salvageable.
I tested a citrusy fish with a breadcrumb topping that was promising on paper but looked uninspiring on the plate. Back to the drawing board for that one.
I was determined to make homemade crispy potato chips in the air fryer and even went so far as to try multiple air fryer models. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get the texture I wanted — turns out many “air fryer chip” recipes overpromise.
A peanut butter and jelly cake that came out completely meh. The flavor didn’t sing the way I’d hoped. I’ll be reworking and sharing a better version soon.
I made three attempts at a stuffed flank steak and each one looked worse than the last. Presentation and structure were the biggest issues.
Here’s a sad Dijon chicken experiment that I’d rather forget. The flavors didn’t balance and the texture missed the mark.
More bread problems! On the bright side, I have an excellent banana bread coming next week that redeems my loaf reputation.
I tried to make curry ramen noodles and the finished dish was bland and uninspired. It lacked depth and needed more bold seasoning.
This pot pie experiment was, frankly, a disaster. Spring vegetables like green beans and asparagus just didn’t work in the filling — the texture and flavor combo was a hard pass.
I created an overly dry turkey stir-fry, likely sabotaged further by an ill-advised attempt to add peanut butter. Lesson learned: some flavor combos are better left untried.
This lemon tart looked promising but was overwhelmingly sour, and a macadamia-based crust was the wrong direction — salt couldn’t rescue it. That one went straight into the “do not repeat” file.
Despite the mishaps, testing and failing is part of the process. You learn more from what goes wrong than from what goes right. Here’s to fewer disasters and better bakes in 2022!