Disasters You Have Cooked

kylith

hdowney wrote: »

one other thing to note is i think your conversions are off. you have 1 cup converted into 5 oz and then 1/2 cup converted into 4 oz!!! that sounds wrong. i always convert 1 cup to 8 oz so your half cup is right at 4 oz

I assume her conversions are to weight. One cup = 8 fl oz volume. A cup of sugar will not be the same weight as a cup of butter.

hdowney

kylith wrote: »

I assume her conversions are to weight. One cup = 8 fl oz volume. A cup of sugar will not be the same weight as a cup of butter.

and yet in a lot of recipes when they give you the weights for things like butter and sugar they do treat them the same. if you see what i mean. like i have always straight converted and never had a problem

Faith

I checked the conversions through a number of sites and they're correct. Cup measurements are volume, so a cup of flour is a different volume to a cup of sugar. It seems counter-intuitive, but converting volume to weight can produce large differences in the weight measurements depending on what the ingredients are.

hdowney

Faith wrote: »

I checked the conversions through a number of sites and they're correct. Cup measurements are volume, so a cup of flour is a different volume to a cup of sugar. It seems counter-intuitive, but converting volume to weight can produce large differences in the weight measurements depending on what the ingredients are.

ya lost me!!! i don't understand why the volume of flour is different than the volume of sugar. it has been a LONG time since i studied volume!

Faith

hdowney wrote: »

ya lost me!!! i don't understand why the volume of flour is different than the volume of sugar. it has been a LONG time since i studied volume!

The particles are different sizes. It all depends on the density of the ingredient. Think about it, one cup of coal is heavier than one cup of feathers. So you could just say "Well, they're both one cup, so I'll use 4oz of coal and 4oz of feathers".

hdowney

Faith wrote: »

The particles are different sizes. It all depends on the density of the ingredient. Think about it, one cup of coal is heavier than one cup of feathers. So you could just say "Well, they're both one cup, so I'll use 4oz of coal and 4oz of feathers".

ah i think i get you know. gah brain melt!!

fitzcoff

I had the same thoughts myself when looking at the conversion but I used
http://www.deliaonline.com/conversion-tables.html

so assumed that it being Delia that the conversions would be correct. I was a bit confused looking at the different quantities until I thought like Faith said.

I have some sour cream in the fridge, using it for dinner tonight so I am planning to try these again tomorrow.

I am thinking the cause was too much raising agent, so plain flour this time round.

I will report back on how I get on, wish me luck

Swampy

I recently cooked the coffee cake recipe off the Irel bottle. The end result was a sandwich cake about an inch high.

pickarooney

I made a Baileys cheesecake one time and hadn't enough Maltesers for the base so I added in some Twix bars I had. I put a plate upside down on top of the base when putting it in the fridge to set. The plate welded itself to the base and no amount of coaxing and cursing would remove it. I was damned if I was going to throw it all away though so just continued on as though the plate weren't there, covering the whole thing with the creamy top. I have a photo of the thing somewhere. It was pretty good once you got over the whole 'plate in the middle of the cake' surprise element.

I once tried to make some Thai soup or other which called for prawn shells. I vomited after one spoonful; by far the worst thing I've ever tasted from my own kitchen.

Loopy

Not a total disaster, but I did make this from the Cooking Club, and added a tad too much butter. Silly mistake although it still got eaten.
I've made it since and it's a great dish.

ncmc

I tried to make a delicious sounding baked French toast, it was basically brioche, baked in the oven covered in a mixture of milk, sugar, cinnamon and egg. Things started off badly when I couldn’t find brioche in Tesco, so used ordinary bread. Things got steadily worse when I didn’t realise that a cup in an American recipe, wasn’t actually a tea cup! The result was a soggy mess with a crispy top that would break your teeth! The worst part was that the bread had to be marinated from the night before, so I was getting the whiff of sugar and cinnamon every time I opened the fridge. I was so disappointed with the result.

I’m not much of a cook to be honest, I’ve prob had more disasters than success. I follow recipes exactly, but something always seems to go wrong!

Rosy Posy

Tree wrote: »

Potato gratin ALWAYS turns out like rocks. Short of boiling the crap out of the spuds before hand, even if i leave it in for three hours, still rocks. And usually end up eating what was planned with it on its own and some waffles. That said, the rocks spud reheats soft, go figure.

Try slicing the potatoes really thinly, drying them out in a cloth, season then poaching them in a mixture of milk and cream with some crushed garlic and ground nutmeg until they are tender but not mushy, then take them out of the liquid with a slotted spoon and arrange them in the dish, pour the liquid over, top with cheese and bake until browned on top...that's l'original gratin Dauphinaise method and its never failed me

Rosy Posy

barbiegirl wrote: »

I cannot bake a vistoria sponge. I have tried every recipe, from all the books I have (a lot) plus off the net, and despite trying at least once a year for the past 24 years I can't do them.
They come out flat and hard. Every other cake is fine, I do a mean coffee and walnut, it's just the Victoria Sponge. I should mention that this is using various ovens over the years so it's not temperature. I obviously put too much air in somehow as there are lots of little holes on the top of the layers. :mad: I think I'm just resigned now.

Nigella has a great recipe that uses just a little bit of cornflour that's worked out well for me

Rosy Posy

had my fair share of disasters.

The first time I tried to make Rose Geranium Jelly boiled it for way too long- it was a hot day and I didn't put my setting saucer in the freezer so I just couldn't get a set...the liquid was evaporating like mad and a swarm of bees came into the house to investigate the sweet smell...I ended up with a jar and a half of rock hard candy-like stuff, uncommonly like those dreadful soother lollipops that you used to get in bray, which my friend christened 'the tar in the jar'...

made an apple chutney from laurel's kitchen that was so disgustingly vinegary that I had to bin the whole pot...

Nigella's 'store cupboard' chocolate orange cake which was just horribly marmalady and inedible, even by students...

I guess you've got to kiss a lot of frogs...

fitzcoff

Loopy wrote: »

Not a total disaster, but I did make this from the Cooking Club, and added a tad too much butter. Silly mistake although it still got eaten.
I've made it since and it's a great dish.

This reminded me of the time I made brocolli soup and instead of 1oz of butter, I used 10oz :eek:

I double checked the recipe a few times and still saw 10ozs each time I looked at it.

pickarooney

I found the picture of the cheesecake

Outside


Inside

number10a

I tried making French Onion Soup once, and you know the way you'd improvise sometimes for small things when you can't be bothered going to the shop (I call them the "Ah sure it'll be grand" moments). Well I had too many of those moments and ended up giving myself a good, shall we say, "detox" after the soup. It was rank, but I was determined to eat it after spending ages at it. Lesson of the day: never be determined to do anything.

Zuiderzee

Theres been a few, once tried a Morrocan recipe for cous cous, added a bit extra Harissa paste, two teaspoons instead of one - dear christ, inedible excrement of satan.

I grow a great deal of my own food, but have found Cardoon impossible to make palatable, it gets one more attempt in a gratan

reallyrose

I was making chilli once, decided to put serious effort into it, slow cooked beef pieces, half a bottle of ale, lovingly simmered for several hours. After a bit I decided that it needed a bit of a kick so I went to throw a shake of dried chilli in. I didn't notice that the bottle of dried chilli had an open top, not a shakey top so I put a deluge of chilli into my .. well.. chilli. I tried scooping some of it out but too much escaped into the sauce.

I couldn't eat the result, pure fire on a plate. My housemate and boyfriend loved it though!

herisson

i was trying to make this chocolate tarte from lindt

http://www.lindt.com/au/swf/eng/lindt-lovers/recipes/chocolate-connaisseurs/chocolate-tart/

absolute disaster it ended up tasting like custard with a weird taste of egg and chocolate
the pastry wouldnt cook right either....
when taking it out of the oven i ended up spilling half the stupid mixture on to my legs!
it wouldnt settle at all for me and just ended up being a massive pile of goo!

i want to try it again and get it right!

Pigwidgeon

Even though I've made bearnaise countless times, making it yesterday in work ended up a complete disaster. The thing completely split and resembled a scrambled egg buttery greasey mess. There was no chance in hell of saving it!

Tom Dunne

My egg nog at Christmas turned into a very nice smelling sludge, with the consistency of frog spawn.

thethingis

Made a soup once from a lot of Brocolli liquidised and god knows what else, I was doing my best to impress my lovely Swedish date at the time.

We did try and eat it and she asked could she take a photo of the abomination at the time we were laughing so much at the effort. I will see if I can dig the photo up. You could stand a spoon in it. It was Shrek puke basically. We then watched Shrek1 the movie for the first time on DVD.

It was preceded and followed with a bottle of absolut vodka blueberry flavour. Mmmmm. I didnt listen to a friend on the art of seducing Swedish women which was .. Absolut vodka... and dont drink as much as her. I didnt make it to desert as the room began to spin around very fast.

The second date went better! We are now both married!


(not to each other mind :-)

hdowney

Pigwidgeon wrote: »

Even though I've made bearnaise countless times, making it yesterday in work ended up a complete disaster. The thing completely split and resembled a scrambled egg buttery greasey mess. There was no chance in hell of saving it!

Yea I managed to completely cock up white sauce!!! Was not impressed as it is pish simple when you have done it right hundreds of times and them pfff

Alun

Pixie-Fairy wrote: »

i was trying to make this chocolate tarte from lindt

http://www.lindt.com/au/swf/eng/lindt-lovers/recipes/chocolate-connaisseurs/chocolate-tart/

absolute disaster it ended up tasting like custard with a weird taste of egg and chocolate
the pastry wouldnt cook right either....
when taking it out of the oven i ended up spilling half the stupid mixture on to my legs!
it wouldnt settle at all for me and just ended up being a massive pile of goo!

i want to try it again and get it right!

There's something odd about the oven temperature in that recipe. 130 deg (fan oven 110 deg) doesn't sound enough to cook the filling to me, and certainly not enough to cook the pastry properly. I'd say 160 deg would be more like it to be honest, or even more, say 180, for the pastry.