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My biggest baking disaster only happened once (with baking, anyway...I successfully did the same thing with vanilla ice cream over this past summer...that actually didn't turn out too badly, though). Using the classic Nestle recipe for chocolate chip cookies -- which I know by heart after years of making it -- I...successfully left out the sugar (both kinds). Brilliant, eh? I was staring at the batter after adding the flour and wondering why it was the texture it was when I realized it. I tried adding the sugar at the end and then actually baking the cookies but it was pointless; they tasted okay if you could get past the texture, which was something like chewing on mushy sandpaper.

Normally I can bake when tired, but apparently I couldn't that day! I ended up just throwing together a new batch.

Poured fondant always ends up disasterously for me. Thankfully, I have a very level headed boyfriend who can hear the sobbing from the kitchen and fix me a proper drink before I launch into a tirade about how everything I have ever done, and ever will do again is an utter, abysmal, failure.

biggest disaster was thinking that i could substitute I can't believe its not butter fat free for regular byutter in my cookie recepie...it completely melted in the oven.

best success was the white chocolate oatmeal cookies with white and dark chocolate drizzle on top that i made for my Anatomy class in college! everyone was asking for the recipie

Biggest baking disaster might have been a brick-like loaf of brioche that never seemed to come together but that I crossed my finger and baked anyway. All that butter, all those eggs, utterly ruined. I have since made lovely loaves of brioche, but that first one was a sad, sad thing.

It makes me feel sad even to think about it. In my first apartment after college, before I had a lot of cooking gear, I attempted to make my grandmother's pumpkin pie recipe in a premade crust (the kind that comes in a tin pie plate.) I lifted the pie plate out of the oven, and it buckled, pouring the delicious pumpkin custard all over the floor. I literally cried. Always, always, put those things on a cookie sheet and transport that way.

My biggest disaster was a chocolate cake that was supposed to be dense, but, instead, decided to rise. It overflowed all the pans, and cascaded all over the oven -- scorching the oven surfaces it touched and putting out smoke and fumes!

The first time I made biscuits I kneaded them and handled the dough waaaay too much and the result was totally inedible.

Biggest disaster: my first loaf of whole wheat bread, which was a sad, unrisen lump of concrete.

Biggest success: making my friend's wedding cake.

Biggest baking success was a fudgy chocolate cake that came out impeccably... I'm still not sure why. :)

i followed a paula dean recipe for orange brownies. on her show, she doubled amount of glaze b/c she loves all things in excess. i took this as a legitimate recommendation and did the same. those things were too damn sweet!!! i made them for a book club meeting. most people liked them, but i felt so bad when one got wrapped up in napkin after one bite and was thrown in the trash.

unrisen rolls on thanksgiving two years ago. still don't know what happened.

best was a 5 layer vegan honey cake for my girlfriend's birthday.

biggest success: making a friend's wedding cake and all the sweets for the sweet table.

{biggest disaster: she told me she wanted a divorce three months after the ceremony.}

No Pudge brownie is delicious, but my attempt at a single version serving in an info-mercial style omelet cooker did not work as well. I used too much really tart european plain yogurt instead of the recommended vanilla so the resulting brownie was sour, wet, and limp.

I'll continue tweaking the brownie mix to yogurt ratio until I get it right. Maybe a little honey could help...

biggest success was a chocolate cake w/ peanut butter frosting i made for my husband's bday party once - his guy friends are always claiming they hate sweets/cake/chocolate, but they loved this cake!

Biggest disaster - an apple cake that never fully baked and oozed butter (we still can't figure out what went wrong)
Biggest success - the first loaf of sourdough where I leaned in and heard the crackle of a crisp crust!

I tried making bread for Thanksgiving last year--had made the recipe several times before--and failed miserably. No bread for that meal!

My biggest success is probably finally mastering a pie crust recipe.

My biggest baking disaster happened recently while visiting home. I wanted to make a cheesecake for my grandma, and used my mom's tried-and-true, never-failed-yet recipe. Sad to say, but it's no longer foolproof. I did everything the directions said (or so I thought), but the cake never firmed up, the middle was completely goopy, and the butter had seeped out of the springform pan, coating my mom's oven. When I set the oven to "clean" to clear up the butter and batter remains, the heat set off the smoke detectors in our house, sending us scrambling to open all the windows. So, in the end, no dessert, plenty of alarms, and one daughter who is on parole from making cheesecakes.

My biggest baking success and disaster was at the same time! I decided to make a strawberry cake entirely from scratch for my grandmothers birthday. It was 2 10" layers of genoise with bavarian cream and strawberry filling and buttercream icing and I even made marzipan roses to decorate the top. It came out fantastic!!!

It made it to the party in one piece..after about an hour someone noticed that the icing had completely slid/melted off the sides of the cake into big piles surrounding it. I was devastated...although it still tasted good thank goodness!!

My biggest baking disaster was when I was 10 years old and tried making brownies on my own. Let's just say that now at 26 years old, I am a complete nut about labeling things in my kitchen lest I once again mix up salt and sugar. I will never forget the look on my mom's face when I gave her one to try.

Favorite success were some oatmeal scones I made from a Cook's Illustrated recipe. So simple, but they turned out so well.

I bake a lot so I'lve had a lot of disasters and, luckily, even more successes. Two recent disasters come to mind: I forgot the sugar in a cake and I dropped a cake when flipping it out of the pan.

My biggest success was a three-tier carrot cake with cream cheese frosting wedding cake for my daughter's wedding.

My biggest failures are the ones I've been having trying to learn to bake gluten-free. Yikes! Nothing tastes or turns out the same at all, so I'm still playing around, and not having the wonderful success I've always had with regular baking.

Usually baking is something I do well, but for my daughters first birthday I used unsweetened chocolate instead of semisweet for her cupcakes. She very happily ate them, but I had to add a LOT of powdered sugar to the frosting before my older daughter would eat them.

My biggest disaster is when I tried to recreate my grandmother's strudel after having a learning session with her. Nothing went going right. The dough was too soft and therefore wouldn't roll. The filling was too soggy and I still couldn't figure out what I had to put crushed corn flakes in (I know now why). The end result was a big soggy mess and me in tears. I've since taken the best from her recipe but used my own dough!

My biggest success was my own three tiered wedding cake with three distinct flavors and fillings that was covered in gum paste flowers. It took me and two friends nearly 100 hours (collectively) just to make the flowers. Four days of baking and decorating later it was the most perfect wedding cake! It was such a shame to eat it!

Well my biggest success so far is probably a toasted walnut blue cheese sourdough round that I recently made following a Peter Reinhart recipe.

There were some definite baking disasters when baking as a kid... some of the salt vs sugar or tsp vs tbsp variety....

As an adult I tend to have baking disappointments rather than disasters.... the top of the bundt cake sticking to the pan, the ciabatta with a tight even crumb instead of loose holes, the cheddar garlic bread with zero cheddar flavor.....

It's actually my husband's disaster, but it's sad enough for the both of us. He spent hours making croissants by hand - rolling out the butter and layering it with the dough, I mean hours. Then, he goes to bake them and they come out just charred, because he had the oven set about 100 degrees too high. So sad. That was like 5 years ago, and he's just recently mentioned that he's thinking about trying them again. (Ordinarily though, he's an amazing baker.)

One of my biggest baking mistakes was adding powdered sugar instead of flour (the containers were unlabeled and I was in a rush). Needless to say, the cookies turned out flat, gloopy, but very sweet.

Biggest success was probably my first loaf of brioche. Mmmm, delicious eggy buttery goodness.

My best baking success were pudding cakes! When I learned how to do a successful water bath and bring forth delicate cakes with a layer of creamy pudding under them...the possibilities were endless!

A cake pan waiting to go into the oven slid off the counter. About half of batter sloshed out onto the floor. I ended up with a much smaller cake than I had originally intended.

When I first started seriously trying to bake and cook, one of the first recipes I tried to make was for zucchini bread, since I loved the stuff so much. I didn't have any sugar, so I went to a neighbor's to bake at her house. I put the recipe together and it had baked for 30 minutes when I realized I'd forgotten to add the sugar she'd set out for me. I pulled the loaf pan out and mixed the sugar into the nearly-set dough, turning it into a sort of oatmeal-looking thing, and finished baking it. When I took it out, it still looked oatmealy. My neighbor wouldn't let me try it; she tossed it as soon as it was cool enough. The second time I tried to bake zucchini bread, I put the loaf pan on a rack that was positioned too high, and toward the end, I smelled something burning. The beautiful loaf had risen right into my oven's heating coils. I still ate it, though, and it was good, even without the nice crispy top crust I had to scrape off.

bread and bread

I can't make dinner rolls for anything. :(

But I'm currently in love with Berenbaum's Basic Sandwich Loaf - made it 3 weekends running now!

My disaster. A neighbor brought over some big zucchinis and I decided to make zucchini bread. I couldn't figure out why the grated zucchinis smelled differently than I expected. I pondered this while the bread was baking in the oven and it finally dawned on me that they were cucumbers.

My most recent big disaster was just this past week when I tried to make a banana cream pie (which I have successfully done many times before). I had to try twice before I had a crust that I could actually roll out, the first one I was too careful not too add too much water and over-work it, and so on the second try I over compensated and it turned out super tough. Then the first batch of custard never set up. At least my roommate enjoyed the "banana pie soup" I gave her for breakfast, and it only took 24 hours to get a semi-edible finished product.

One time I was baking cornbread and it tasted bitter so I immediately threw it out and baked a second batch thinking I had forgotten to add sugar. The newly-baked cornbread with carefully added sugar still turned out horrible. I finally stopped to look at all the ingredients on the kitchen counter and saw that I had been adding baking soda instead of baking powder!

My biggest success was getting an order for 1200 Chocolate Bourbon Pecan Pies from the Ritz Carlton!
My biggest blunder was putting 24 of them in the oven without the chocolate!

I made a Big mistake. I was a novice, left on my own, having never really cooked before. I was trying to make apple crisp. The recipe called for a certain amount of "fat". Not knowing any better, I used bacon grease! As much as I love bacon, this was seriously revolting.

my biggest disaster was my first blueberry pie........it bubbled up and over.....and was burning at the bottom of the oven....and the crust never did get entirely done.......horrible......!

My biggest disaster was substituting applesauce for oil in a rich pumpkin bundt cake, not realizing that I should drain it first. I ended up with an overly dense cake that had an unappetizing "wet" layer on the bottom. Yuck!

I might be able to do both in one story. The first time I made a pie crust from scratch was definitely a milestone, and the crust came out beautifully-- unfortunately, the peaches I was going to use for filling were underripe. It was an odd pie, but at least edible.

Biggest success- the no-knead bread. It hasn't failed me .....yet.

I tried to make a batch of petits fours in a dilapidated apartment kitchen with an ancient and unpredictable stove. I spent hours working on the stupid things, and wound up eating dry white cake crumbs with grainy icing. I know now why a petit four can run you $3 a piece. It's worth that not to have to make them.

Almost burnt the kitchen down cooking Ramen! Ramen!! Not even anything fancy :) I guess I *kinda* forgot it was on the stove and the pot caught on fire, as did the kitchen cabinets, hood etc. Not fun.

I tried to make a vegan version of lussekatter from a recipe sent to me from a vegan baker in Sweden. Something went wrong in the translation of the instructions or metric conversion, because they ended up dense as rocks and with an overpowering saffron flavor.

I once forgot the butter in a batch of brownies. They were so bad, but my friends ate them anyway. Sweet!

Disasters: once I auctioned off two homemade apple pies for a school fundraiser. I left out the sugar! Thankfully I noticed something was wrong before I delivered the goods and was able to make the switch with a purchased pie.

Most recently, I moved into a new apartment and the first thing I made in the (terrible, horrible, very bad) oven was a sugar-free flourless chocolate cake for my dieting roommate's birthday. Apparently the previous occupant had not cleaned the oven very often, because something left in there started smoking and lent my cake a lovely scorched flavor. I hate the taste of splenda anyway so I only tried a crumb, but my roommate covered it in whipped cream and ate it all.

Usually I'm a pretty good baker, though.

My first baking experience was also my worst. I was making banana nut bread- everything was going really well until i smelled it burning in the oven. the top was completely torched because i set the oven on broil! Then the smoke alarm wouldn't go off because the batteries were old. I haven't attempted making banana bread since.

Another sugarless pie disaster---this time a pumpkin one! I lovingly roasted and mashed the sugar pumpkin, cut out teensy-tiny leaves for a beautiful border on my carefully and studiously rolled dough, hand-whipped the cream...and served it up proud at Thanksgiving dinner. Oooops. Thankfully we had 3 more other types of pie, and lots of liquor, to detract from the ghastly pumpkin masterpiece. Yuck. Funny-I only make savory pumpkin dishes now...

My biggest success would totally have to be my first pecan pie 2 Thanksgivings ago. I'd never even tasted pecan pie before I made one. It was so good even my MIL raved over it!

My most recent success was making little cookies with date filling from Claudia Rosen's Middle Eastern cookbook. While the outside was a little dense, that just meant they kept not-stale for long enough for us to eat all of them.

My biggest disaster was muffins that came out like hockey pucks. No idea how or why. My biggest success was making an apple strudel from scratch including the dough, which I stretched over a card table and was so thin you could read through it. Not a tear anywhere. It was perfect!

My biggest success has been an 8-hour Concord Grape Pie (as in it took me 8 hours to make it and the ice cream that topped it). It is delicious. I'm eating it now!

One of my first 'grown-up' dinner parties in college when I was just getting into cooking, I decided to make baked apples in homemade pastry with a brown sugar sauce. I was so excited. I popped them in to bake while we were eating dinner and I went to check on them 20 minutes later when the door to oven FELL OFF (crappy old apartment kitchens). Hmmm, I wasn't going to let that ruin my dessert so I stood there and held the door to the oven until the apples were done. They turned out pretty good considering the process!

After a summer's hiatus from baking, I just had to try the lemon olive oil cake. My husband dubbed it my biggest success -he always wanted to have this wonderful organic olive oil in everything but never thought it possible in a desert until now; he is so happy!

My best successes always happen the first time I make a recipe. And then, for some reason, the 2nd (and sometimes 3rd) attempts always have something wrong with them. Maybe I should bake with a different recipe every time to ensure success?

The first time I ever tried to make a sponge cake, I doubled the recipe with disastrous results. Either I made a simple error in my arithmetic or the recipe was not fit to be doubled, but what I wound up with was two rubber rounds. The "cakes" were so tough that I could wave them around in mid-air and they did not break. Sadness!

First time I tries to bake an angel food cake; ended up loking like a black Life Saver...

Biggest baking success: homemade croissants and pain de chocolat from Epicurious.com. it was a weeklong project, but they were amazingly delicious!!

I’d like to share my biggest cooking disaster. I am the friend or family member that always offers to make a cake when someone is having a birthday or party. For my cousin’s eighth birthday, I offered to make some sort of chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. I decided to try a recipe for Chocolate Cream Cake: three devil's food cake layers filled with whipped cream and frosted with a chocolate buttercream. I had to make the cake in a hurry, but all seemed to be going well. The cakes came out of the oven and were so moist that it was difficult to stack them. I began assembling the cake with the first cake layer, then a whipped cream layer, and the cake looked really wonderful. I applauded myself and predicted that this would really be the best, most impressive cake that I had made to date.

I made the chocolate buttercream and began to frost the cake. It was very difficult to frost the sides, as the whipped cream kept seeping into my frosting, along with some chocolate cake crumbs, and worst of all, the cake was beginning to bulge out on the sides. By the time I'd finished frosting the cake, I had started to curse and repeat, "This is so ugly. There is no way I can take this cake anywhere."

Even worse was that as I drove to the party, the jostle of the car created small cracks in the top of the cake. Every turn only widened the cracks, so that there was soon a full-blown fault line whipped cream visible down the center of the cake. It also looked like the cake was about to split in two and crumble into the floor. At the party, everyone at the party started calling it the earthquake cake. The big ‘8’ birthday candle sank ever so nicely into the whipped cream. That was definitely the ugliest cake I have ever made. Photo

biggest baking disaster? the day before a bake sale at school, i tried making my grandmother's famous icebox cookies, but when i called for the recipe, i heard 1/2 cup of salt instead of 1/2 teaspoon... you know where it goes from there...

I've had few disasters in the kitchen, but am still really happy with the homemade croissants I made a while ago. They were light and fluffy and were all from scratch. Took all day but they were totally worth it.

My biggest baking disaster was when I made a cake for my dad's b-day qand put it up on top of the refridgerator to cool and when I came back to frost it the cat had gotten into it and was digging in. To say the least I had to buy a cake that year.

Success! Thomas Keller's brioche recipe. It's laborious, but as long as you follow his instructions to the letter, you can't go wrong. Makes a killer BLT, not to mention French toast.

Disaster: I made a lemon meringue pie in a cracked glass pie pan. When it was in the super hot oven for browning the meringue, we heard a loud "POW" and opened the oven door to see that the pie pan had broken clear off the pie. The good crust held most of the filling in, and my roommates ate most of it - at their own risk!

My biggest success was Baklava. I was 24 yrs. old and made it for the 1st time and I couldn't believe how perfect it turned out.

I accidentally used msg instead of sugar once.... bad

The first time I ever baked I tried to make pizza dough. It was an unmitigated disaster. I was so determined to make it work that I refused to acknowledge halfway through when I had already failed...I ended up with melted cheese and tomato sauce on top of a pile of soft flour paste.

love baking and creatng- first time I baked I made lasagne so I love baking sweets and treats or real food

My biggest success was my first loaf of no knead bread. I know, it's pretty unimaginative, but there you go. Every time I had tried to make bread before, it would taste so bland with a crumbly texture. Turns out that all I needed was to let the dough sit around for a while. When that bread was cooling on a rack, I heard the crust crackle as it cooled. I knew then and there that this was going to be the perfect loaf even before I tasted it.

A couple years ago my boyfriend and I decided to make a pumpkin pie from scratch for dessert for Christmas. His mom, who loves that we cook together, bragged to everyone that was coming over that we were making a pie from scratch, not from a mix, etc, etc. Pie comes out of the oven and it looks beautiful and smells beautiful, and we are all proud of ourselves. Evidently we were not the only ones who thought the pie looked wonderful, the dog did too, and she helped herself to half of the pie before anyone found her! When it was time for dessert, everyone wanted to know what happened to the fancy, home-made pie they had heard so much about. We told them if they really wanted, there was some left, tooth marks and dog hair included.

Disaster: pretty much everything I've ever tried to bake. I try to blame it on the craptastic oven in our rented apartment, but you would think that after 5 years here I would have learned how to control it.

Success: having such a wonderful family that they eat everything I bake (and compliment it), even if it is burnt, still runny in the middle, crooked, too salty, too dry, too sweet, etc. I love them.

my baking disasters usually occur if i'm baking something, and my mother calls. because of course i can concentrate on what i'm doing and talk to my mom! easy as cake! one time i made bread and forgot to add any salt. it was gross, and i ended up throwing it out. another time i made muffins and forgot to add butter. As the muffins are finally cool enough to eat, Mom puts Dad on the phone. "Hi Honey!" he says. "these taste like crap", i said.

no such thing as a disaster: everything is a learning experience. (that's what I tell myself)
and my biggest sucess is anything that gets gobbled up-usually brownies!

successes: fruit crisps made with locally picked fruits

This is easy. My chocolate souffle. I knew it fell but figured it would taste OK anyway and that's what counts.

Well it didn't x2! Sometimes you just need to throw it away.

i once baked an apple pie for a neighbor and left it their front steps. a few hours later i received a call asking why i had left a pan full of apples and ants at their door! ill never pull that one again.

My biggest disaster is probably my first ever pumpkin pie. The filling was outright disgusting. Fortunately, I have improved since that first dreaded pie...

I always mess up anything that uses yeast, Bread comes out either like a rock or looking like an alien life form.

Biggest Disaster.....LOL

I TRIED to make my husband an ice cream cake for his Birthday a few years ago. Bad, bad, bad idea!!! The cake itself was very dry & the icecream was freezer burnt ~ the whole thing was just a big pile of crumbs, hard ice cream and drippy frosting. I had to get him a large, iced chocolate chip cookie from the Mall at the last minute. :(

I was working with the old family recipe for Texas sheet cake, making it for my mom's birthday. It's her all-time favorite cake, and the ONLY time she'll ever eat frosting. EVER. The copy I had of the recipe called for 2 t. of cocoa powder in the frosting, and although I thought it looked anemic, I put it on the cake anyway, and garnished with nuts. Fast-forward to her birthday party, when I made the big cake reveal. Everyone wouldn't stop commenting on the pale tan-colored frosting, and when it had been sliced it was quite evident that something was amiss, when it tasted like nothing other than vanilla and slightly caramelized sugar. Turns out, when I had transcribed the recipe from Grandma's stained, bent recipe card, I had accidently written 2 t. instead of 2 T. So much for the lush, fudgey frosting. Mom wouldn't even touch her birthday cake!

My baking success? Well, with the help of my bridesmaids, we managed to create my wedding cake! One of my bridesmaids baked the layers, packed them up and brought them as carry-on luggage.. (haha, I wonder what the baggage inspectors were thinking). We spent hours frosting the cake and decorating it and it turned out great!

a sad, sad angel food cake. tragically bad.

Not sure if it was the biggest disaster, but I once made cupcakes filled with sweet sesame paste with a friend, thinking that the paste would form a warm lava filling. The sesame paste oozed out and "exploded" everywhere, and of course there was a big mess in the oven! -__-||

My biggest disaster was my first time making a dish where I made the Garam Masala from scratch. I made the recipe for the Garam Masala and then, instead of adding the called for tablespoon to the dish I was making, I added the entire recipe (about a cup). Needless to say, my roommate and I were quite happy to have a good pizza place down the street.

One time I followed a recipe in a magazine for Fluff 'n butter cake. Everybody loved it.

Seems like every time I try to hurry in the kitchen I end up with a series of mini disasters, which take me twice as long to fix! As for a recent success, I'd have to say a batch of focaccia bread that started out as a possible disaster (I accidentally mis-weighed the flour and did a hasty job of mixing, which left me with clumps) and turned out to be some of the best bread I have ever made!

My most recent disaster was this week ,when I tried to make corn bread muffins and they came out flat.

my biggest success...a birthday cake, hand decorated, for my daughter's 5th birthday...a triple layer chocolate, with flowers and princesses...my first shot at making a layer cake AND decorating. THANKS

Biggest baking disaster - mislabeled containers of corn starch and baking soda. They look a lot alike but they are, most definitely, not interchangable.

My biggest baking disaster involved my son's 11th birthday cake. It was a chocolate chip cake, made from scratch, and it fell after I took it out of the oven. In spite of the fact that I'd been successfully baking for 15 years, my family never - even to this day - let me hear the end of it.

my biggest baking disasters usually occur when i try to go too vegan, substituting absolutely everything with a liquid (oil for butter, flax seeds and water for eggs, molasses for sugar) and then expect my cake to rise anyway. Most recently was a lemon poppyseed yogurt cake that ended up collapsed into a pudding. A moment of silence for the pudding.

Biggest disaster--I was rushed (rushing and good baking are mutually exclusive) while I was making a cheesecake for an important family function. It wasn't just a run-of-the-mill cheesecake, but a big, glorious thing that was specifically requested and the only dessert offered. The cheesecake came out of the oven unbelievably flat and with a million (undisguisable) cracks. While I was stomping around the kitchen wondering what had gone wrong, I noticed the canister of sugar sitting on the counter...unopened, unused. I made a cheesecake with no sugar. Awesome.

My biggest baking triumph was actually Nick Malgieri's Dark Chocolate and Banana Tart from his most recent 300-Calorie and Under Desserts book. I struggled with the crust and was sure that the whole thing would fall apart once it was cut into. The tart ended up perfectly formed and was honestly the most delicious thing I've ever made. Superb.

I learned to cook sitting in the kitchen watching my grandmother cook. This was during WWII when cooks everywhere faced with shortages became very innovative and because I learned well I have never had a real disaster that I can recall but have had a couple of successes I am proud of. I baked my brother's wedding cake. It was a 4 tiered work of art with swans in the seperators that I filled with babie's breath and adorned with sugar bells that I fashioned myself. It had more than a hundred little silver candy balls that I placed meticulously with eyebrow tweezers and so many people asked Ann (my brother's bride) what bakery she had make it and I was even approached to make some for other weddings but it was a labor of love and not something I would want to do for a living. My second success was in winning in the Land O Lakes cookie contest and having my recipe included in their cookie cookbook of the year and of course the $2,500.00 check was nice to.

My biggest success was a carrot cake, I was out of a lot of ingredients so used substitutions and it was the moistest cake ever! Unfortunately I can't remember what I did!

I think my biggest baking success is my Lindy's cheesecake.

My biggest disaster was an attempt at ciabatta. After all my battling with the really wet dough, they didn't rise. They were like eating the slippers themselves. Next time, I'll use fresher yeast.
My biggest success was a focaccia. It was a hit at a party.

The time I tried to make a frozen tartuffo recipe from Sunset. I am sure it was me, not the recipe, but I threw that recipe in the trash. I wish I had it now, though. I have a really reliable candy thermometer.

It all turns out great.

chocolate babka...total disaster.
and i'm still too terrified to try it again!

My biggest baking success: Making my great grandmother's recipe for sticky buns and having it come out like hers!

I wont call it a disaster..I mean its still edible eventhough it did not turn out right and I have to eat the whole batch myself. What am I talking about? Macarons... choco ones to be specific.

My biggest baking disaster was when my husband was feeling acceptionally helpful and offered to help me make some cookies. As he began mixing the dough in the bowl I was getting something out of the cabinet. He asked me to see if it looked ok and as I came over he lifted up the handmixer without thinking and batter went all over me, all over the wall and some even hit the ceiling.

My biggest success was a peach pie that tasted like summer....just fresh peaches and a little sugar for the filling, and no thanks to my lack of actual baking prowess, it remains the most delicious pie I've ever had. Baking kismet.

My very first attempt at "baking" was also the biggest disaster:

My cousin and I were having a sleepover in elementary school when we got the idea to bake bread. We mixed cups of flour and water together, put in a loaf pan and baked it at probably 300 degrees. The result was baked glue in my aunt's loaf pan :)

I was trying to use fructose and a natural raspberry fruit spread to make a lovely raspberry swirl loaf. Something about the combination of pyrex/fructose/raspberry created some sort of horrific block of gloppy doom, as the raspberry sank and burned in despair. Alas, I have not faced a loaf cake since.

In high school Home-Ec class we were assigned a chocolate chip cookies recipe. When we took them out of the oven and tasted them, we realized that what we took from the sugar jar was actually salt. In our defense, the ingredients weren't in their original packages, they were in non-descript similar white canisters.

Biggest disaster: pouring too much batter into a molded cake pan & having it drip all over the bottom of the oven & burn as the cake baked.

Biggest triumph: being told at a church women's organization recipe exchange that my strawberry swirl cake looked like it belonged on the cover of "Better Homes & Gardens!"

my wife's biggest success: chocolate chip espresso cookies! everyone asked for more. it was the caffeine, I suppose. i don't bake, so i had to ask her.

Biggest disaster was also one of the earliest. When I was around 10, was making corn meal muffins but got the sugar mixed up with salt. Don't ask, but the containers weren't marked. The muffins turned out flat, hard as rocks and salty! thankfully I learned my lesson and it hasn't happened again.

For me, there are two disasters that come to mind:

1. Baking an almond cornmeal cake at altitude and forgetting to add the milk in the recipe. Yeah, it collapsed and was the densest thing I've ever eaten.

2. Making a pumpkin pie and forgetting to add the sugar. It was...weird.

Biggest disaster - I had an old oven where the temperature dial went all the way around. What my brother thought was turning the stove off was cranking it up beyond 500F...with predictable results for the pizza inside.

My biggest success: Chocolate ganache-filled macarons from a Pierre Herme recipe, which turned out better than any macarons I'd found in the entire city of Phoenix (not that that's saying much).

Biggest baking disaster: Sadly, I'm still not sure what went wrong, but years ago I opened my oven to check on a batch of blonde brownies (blondies) only to discover sugar strings dripping from the roof of the oven. It looked like the batter exploded and shot out silly strings of yummy, yummy carmelized sugar. The blondies were ruined and the oven was not easy to clean.

Lovingly baked my family recipe for "Paper-Sack Apple Pie" in a boyfriend's oven. The paper sack caught on fire and the oven blew up. I should have heeded my grandmother's warning: she had drawn a skull and crossbones on the index card containing the recipe. We're getting married in August and I wonder why he only requests brownies.

ugh my biggest failure was a chocolate flourless cake for my boyfriend's birthday, with EXPENSIVE chocolate, that i baked in a bain marie. i was paranoid that the spring form would not be water tight so i covered the bottom in foil. it managed to SEEP AROUND the foil and when i took it out my cake was a watery puddle of chocolate. i was broke from the chocolate and didn't have time to make another cake. and too annoyed to try again anyways!

I consider myself a pretty durn good cook, but I cannot make edible bread. I have approached it scientificly, holisticly, you name it ly, but it either comes out something akin to a weapon, or a burbling mass of yeachhhh!. This is my dismal failure in the kitchen

My biggest mistake was made when I was making rolled-out sugar cookies for Christmas when I was a teenager. I had run out of flour to dust the counter top and rolling pin and thought it would be ok to substitute baking soda. It was white after all! They were terrible and I had to throw out most of the cookies..lesson learned!

i was helping my friend make lemon cheesecakes with blueberry sauce for her son's wedding. instead of grabbing the cornstarch to make the slurry, i grabbed the baking soda. i had a huge bubbly mess of blueberry sauce and ruined the batch. volcano effect!!!

My biggest baking disaster was one in which I was substituting Splenda for sugar and put exactly the amount of sugar the recipe called for. That was one ultra sweet cake.

disaster -- used liquid vegetable oil instead of solid shortening or butter to "grease" a cake pan... cake came out in pieces (the parts that actually came out that is)

i was about 14 years old, baking the cake for my mom's bday and all i could do was sob...

she had to help me "salvage" her own cake (we "glued" it together with icing)...

she laughed till she cried (while i just cried), but was supportive and sympathetic throughout... and as i recall, the cake still tasted pretty good.

My biggest success was making a lemon-chocolate tart from Suzanne Goin's cookbook. That or a birthday cake for my dad.

using baking soda instead of baking powder in muffins! yuck.

Worst failure is a tie between a Boston cream pie and the first time I tried to bake bread.

Greatest success is a tie between my favorite brownies and my second time making pizza dough!

disaster(s)---cakes that sank in the middle

A real 'disaster' would have been the cake I made in college for my bf - a chocoholic. I doubled the batter and put in solid chocolate, as well. The cake never really came together, and even after baking it for extra time, it stayed a pudding-like consistency. My friend and I ended up eating most of it with a spoon. Needless to say, poor bf never did get a cake that week. My best cake was a pumpkin spice bundt cake that I made several Thanksgivings ago. No one could go past it without having a slice - it didn't stick around very long!

The first time I worked with fondant! I was told to be VERY scared. It came out more beautifully than I imagined and my friend's wedding was a success. (Wish I could say the same for the marriage!) :)

biggest success: chocolate hazelnut cakes from Mario Batali's Babbo cookbook -- made this for my friend's bday and she literally could not believe that it was baked right in my own kitchen!

biggest disaster: while baking a fruit tart, accidentally dropped the crisped pie crust (which broke), remade the crust and rebaked, dropped it AGAIN, the second time after which I had a terrible accident trying to get the dustpan to clean it up that involved my head scraping against a cabinet door corner and getting a bad laceration!

In Home Ec class in high school, our team made banana nut bread. I confused the baking powder with the baking soda, and couldn't remember which I had put in. So I just added both measures again, figuring such a tiny amount wouldn't matter, right?

Although it smelled terrific baking, the result was awful. Wonder why I don't bake much.

The worst thing happened years ago when we had a bread machine. We had some luck for a time but then it started. The bread would be baked and you could not get it out of the pan. Correction, the insides came tumbling out leaving the crust behind. Not enjoyable at all.

Peanut butter chocolate sandwich cookies. Made them too thin and ended up burning more than half of the batch. Though the others turned out tasty.

For my Algebra II/Trig class in high school I decided to make pie for everyone on Pi day (3/14). As a sophomore in high school I wouldn't say that I was without friends, but I was always looking for ways to please the ones I had and maybe make new ones (plus everyone always said the way to a man's heart is through his stomach and my high school crush was in that class) so I went all out. I took orders from people of their favorite kinds of pie and offered individual sized pies in one of the top three flavors: Apple, french silk and pecan. I spent about 4 hours that night making pie crust, filling and garnishes (a crumb sprinkle for the apple pie, chocolate shavings for french silk and real whipped cream for all three). I loaded everything up the next day and served them up after lunch to my class and everyone loved them!!! I had made extras of everything, but they disappeared pretty quickly. Even though they went over very well, the biggest reward for me was in the actual baking of the pies and then watching everyone enjoy my work-talk about the joy of cooking!

oh dear...where do i start???!! I think the disaster that hit the hardest was during christmas last year. I was all excited to bake these cookies that i trial tested a week ago so I could give them out to my colleagues and neighbours.

4 batches later, each of which turned out totally different from the previous (And absolutely NOTHING like those i made during the test run) I gave up and my husband came home to me sobbing on the living room floor, a glass of ice wine in my hand (And the empty bottle sitting on the kitchen table amongst my baking mess) and with my work laptop open (which, by the way, it is NOT a good idea to do work when one is distressed...i think I sent out some emails that could have been worded a little....nicer), while exclaiming "I'm going to be a horrible mother!!!!!".

Yes, it was a pretty sight. Lets hope it doesn't repeat itself this year, as this time, I'd really have a baby in my family!

my biggest baking success is my signature dessert "tres leches cake". (this is a three milk cake--evaporated milk, sweetend condensed milk, and sour cream soaked into a yellow cake topped with a cream cheese frosting topped with mangos and strawberries) a few years ago my husband and i were managing a tex-mex restaurant and we wanted to start making some desserts. we had heard of this dessert and i did some research on the internet and made one. the first one was not so good. however i ended up finding the recipe of owner's mother who owned many restaurants in the Houston area. i tried that one and struck gold. it was a major hit and when the owner came down and tried it he said it tasted like his mom's. i told him i found the recipe and he was delighted. anytime we all get together i make a "tres leches cake" and it is always a big hit.

Last Christmas, I tried to make TKOs, my favorite cookie from Bouchon Bakery, to give away as gifts. After slaving away in the kitchen all morning, they actually came out looking pretty nice (as in, "not like crap"). That was until my mom and I took a bite, and I realized that instead of putting 1.5 teaspoons of salt, I had put 1.5 tablespoons of salt in the cookie mixture.

I still gave them away (with a warning of course). It's the thought that counts right? : \

My biggest disasters like over- cooking pies and cakes came from not paying enough attention once I put the item in the oven. I invested in a timer and made it a point to not allow myself to be distracted and I started having better luck.

Absolutely don't accidently substitute unsweetened chocolate for bittersweet...nasty!

Easy peasy plum cake.

I baked a cake for a party once. How that fork got in there is beyond me.

Using my Mom's recipe, I baked a carrot cake twice and had to throw it out because it had a horrible aftertaste. I'm still not sure what I did wrong but I think it was too much of a spice or the wrong spice.

My biggest baking mistake was relying on a friend to correctly read the ingredients to me as I made chocolate cookies. She told me "1 and 1/2 teaspoons of salt." I didn't think that sounded right so asked if she was SURE about the amount, and she got all defensive about it so I just went ahead and added 1 1/2 teaspoons to the batter. The correct amount was actually 1/2 tsp. Salty cookies!
I was about nine years old at the time, and hadn't done a lot of baking, but my instincts were right on.

Biggest disaster was forgetting the flour in a blueberry pie - it was a soupy mess -

Ina Garten's rugelach. The Food Network website said to refrigerate the dough. After I spread out the jam, wondering hmm, why is it so sticky in comparison to hers (I had just seen the episode a few hours ago), my sister piped up, "she put hers in the freezer!" Needless to stay, the dough was totally stuck to the countertop. I somehow managed to scrape it off and bake it, ending up with "jammy blobs" instead of rugelach....

The worst was probably when I forgot to strain the pumpkin before I made the pumpkin pie on thanksgiving. It looked and smelled soooooo good, but when we went to cut it, the whole pie went with the knife. It was SOOOOO embarassing.

My biggest baking failure was one time I decided that I felt like baking a cake to bring to my parents the next afternoon. I didn't think I was too tired so I made the cake and put it in the oven. I still don't know what made me wake up, but I eventually woke up after the cake had been baking for nearly double the time called for. It didn't catch on fire at all, but needless to say, it was inedible. I still haven't told my parents about that cake :P

When I was younger I was making a chocolate cake and got the melted butter waaay too hot and it boiled the eggs so the cake tasted like chocolate eggs but not like the Cadbury variety!

Biggest mistake: forgetting the sugar in this potentially beautiful homemade ricotta cheesecake...and I had taken so long to make the ricotta from scratch! Biggest success: wonderfully crispy exterior, soft interior baguettes with oven spring!!

Disaster:

Making clafoutis in a REMOVABLE-BOTTOM tart pan. Enough said.

On a whim, I made Hallmark's 4 ingredient chocolate cake with 60 % belgian chocolate when unexpected guests were coming. Wonder of wonders, the cake tasted heavenly and was a complete success. Everyone wanted the recipe! That was the success...the failure was the catcalls when I disclosed that it was just another of my q&d's (quick and dirty recipes) so I still retain "my-no-recipe- is-worth-doing-unless-the-food-is-served-raw-and-untouched" status with my friends and I still spend less than 30 minutes preparing anything.

Biggest disaster was spending all day making 6 pumpkin and pecan pies, then the dog getting 3 of them.
Biggest success was my rocket ship twinkie cake.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cookieeater/472590796/in/set-72157600128468677/

I forgot to add soda once and made rocks...

Biggest disaster: a friend's wedding cake.

The florst screwed up and didn't bring adequate flowers, so I had to do things to change the design of cake, a tirimisu flavored cake. Well, the espresso I brushed on the layers ended up making the cake a bit too soft and when that was coupled with all the futzing to make columns shorter and whatnot, well it ended up collapsing. The top two tiers dove off the back, taking cake from the bottom two tier along on the suicide jump. It was totally ruined. She was very grcious about the whole thing. Thankfully the grooms cake (chocolate peanut butter) survived unscathed.

not so much a disaster than an inability to read directions - i was making a mushroom struedel and the recipe called for 5 sheets of phyllo dough. i interpreted as 5 packages of phyllo dough. it took me a year to go through all of that dough - one thing i learned that phyllo dough sheets can be used to make very tasty empanadas & samosas

Biggest disaster-carrot cake that fell apart into crumbs when you sliced it (the proportions in the recipe were wrong). Of course, I made it for Thanksgiving at a friend's house and did not test the recipe first (never did that again!).

I make an extraordinary spanikopita. Usually. I was given the recipe by a Greek friend of mine, who said her aunt had obtained it from Greek nuns. Whatever the origin, the recipe is perfect. For Oscar Night 2007, I decided to amaze all of my friends with my cooking skills by cooking the finest spread of food they'd ever seen. Because I was the only chef, I had to spread my cookery over the entire day. Since the spanikopita took the longest to prepare and bake, I made it early in the afternoon, planning to put it in the over and bake it just before my friends arrived. I carefully painted melted butter over every inch of every layer of phyllo, and placed it in the fridge for a few hours, removing it about 20 minutes before the party began. My friends began to arrive -- they oohed and aahed over the smells emanating from my oven. When I went to check on the spanikopita, I found that despite it's glorious smell it was not crisping on top like it should have. So, of course, I turned on the broiler. A minute later, we were fanning the fire alarm and running a flaming spanikopita out the door of my apartment. We put the fire out without destroying the pie and lifted off the burned layers. My friends, my dear, dear friends, ate the soggy spanikopita anyway.

biggest baking disaster: a hockey-puck-of-a-loaf of bread. all seemed well throughout the rising process, but the stove stopped all short. it emerged a long brown pallet, having risen barely an inch. [sigh] soon i'll try again.

Thanksgiving pecan pie a few years ago, that just would.not.set. in the middle....it was less pie than really good on top of ice cream!

the other night I attempted to make cupcakes from scratch for a co-workers birthday the very next day. Good time to try something for the first time, huh? Well, they turned out more like dense muffins than fluffy cupcakes. At least they tasted good...well, the ones that didn't get burnt on the bottom, anyway. The next morning I went and bought a cheesecake to bring in instead.

Biggest disaster---the Easter Ham burned because the oven thermostat "blew" out and the temperature flew up over 500 degrees while we were at church!!! Ham was black, but the house didn't burn down.

I once made brownies that could have been concret bricks!

One of my first experiences with baking when I was about 8 years old involved a batch of cookies. At the time, I didn't know there was a difference between baking soda and baking powder. Lesson learned. I'm much improved now.

My biggest disaster was just a few months ago. I had just received a new Cuisinart. I wanted to try making dough in it. I researched recipes on line and decided to make french rolls. I followed the directions to a tee, but they never rose properly. I became impatient and baked them. They were horrible. They were hard little rocks. the birds wouldn't even eat them.

My biggest baking success was my banana pudding tart. It was my first attempt at food blogging, so I took pictures of all the steps and those pics still make my mouth water. The tart had a shortbread crust, vanilla custard filling and caramelized banana slices on top. I tried to make a caramel sauce to drizzle over it, but I still haven't mastered the caramel consistency.
I would love to have this book. I've seen it blogged about in several places. :)

My biggest baking success was making a red velvet cake for my roommate's thirtieth birthday. I usually go with the easy cookies or a simple cake but a two layer frosted cake that I've never made baked before and for a major birthday, no less? I used Paula Deen's recipe and a cream cheese frosting that I found online and it turned out amazingly well. Well enough for her friend to declare it as one of the best and moist cakes she's ever eaten!

Success -- choclate chip cookies. I've made them enough times to get the recipe and the baking specs just right to make them come out soft and gooey but just substantial enough not to fall apart...

I once baked a cake that caved in the middle. Once I was finished panicking, I cut the cake into cubes and layered it with some whipped cream and instant pudding I had on hand. Ta dah, I had a delicious trifle and nobody needed to know that it was originally supposed to be a cake!

Ahhh.... Baking disaster!
I love everything puff pastry related. I will have and probably devour anything puff pastry related. I REFUSE to make another puff pastry.
It does not work. Several attempts, lots of oozing butter ( not fun to clean ), and no puff later I have put down my rolling pin in relation to this recipe and given up.
Sorry napoleons, puff tarts, and the easy ( but not for me ) croissant.

My biggest baking disaster were Blueberry Muffins that looked great on the outside but when you broke one open the blueberries and surrounding area had turned green. I understand (now) that usually happens when the blueberries are over ripened and mixed in the batter too early.

I fed 2 dozen muffins to the garbage can that night and haven't baked Blueberry Muffins since.

My proudest baking moment has to be ....when as an 8 year-old 4-H girl, I won a Blue Ribbon for my plain white cake at the county fair!

My biggest disaster.....I tried making this Mexican Chocolate Torte that turned out just awful......the thin layers were lopsided....thick on one side, thin on another....they were all different sizes and none of them were anything that resembled a circle. I didn't whip the heavy cream enough for the filling and it turned out like soup.....basically it just looked like a pile of brown glop. My family was kind enough to eat it anyway (it tasted ok, not great but not terrible)....I was about 12 years old...now, 16 years later, my desserts are requested all over town....I bake for 2 restaurants and one bakery and do the occasional wedding cake on the side. Who'd have thought I come this far?

Notable failure: The night before Thanksgiving I was going to bake a Dutch apple cheesecake to bring to my sister's. After work, though, I went out with a friend and her coworkers and got just staggering blind drunk -- I'm usually a pretty careful drinker but that night I just lost track and we ended up at my place with my boyfriend and her husband dancing around the house to Abba, and somewhere in there I made the cheesecake. I honestly have no memory of the actual baking part, but at least I didn't burn the house down. On the other hand, it tasted like cardboard and I had to do Thanksgiving with a wicked awful hangover.

Other than that, over a lifetime of baking I've had a really good success rate, so no complaints.

The cooking disaster that comes to mind was at 11:00 at night. I was trying to make sourdough bread. I followed the directions to put a 9x13 pan in the oven to preheat then poured water in the pan right before I put the bread in the oven to make steam. Too bad I used a Pyrex 9x13 pan. There are probably still glass shards in the bottom of my oven. FYI, you can still bake bread with the shattered remains of a glass 9x13 pan in the bottom of your oven.

My baking disaters are everything right now. I'm renting and the oven is the worst. The temperature in the oven is all over the place. So antything I bake could be burnt on the bottom, dry on the sides and uncooked in the middle, who knows until you take it out of the pan. Hate it.

Biggest mistake: 10 years old or so, trying to make a cake with fondant glaze. Misread directions, put 250 mL baking powder as opposed to 25. The cake collapsed in on itself and tasted like really bad biscuits. Not even glaze could save this one.

I was making 8 pies for a friend's benefit, and the prettiest one of all was a double-crust berry pie. The pie was perfect but I wanted the top just a little darker. Under the broiler it went, 5 minutes later it was toast. My boyfriend and my roommate did not consider this to be a disaster, as they were allowed to eat the disfigured pie on the spot.

My biggest disaster was my first loaf of homemeade bread. Felt like a brick.

The biggest ever baking disaster I had was a few months ago when I made a Fresh Fig Tart with a rosemary cornmeal crust. I had forgotten to refrigerate the crust before baking it. The crust seemed to melt and seep through the tart pan with a removeable bottom, land on the oven floor causing the oven to smoke. My other mistake was opening up the oven door which promptly set off the smoke detector which is connected to an alarm company. About 10 minutes later three fire trucks appeared at my front door!! Embarassing? Yes! Hilarious, double Yes!

i forgot that i was baking a cake, several hours later i wondered what that burning smell was, and the rest is history!

My biggest sucess with cooking would just bein able to make something.

Was making dinner rolls using a recipe from Clayton's Book of Breads. The rolls were going to be for an Easter lunch. For some reason the dough did not rise. So, took dough, wrapped it around the ham, and ended up with a delicious ham, covered in a great dough crust. So each Easter, my wife asks me to mess up the dough, so I will have to wrap it around the ham.

My biggest success was when my children were small, I had to make their birthday cake because their birthday is a day after Christmas and I couldn't find a bakery that would do it. My mother had always purchased our cakes from a bakery and had never made a birthday cake for us. When she telephoned before the party, she asked who was making the cake. I said I am. She was appalled. I made and decorated my children a mickey mouse cake and even made little individual mickey mouse cakes for each of them. I was determined to show her. When she walked in for their party of course she wanted to see the cake. She said I thought you said you couldn't find a bakery to make their cake. I said I didn't, I made it. Needless to say that was the best compliment I could have ever gotten. The cakes tasted really good too and everyone was impressed.

My biggest success was the first overnight smoked pork butt. My wife forgave me for buying the smoker.

My biggest success was the first Thanksgiving I held at my house. I made yeast rolls from scratch and they were AWESOME! but also A LOT of work. I have had several requests to make them again but I haven't done it yet.

I found my go-to dessert that is quick and perfect. I make a key lime pie (only 4 ingredients) and sometimes I layer the bottom of the shell with frozen blueberries or raspberries (they must be frozen so they held their shape while the pie bakes) before I pour themizture on top.
A quick homemade whipped cream and everyone is thrilled.
Nycole K
knycks1@aol.com

I found a great recipe for frosted sugar cookies and made them brought them to work. Everyone thought the were from a professional bakery they turned out so well!

The first time a made cookies in my apartment I used the broiler pan because I did not have a cookie sheet and I remembered my mom using some kind of cooking paper(yes I know now its parchment) I used wax. the wax melted and I tried scrapping it off. There were big black burnt stipes on the cookies. I still brought them in to work for our class bake sell. They sold like hot cakes. All the kids thought it was chocolate stipes.

I have a disaster about once a week whenever I end up burning something.

one time I was baking a quiche in the oven and it overflowed all over my oven ...Thats was not an easy mess to clean! I was so upset with myself, that I've never tried that recipe again.

My biggest success would probably be pound cake and blondies as people always seem to love them. I don't have a big disaster story as I check and double check because I do worry about that. I did make a Scooby Doo cake once though that was adorable and tasty but a pain to decorate, I had never attempted that before.

My biggest success is my amazingly awesome Christmas dinners each and every year! I fix all of the traditional favorites and try 5 or 6 new recipes I have selected during the year for something special.

Let's just say that you cannot switch Baking Soda and Baking Powder in and out...you must use what the recipe calls for...*bleck*

my biggest success was making cream cheese pound cake it came out so perfect that its a request every year

My biggest baking disaster was my sons first birthday cake that I tried to bake and I forgot the eggs... lol it was horrible flat gummy horrible! Thank you so much for the chance to win!
cadewill14[at]yahoo[dot]com

Every time I bake it's a disaster :)