The Great Bake Fails of 2017

Every great baker has a bad day in the kitchen.  I am not saying I am a great baker–I mean I think I am a pretty okay baker– but I fail with my kitchen baking experiments all the time.  So lets turn lemons into lemonade and have a great laugh (at my expense), while I show you the great bake fails of 2017!

Now, not every kitchen disaster from 2017 is on here….these are just the ones I took pictures of. The other times I was stomping my feet and beyond too frustrated to snap a picture. Hehehe. Okay! First up….birthday cupcakes for Ethan’s 10th birthday party.

Mmmm yeah.  Chocolate coffee cupcakes.  But I thought I could get away with using powdered buttermilk in place of the whole milk, because I was being lazy and didn’t want to go to the store.  Now, I have used powdered buttermilk in recipes before without any issues, so I wasn’t expecting disaster.  A big clue that there was going to be a problem was when I was mixing the buttermilk powder (that was kinda clumpy), into the batter.

Oh but I didn’t stop and re-evaulute the situation.  Oh no.  I kept going.  And made three dozen chocolate cupcakes that when baked up, they had chunks of buttermilk powder in them.  I didn’t think eating powdered buttermilk clumps was very appetizing, so these cupcakes got tossed in the garbage.  Lesson learned.

Ok!  On to the next disaster.  This is actually what I like to call a #PinterestFail.  My Decorated Owl Sugar Cookies.

I spend too much time on Pinterest, which gives me waaaaaaay too much confidence in my cookie decorating skills.  Forty sugar cookies, cut out in the shape of an owl and decorated with four different colors of royal icing?  Pssssssh.  Easy, right?!  Um.  No.  I was over these cookies before they even went into the oven, because the cookie cutter was a pain in the ass!  I should have known it was going to be an uphill battle from there.  And it was.  My royal icing consistency was off (obviously), but no matter what I did to it, I ended up with a Goldilocks-and-her-porridge-situation: too thick, too runny, too hard. But I just went with it, and ended up with royal icing that dried with texture, instead of a smooth-as-glass texture like I was going for. So these cookies looked like furry little owls.  Oh and these forty cookies consisted of four batches of sugar cookie dough, two batches of royal icing and about TEN hours of time.

Speaking of #PinterestFails…my cake decorating skills.  In my own mind I always envision something different than what my skills actually turn out.  Wonder Woman erupting from the middle of the cake.  I wasn’t happy with the shape of my cake (boring) and I was having issues getting my buttercream frosting smooth like fondant.

What’s a super hero party without Flash?  I think I went a little overboard on my lightning bolts…less is more Kelly, less is more.

NEXT!  Snickerdoodles.  Hmmmmm….rolling the super cold cookie dough in the cinnamon-sugar topping wasn’t working.  The topping wouldn’t stick to the dough and I was too impatient to let the dough come to room temperature.  So what did I decide to do??

I decided to dip the dough balls in water and then roll them in the cinnamon-sugar topping.  The topping stuck to the cookie dough, and off to the oven they went.  Well, when the Snickerdoodles were done baking, the cookies had a super crispy exterior.  Crunchy.  The interior was still soft.  They didn’t look like what I needed the Snickerdoodles to look like (I was making 10 dozen Snickerdoodles for a wedding dessert bar).

I gave all these messed up Snickerdoodle cookies to James and he told me these were now his new favorite cookies.  What????  Yeah.  He liked the crispy exterior and the soft interior.  So there ya go….if you are looking for a cookie with a crispy exterior and a soft interior, dip the cookie dough in water and then top with sugar.  If you want to see what they should have looked like, click HERE.

This is what happens when your cookie dough add-ins explode while baking….

That’s toffee that melted out.  But!!!  You can fix it.  If you ever have cookies that have spread too much (into pancakes) or the above happens to you, all you do is let the cookies set for a few minutes and then use the edge of a spatula to gently push the sides of the cookie in.  And then poof…..perfect looking cookies!

And there we have it!  My baking shenanigans for 2017!  I hope I got at least one laugh out of you 😉  But since misery loves company, leave me a comment below telling me your best kitchen disaster!

XOXO,

Kelly

PS- I linked this post up at the following link parties: Meal Plan Monday, Sugar and Spice, Pretty Pintastic Party, Reader Tip Tuesday, Foodie Friday.

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