Today’s Kitchen Disaster Story is brought to you because I’ve been invited to be a part of Pampered Chef’s Spill It! Contest.
By sharing MY story with y’all, I’m entered to win a $3500.00 shopping spree to Pampered Chef to stock my kitchen and a $125 Spa Gift Certificate. {swoon}
UPDATED: 4/11/11 2:10 PM CST
I’m really excited to announce that I was just given permission to do this and I’m SOOO excited!
If I win, I’m going to share this awesomeness of this with y’all!!!!
IF I win, everyone who commented on this post and helped me win — gets entered to win MY $125 Spa Gift Certificate!!!!! Thank you TPC for being SO Generous!!!
How do I win?
With YOUR help! The blogger with the most comments on their post by NOON Friday, April 15th — wins.
Have I mentioned how much I love y’all? How beautiful you look today?
I’m about to share my biggest/most memorable kitchen disaster with y’all — I’d love for you to share yours with me here and Pampered Chef wants you to share it on their facebook page, too!
** Check below the post for a way to ENTER to WIN THE EXACT SAME PRIZE that I’m in the running for!!!!!!
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Do you remember when you were learning to cook?
The thrill of mastering a recipe?
The nervous butterflies in your tummy when you pulled something out of the oven for the first time, hoping, praying that it turns out correctly?
The double and triple checking of ingredients and measurements?
OH! You didn’t double and triple check the recipe ingredients when you first started cooking?
I did — except this ONE time — this time that 20 years later I STILL hear about.
Okay y’all — truthfully, I measured everything I just um……
Well, I was making my Dad’s Raisin Bran muffins which were my favorite favorite thing ever for breakfast and snacks. I was SO confident that I could do it just like he did. I just knew that my muffins would be light and moist and filled with plump raisins and delicious — just as good, if not better than my Dad’s.
{sigh} to be young and cocky confident 
Everything was going perfectly until young teenage me added 3 Tbsp of baking powder instead of 3 tsp of baking soda.
Let that sink in for a moment
This was literally, a recipe for disaster.
The resulting (I hesitate to call them muffins) muffin shaped imposters were horribly bitter and completely inedible and I was devastated.
I’ve had multiple other kitchen disasters in my day but this one — this one stands out to me as my BIGGEST kitchen disaster of all time. Maybe because it was my first, or because it taught me the lesson that I should always read a recipe completely and measure out my ingredients carefully beforehand but mostly because those were hands down the nastiest muffins EVER.
Now, even when I’m distracted — you can bet I triple check my ingredients AND my measurements!!!
What’s YOUR biggest/funniest/most memorable kitchen disaster?
I’d love it if you’d share that here in your comments and help me to win this amazing contest!
Want to know how YOU could win big??
Go to the Pampered Chef Facebook Page and share your own disaster story on www.facebook.com/ThePamperedChef (under the “contests” tab) before Friday at noon!. If you do this.. then YOU can be entered to win your own $3500 Pampered Chef Shopping Spree and the $125 Spa Gift Card.
Pampered Chef is sponsoring TWO giveaways! One for bloggers (I’m participating with MY post here) and one for Facebook Fans on their Facebook page.
Here’s today’s linky! Please leave a comment (to help me win!) after you link up your recipe! Thanks y’all! Happy Monday!
Wellllllll, I have a few but the MOST EXPENSIVE ONE I’ll share with a link:
http://www.pensieve.me/2008/11/uh-oh-our-thanksgiving-day-disaster.html
Yes ma’am, the URL tells you the truth……..and it translated to needing a new kitchen appliance!
(p.s. J’adore Pampered Chef but it’s been a while since I’ve checked it out. Thanks for the reminder!!)
Robin´s most recent brilliance ..Give pause for thought
Oh wow – I just had a huge one last week! My pan exploded and brownies went everywhere! I blogged about it, because it was crazy and I’d never heard of that happening before!
http://legallymarried.wordpress.com/2011/04/10/public-service-announcement-exploding-brownies/
I was helping make Gingerbread Cookies with my mom one year when I was young…I decided I didn’t really need to mix the dry ingredients together first so I just added them one by one in with the dough…ending up with some really spicy areas!
Krissa´s most recent brilliance ..A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Donald Miller Giveaway
Good luck! I remember being very young and “helping” my Grandma make a cake. I begged and begged for her to let me mix the ingredients with the hand mixer. Well, finally she did….but I didn’t know I was supposed to hold the bowl (my mom must have always done this when I “helped”) so I was holding the mixer and the bowl flew out from under it….cake batter went EVERYWHERE. Floor to ceiling. But my Grandma didn’t fuss at me, gotta love grannies
Mo’Betta´s most recent brilliance ..Overnight Oats
I remember making a big pot of hot chocolate without parental supervision. I forgot to add sugar and my brother in law never let me live it down. I was about 14-15 years old.
Then there was the time I made potato salad for a date — never made it before. Well, my potatoes weren’t cooked enough and it was just too hard to eat. Years later I had my mom come and help me prepare for a party…she came to make potato salad, I watched intently and now I know how to do it!!
Rachel, love your blog…Hope you win the grand prize!!
I think it was the time I tried to teach my then 7 y.o. how to make BOX mac and cheese and I didn’t hoover ENOUGH. Let’s just say, it took 3 boxes. *sigh*
My greatest kitchen disaster happened when I was a newlywed. I put a pizza in the oven (my first mistake!) and promptly fell asleep. When my husband got home from work our apartment was filled with smoke and my pizza was a crumpled black mess.
Shelly W.´s most recent brilliance ..Meet Richella
Good Luck, I hope you win.
Most recently, last night in fact, I heated some oil in a pan. From a bowl I poured in sliced zucchini, onions and garlic. The last of the veggies plopped into the oil, splattering it on my arm. I now have a decorative splatter of burns on my arm. Yay me. :’(
Good news is, everything tasted great.
Mine isn’t a disaster with measuring/cooking persay, but a disaster nonetheless. It was Valentine’s day, and I thought it would be really romantic to make my boyfriend the dessert that he told me loved on our first date. I specifically remember him saying that his neighbor made great tres leches cake, so whenever he went out and the restaurant made it, he had to try it. I looked up tres leches cake recipes and decided on one. I made it, whipping egg whites and everything…I had never done that before! My cake turned out great, and I was soooo proud and excited to enjoy it with my boyfriend. Then, suddenly, it hit me: it WASN’T tres leches cake he had talked about…it was tiramisu. So much for the romantic gesture! It was yummy anyway.
I love Pampered Chef! GOOD LUCK!
Amy @ Living Locurto´s most recent brilliance ..How to Make Fabric Flowers – No Sew Tutorials
My first time here! Linking up the Cookies and Cream Cupcakes I made last weekend for my daughter’s 9th birthday party!
Good luck on the contest!
Tina (PinayInTexas)´s most recent brilliance ..Cookies and Cream Cupcakes- Hersheys Chocolate Cake and THE BEST BIRTHDAY EVER!
And then there’s the most EMBARRASSING time where I had been talkin’ about how much I loved to bake; a small group I was a part of was having a covered dish dinner & I asked to bring dessert.
I was trying a Kentucky Derby pie CAN YOU SAY YUM????
Except I forgot to add the eggs DON’TASKMEHOWYOUCANFORGETTOADDESSENTIALINGREDIENTS!
Do you know what happens when you forget the eggs in a Derby Pie? You make concrete that sticks to the pie plate & is impossible to clean EVEN WHEN YOU SOAK IT OVERNIGHT AND TRY TO HACK IT OUT WITH A MACHETE so you have to throw out the entire blasted thing.
And face the humiliation of your friends who TRIED to moisten it with coffee to pry it out of the dish.
It’s a kitchen disaster, alright
.
Robin´s most recent brilliance ..Unaware
Good Luck! Pampered Chef has some great things! I hope you win
Irina´s most recent brilliance ..Brilliant money making ideas
Too many baking disaster to share. I can never live up to my super-baking mother. I’m sure I’ll blog about it one day. Good luck!
I don’t have one in particular, but I am notoriously good at forgetting ONE ingredient – and it tends to be the most important one. I’m really good at substituting, but still. I’ve been halfway through a sugar cookie recipe before realizing I don’t have enough sugar. Oops.
I have so many cooking disasters, it’s hard to narrow down to just one! I’d say the worst (and totally not my fault) was when my oven died Thanksgiving morning as I was cooking dinner for 14 people. We ended up with rotisserie chicken and sides from Boston Market. Not the dinner of my dreams.
I’ve had so many kitchen disasters, it’s hard to know where to start. My BIGGEST one wasn’t a cooking mess. I was a teenager and decided to start the dishwasher for my mom. But I used liquid soap rather than the dishwashing powder.
Oh. My. Word. Suds everywhere. Totally ruined the floor. Thankfully, my mom had wanted a new floor for a long time.
Kimba´s most recent brilliance ..What a Paint
I’ve had so many kitchen disasters that I started doing s segment on my blog called “My Homemade Crapiness.”
I LOVE Pampered Chef! Good luck!
Tasha – My Homemade Happiness´s most recent brilliance ..Recipe- Roasted Veggie Lasagna
I did something similar to you. Added TABLESPOONS instead of TEASPOONS of chilli powder to chili when I was 8 or so. Explosive chili to say the least.
We learn from our mistakes. Look at the magic you create in the kitchen these days. You create and INSPIRE.
I don’t do recipes unless that includes ordering pizza from the Internet.
Avitable´s most recent brilliance ..Still here
Linking up a bit late but so happy to have found you!!
Debbie´s most recent brilliance ..A recipe for you
God I could use a day at the spa as A college student, I need a massage so bad.
HA! Once I was making chipotle mayo and instead of one chipotle pepper I added one CAN of chipotle peppers. Talk about inedible!
I don’t know that it was my first kitchen/cooking disaster and I know it wasn’t the last, but it IS the one my brothers still talk about to this day nearly 25 years later! Our parents were gone and I was in charge of dinner – enter Hamburger Helper, every teenagers friend. It was a taco one and seemed simple enough to make. I was lacking one ingredient – tomato sauce. We did have tomato PASTE, so, I figured not much different, add some water, you have tomato sauce, right? NOT. That stuff was SOOOO nasty, the dog wouldn’t even eat it! Dessert for that meal wasn’t any better. Chocolate chips in cherry Jell-O do NOT taste like chocolate covered cherries. Trust me.
My brothers and I still get a kick talking about that meal. I think we finally ended up eating PB&J sandwichs. My husband is just grateful I’ve learned a thing or two since then.
Good luck with the PC contest. Love their stuff.
Ah, the baking soda/baking powder disaster — I have a feeling we’ve all been smacked by that one at least once!
I don’t have a link to share, but my biggest disaster was trying to replicate my mom’s chili recipe from memory. It wasn’t close to chili…but it made a nice pasta sauce!
I’d have to say mine was when I was learning to cook, I think I was nine, I made spaghetti. Let me juat say I never knew spaghetti could crunch. *ahem*.
TheEvilStepMom´s most recent brilliance ..Year Three
This sounds like something that would happen to me. I also learned the hard way that you should always measure everything out very carefully before you begin. I ended up with a completely inedible coke for my Dad on Father’s Day one year because I did not add enough sugar.
Oh, that’s pretty easy. I definitely think it’s the time we had company, (I can’t even remember who now), and I made my world famous deviled chicken. I still love that dish.
Aaaaanyway, I was whipping through that recipe and got to the salt and mistook a “t” for a “T”. I put two TABLESPOONS of salt in instead of teaspoons.
BIIIIIIIG difference! And, boy was it gross!
You’re right! Read carefully!
Krissa´s most recent brilliance ..Oh- for the love of God!
OH! And then there was the time I cooked a pound of sausage instead of hamburger meat to make a beef stroganoff. I had a stuffy nose at the time and didn’t smell what would have been obvious to anyone else… until I tasted it! Eeeew! At least we didn’t have company that night!
Krissa´s most recent brilliance ..Oh- for the love of God!
I was uusing the new doughnut maker my mum had bought. The recipe said to use baking soda, but i used bi-carb soda, not realising they were different (hey i was only young!) lol, needless to say, they were awful
I never attempted to use the doughnut maker again…..
aren’t you loving this contest? love all the great stories that are coming in! finally got a minute to read through your post…love that the experience stands out so clearly in your mind. btw…wish so much I could have taken you up on the dinner offer last night on FB.
and tonight. and probably tomorrow night too.
YIkes! I bet those “muffins” were awful! I have to admit I did hte same type thing but with salt in cookies!
wow wow wow wow wow
Looks so tasty. I don’t know to do a cake, neither a cupcake, or pie, anything.
I did a cake three times, one worst that other. Last time the cake was burned and sunk by the center
You can see and laught
http://www.flickr.com/photos/giozi/4857120737/
My cooking diaster is a little different, when my husband and I got married I couldnt really cook anything. The first year of our marriage was nothing but the different varieties of hamburger helper that were out at the time. My husband was very gracious and would eat the meals every night that I would cook them. Finally one day he asked me if we could eat something else besides hamburger helper…thats when I started to learn how to cook….needless to say my hamburger helper days are over and now I actually cook regular meals…LOL
That would have to be the time I forgot I was hard boiling eggs (yes, I can even mess that up.) I went upstairs and started watching a movie. A few hours later I heard gun shots coming from downstairs. It was the five eggs exploding one by one. The pan was black and ruined. The eggs exploded in a 20 foot radius. AND I had nothing to eat for lunch.
My disasters tend to be expensive. Like when I forgot that I was boiling water until the pot began to smoke, I picked it up to remove it from the burner, and the bottom separated sending little beads of hot metal all over the floor. Somehow I managed to not get burnt (and thankfully my kids who were little at the time were not in the kitchen). But I did ruin a pair of shoes and the one-piece beautiful linoleum floor was beyond ruined– huge burnt pockmarks were everywhere. Which I promptly “forgot” to tell my landlord about. Until moving day. Lost that deposit. So that’s my disaster: BOILING WATER. I know.
Good Luck!
Beware!!! I checked with Pampered Chef. People must submit their stories through the official Pampered CHef Facebook page in order to qualify for a chance to win any prize at all. Commenting on this blog will not allow to win any prizes. The person who posted it is not authorized to enter people into any drawing.
Hi Stephanie!
Actually — I am a blogger participating in one half of The Pampered Chef Spill It! Contest giveaway
. By commenting here on my post people are helping me 
. Because, the blogger with the most comments will win the $3500 Shopping Spree AND a $125 Spa Gift Card.
IF I win — I’m going to give my $125 Gift Card to one of the people who commented on my blog and helped me to win.
There is ALSO a second part to this contest — that is what is specified at the bottom of my post
People can go to The Pampered Chef’s Facebook page and enter to win the Fan giveaway there.
I tried to make it as clear as possible — sorry for any confusion you may have seen.
Hope this cleared it all up!
In 10th grade, I had some sort of Assignment for English, that involved bring a food dish from a certain time period or region or something.
I made some sort of lemon bread thing, but instead of the 1 tsp of salt it called for, I added a CUP. (Yes, a cup)
It was AWFUL, I can’t remember much beyond warning people that it was a huge failure and not to eat it. I also remember the teacher’s assistant (a Senior!) who had thing for me ate TWO slices! LOL…
I still shudder when I think about the taste of that stuff.
I’ve shared the flaming S’mores brownies here before. (marshmallows + oven on broil + not watching them closely = FIRE!) That is the first thing I think of when I hear “kitchen disaster”.
I’m quite notorious for stepping away from the kitchen when something is in the oven. I try to always remember to set a timer because I’ve overcooked and ruined so many things.
Malia´s most recent brilliance ..Theres no place like home
My mistake that still gets brought up is not reading the ingredient list correctly. My sister and I thought we would be awesome and cook for my husband (who usually cooked for us). We were going to use the new waffle maker and make from scratch waffles. Sounded so yummy for an Easter morning suprise. Well we got all the ingredients and began adding and stirring and we managed to make one HUGE ball of something that I think was dough, and since we added the melted butter last it was a huge ball of doughy SHINNY substance. It was at that moment that the husband came home and looked at our creation, and while we were laughing so hard he figured out for use that the recipe called for 1 1/4 cups of milk…not (one ..as we should only use it once) 1/4 cup like we had read it to read. Needless to say we don’t cook waffles anymore at our house.
I always tend to overcook/burn cookies. Even the frozen pre-cut ones. I’m the world’s worst baker.
Melanie ModernMami.com´s most recent brilliance ..On Being Told to Go Back
My biggest disasters have always been borne of trying to get through a recipe too quickly. In my opinion, few things are worse that chocolate chip cookies that don’t have salt in them.
Bitchin’ Amy´s most recent brilliance ..Crafting With Little Monsters
I always boil over my alfredo and hate cleaning it up!!!
My story predates the origin of this sites creator by about 5 decades! When I was a child of single digit age I was allowed to make my own breakfast on Saturday mornings when I got up to watch cartoons on the 1 TV station in lexington, Ky. I am not sure what it was that I was making but I do know that I left it on the stove, gas burners, and went back to check on the show I was watching. My father opened the for to the TV room about 30 minutes later to tell me about how the house had filled with smoke….all but the TV room. I was able to finish watching my TV show…..standing up! Oh yes, the next time I fixed breakfast I believe I was married.
Cook???? Whats that!! HaHa……….. Best of Luck to you Rach
Love the stories everyone has shared. Good Luck!!!
Fruit pie….bubbled over…smoke….alarms….you get the picture!
One of my greatest kitchen disasters was when I over-baked cookies, because I wasn’t paying attention to the timer that beeped at me, and the cookies burned to a charred crisp. My entire apartments smelled of ash for a week.
AmazingGreis´s most recent brilliance ..Wordless Wednesday – Baby’s First Astros Game…