And now for one of my favorite traditions: the annual roundup of kitchen disasters. This year felt especially chaotic — I don’t even know how my kitchen survived.
I always complain about it, but this year was somehow the worst. Why? Because of a baby.
Adding a child into the mix completely threw off my timing and focus. In the early months I would plan to test a great recipe, only to be interrupted by a long Max moment that required my full attention and stretched three hours longer than expected. I rushed through things in a fraction of the time I used to have, and that led to some spectacular kitchen fails.
At the time many of these moments felt dreadful — there were tears and a lot of frustration — but now they’re funny to look back on. These photos capture only a fraction of the disasters I had this year, the ones I managed to remember to photograph.
For a look at previous years’ mishaps, I’ve chronicled similar disasters in past posts.
And now, let’s talk about my frenemy: pie.
To make a good pie you need three things: time, patience, and desire. This year I had none of them. I wanted an Instagram-worthy pie, but the result looked like a Halloween mask — think Jason or Leatherface with holes. The crust was a disaster and the filling didn’t set properly; I even tasted raw flour in it. It was a complete fail.
Earlier in the season I tried a triple citrus relish inspired by a magazine recipe. It sounded fabulous, but my execution was awful. I even served it with fried chicken — coconut oil fried chicken, no less. The relish still had rind, the herbs were wrong, I added too many onions, and the chicken ended up soggy. I tried to rescue it by roasting the pieces after frying and roasting lemon wedges, but the final plate looked unappetizing: a bowl of oranges and onions on soggy fried chicken. Not appealing.
Another mess was a bacon and lentil soup topped with parmesan crisps and fresh basil. In theory this should have been good, but the flavors clashed and the texture was off — an overcomplicated hot mess born from sleep deprivation and poor judgment.
I keep making bacon cheeseburger quesadillas despite their frequent appearance on my fail lists. Oddly enough they taste very close to a cheeseburger and are delicious, but they photograph terribly. The plating and presentation are a disaster every time.
One of my saddest failures was pickled Brussels sprouts. I shortcut the canning process, improvised the pickling mix, used oversized sprouts, and then let them sit in the fridge for over a week. Instead of the tangy, crunchy bites I imagined for cocktails and cheese boards, I ended up with rock-hard vinegar bombs. Very disappointing.
I attempted a chocolate coffee cake that fell flat. The flavor was bland and uninspired — a definite miss.
For Thanksgiving I tried to create French onion soup rolls: homemade rolls filled with caramelized onions and a generous mound of grated gruyere. The idea was perfect in theory, but I couldn’t figure out how to coat the rolls in cheesy, soupy goodness while keeping them intact. The result was a gooey, unappealing mess instead of neat individual rolls. That one stung.
And then there were the macarons. How many batches did I make? Somewhere between twenty and forty over a couple of months. Chocolate macarons were particularly unforgiving, but other flavors failed too. I cycled through every variable — resting times, mixing levels, humidity, pan-smacking — and still couldn’t get consistent results. I ended up more frustrated than triumphant.
Lastly, I tried making truffles from dried figs and extremely dark chocolate (about 90%) instead of using dates. They were a sad attempt: oddly flavored and not enjoyable.
There were many more mishaps this year, but those are the ones that stood out the most. Just last week I dropped a whole gallon of homemade amaretto on the kitchen floor less than 24 hours after making it, so failures are still happening — often multiple times a day while I try to juggle everything.
What about you? What was your biggest kitchen disaster of the year?