Blog birthday giveaway!
(Note: Giveaway rules appear right under the recipe.)
Friends, the gods are totally smiling upon me today, for today is a double holiday. Not only is it Thanksgiving, but it’s also (Drumroll! Fanfare!) Furey & the Feast’s first birthday. Which means there’s turkey, pie AND birthday cake. I might add that it’s not just any birthday cake, but it’s a chocolate cake.
A microwave chocolate cake. (Are those crickets I hear?)
Normally I’m not too keen on using the nukebox as a cooking method, but this is a special case.
I was 9 or 10 years old when I bought my first cookbook, which I ordered from the pages of that Scholastic book club newsletter you get every month when you’re in elementary school. “Hershey’s Fabulous Desserts” had this beautiful chocolate cake on the cover, all done-up with chocolate curls and strawberry garnishes. What a cookbook was doing in an Scholastic newsletter I have no idea, but I remember thinking something along the lines of holy crap, I can make that?
Among the 140 recipes in this cookbook, there were only a handful of them that a child could make without parental know-how and knowledge. One of them was this cake. My mom had banned sweets from the house long ago, so this cake was, in my eyes, the greatest of mankind’s achievements. I could have cake every single weekday of summer while my mom was at work, thanks to the ease of the microwave. She’d never know.
So in honor of these childhood and blog firsts, I wanted to “bake” this cake again. Back then, each forkful of cake laced with deviousness was especially delightful. Without that element, would it taste the same after all this time?
(Click on “Read the rest of this entry” for recipe and giveaway)
It’s been at least 15 years since I’ve even looked at this recipe, with its outdated fonts and taboo methods. Do people really use margarine in buttercream frosting these days? And since when does baking a cake require that you line the pan with plastic wrap? I’m certain I wasn’t the only one baking from this cookbook in the late 1980s/early ’90s, so I’m glad to say that we’ve all come a loooong way since those days. As for its taste: well, it’s not quite as I remember it. It’s like the microwaveable brownie you get in those Tyson frozen meals. The cake may not be as sweet as the memory, but it’ll do in a pinch.
HERSHEY’S MICROWAVE CHOCOLATE CAKE
Adapted from “Hershey’s Fabulous Desserts”
Yield: 8 servings
- 1/4 cup Hershey’s Cocoa
- 2/3 cup hot water, divided
- 3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
- 1 cup sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
- 1 egg
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1. Line an 8-inch by 1 1/20-inch microwave-safe dish or bowl with plastic wrap.
2. In a small glass bowl, combine cocoa and 1/3 cup hot water. Microwave on high power for 40 to 50 seconds, or until mixture is slightly thickened.
3. In a medium bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Mix in oil, remaining 1/3 cup water, egg and vanilla. Add in chocolate mixture and stir for 40 or 50 strokes, until batter is smooth and all ingredients are incorporated.
4. Pour batter into plastic wrap-lined bowl/pan. Nuke on high power for 5 to 6 minutes. Cake is done when it begins to pull away from the sides of the bowl. Let stand for 5 minutes to cool.
5. Invert cake onto serving plate and peel off plastic wrap. Cool cake completely before frosting (recipe follows).
EASY COCOA FROSTING
Adapted from “Hershey’s Fabulous Desserts”
Yield: 1 cup
- 3 tablespoons butter or margarine (please, oh please don’t use the latter), softened
- 1/4 cup Hershey’s cocoa
- 1 1/3 cups powdered sugar
- 2 to 3 tablespoons milk
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1. Combine all ingredients into the bowl of a stand mixer. Use paddle attachment to beat ingredients until frosting becomes spreadable. Spread over cake and garnish as desired.
After birthday cake, there’s usually presents. So in honor of F&F’s milestone, Artist Lisa Orgler of the Lunch Box Project and I are having ourselves a giveaway. Lisa creates these amazing whimsical paintings of food using playing cards as canvases – like this lovely one (at right) she painted of my Insalata Infilzata, which I bought, framed and hung in my dining room.
The grand prize winner of this contest receives one of Lisa’s paintings – your choice from her collection, or one from your own blog you would like her to paint. (Whether you win or not, you should also know that Lisa is having a buy one get one free special from Dec. 1-15. Go have a look!)
How to enter: In the comments section of this post, share your most flamboyant, embarrassing or epic kitchen disaster while cooking a holiday meal (mine involves twin flaming meatloafs, for example).
Fine print: The contest runs from today through Dec. 2. I’ll choose the top five best stories and pick a winner at random on Dec. 3. I’ll also pick three entries at random to each win an 8-ounce package of Cacao Rouge cocoa powder, made by Chuao Chocolatier, a Venezuelan chocolatier based out of my ‘hood of Southern California. (The only thing I ask in return is a promise never to use this awesome chocolate in a microwave chocolate cake!) One entry per person, please. Good luck, and I can’t wait to read your stories!
After cake and presents come the thank yous. Although these come last, they’re not at all of least importance. Super-enormous thank yous and virtual hugs go out to everyone who humors me in reading this blog. A writer is nothing without readers and I am truly, truly thankful for you. I hope you get something out of your time spent here. I hope you are entertained.
A special thank you also goes out to the writers behind The Chickenless Kitchen and Sweet Water – Lindsay and Jenn, respectively. The two lovely ladies awarded me with the Kreativ Blogger award (which is so awesome!!). Both are new bloggers, having started their blogs this year. Both are fantastic additions to the food blog world. Please visit them yourselves and welcome them to our community – I promise you won’t be disappointed.
A safe and happy Thanksgiving to all!
P.S.: FTC/BlogHer rules requires me to state where the giveaway goods come from. They are purchased by me.
November 26th, 2009 at 8:17 am
I don’t have words to explain how goooood that chocolate cake looks like! Microwaved or not! It’s funny because my very first cake as a kid was also a chocolate cake.
(and Thanksgiving)
Happy BLOG-birthday
November 26th, 2009 at 2:45 pm
Congratulations on your first birthday and a nostalgic masterpiece! Looking forward what’s on the menu for this next year!
November 27th, 2009 at 3:49 am
Happy blog-birthday – and many years to come.
I can’t remember any kitchen disaster. Maybe I’ll have one when I try to make the microwave cake
November 27th, 2009 at 5:17 am
Cynthia,
Happy Birthday and cheers to the next year.
November 27th, 2009 at 5:53 am
It’s generally just been a small gathering at my house for any holiday. My husband and I moved so I could go to graduate school and since then we’ve always lived 8+ hours drive from any family members beyond us two. Every now and then we’ll have a guest over for the holidays and we always have an annual party that has 5-40 guests. This is one story of an epic failure for one of those bigger parties a few years ago.
My mother knew how to make fudge but I never really had a reason to make it until I knew our annual party was going to have at least 20 people. The last thing I needed was more leftover fudge, my waist couldn’t handle that. I chose a simple recipe that had 3 or 4 ingredient, had I only remember my first cheesecake disaster I would have rejected that recipe immediately. But I didn’t. The result was milk chocolate fudge that tasted only like marshmallows and butter — YUCK! It was so bad that I couldn’t serve it to my guests. No one else knew but I knew where I planned for them to go on that table. Given that I was still in grad school and not bringing in much money, the costs for that terrible treat made me feel so guilty too. Now I know: if I want good tasting foods I can’t always go with the cheapest ingredients or simplest recipes.
Wish me luck this year for our party where I’ll be trying several new recipes since I have several cookbooks to review.
November 28th, 2009 at 8:57 pm
mine is turning the mixer on too high and melting my chocolate chips. I ended up with double chocolate chip cookies
good but messy
November 29th, 2009 at 10:54 pm
Happy birthday!! That chocolate cake looks unbelieveable. Thanks for the chance. mogrill@comcast.net
November 30th, 2009 at 7:48 am
happy birthday to your blog! that cake is perfect for the celebration!
November 30th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
OK, well, you may have already heard this story from me, but here goes….
So, for our first Thanksiving mela together, Steve and I were newlyweds living in our little apartment in Hawaii. I was so excited to cook my first Turkey and the ENTIRE Thanksgiving meal by myself; I had the menu planned for days! We were only having a few friends over, so I knew I could handle it. Besides, I wanted to show my new hubby my mad SKILLZ in the kitchen!
Well, when I was prepping the turkey, I couldn’t find the giblets for the LIFE of me!! Where the heck were they?! Weren’t they supposed to be thrown in some bag and stuffed down the bird?! After giving up with my quest to find the mysterious said giblets, I continued on and just slabbed some butter on my turkey, rubbed some spices in and popped him in the oven. I scratched my plan of having gravy with the giblets!
Cut to 4 hours later…my turkey looked GREAT! Ready to be cut, I called Steve over to do his “manly” carving husband duties. As he was carving, he felt something strange.
Yup. He cut into the giblet bag that was STUCK in the neck!! I had cooked the bird with the giblet bag still left inside!
Thank God Steve carved the turkey in the kitchen, AWAY from our dinner guests. I would’ve dies of embarrassment…as it is, he won’t let me live down that first Thanksgiving!!!
November 30th, 2009 at 3:49 pm
Happy Birthday to your blog!! I thought it was older than one year, it seems to know quite well how to walk (in french, we use the verb “marcher”, which means “walk” but also means “work” as in “it works well”).
My most embarrassing kitchen story was last year for a party with friends. I though the theme “South America” would be fun. So I bought plantain bananas for the first time and decided to fry them (also first time at frying things).
I put oil in my wok, and put it under high heat while slicing the banana.
After a while, I saw some smoke. So I slided the wok just a little, to remove it from the heat. And it caught on fire.
I did not know what to do… The flame would not reduce. I knew that water on oil was not good. But I did not know what else to do, so I did it anyway! (isn’t it strange???).
So the flame went up to the ceiling, and fortunaltely died just after that.
When my friends arrived, I was still shaking, all the windows wide open! It was a great story for the evening
But the plantain with the tuna and the balsamic reduction were delicious!
November 30th, 2009 at 4:06 pm
When I was around 12 or 13 yrs old I decided to make an apple pie. The crust recipe required salt and I added it but hadn’t realized that I was using salted butter too. I slaved away on that pie because my cousins were visiting and I really wanted to impress. Well I didn’t know it was too salty until I went upstairs to my bedroom on the 2nd floor. Outside my bedroom window, my mom was telling my brother and my cousins in hushed tones that the pie was too salty and to act like they liked it so my feelings wouldn’t be hurt. Unfortunately I overheard the whole thing! Nonetheless my crazy cousin Harsha downed 2 slices telling me all the while how good it was.
November 30th, 2009 at 6:09 pm
Congrats on your 1 year!! And oh my gosh. I love these paintings!! I just entered myself on Lisa’s blog, too. Hehe.
Here’s my epic kitchen disaster — although it didn’t happen in the kitchen. I had made a bunch of tasty stuffed mushrooms for a party and arranged them meticulously on a pretty round plate, covered it with foil, and had some extra in a Tupperware container and a sheet pan covered with foil that was sitting on the floor of my car. I was in a rush to get to the party as I was already super late, and as I was getting into the car, I nearly dropped my pretty plate of mushrooms – a sign of what was to come. Anyway, I got them into the car and placed them carefully on the front passenger seat, rearranged the mushrooms that had slid, and covered it back up with foil. Well, on the way there, a car had cut me off, causing me to brake really fast.. and while I held onto the plate, my mushrooms went flying. Onto the car floor. They had gained so much momentum they slid right off the plate, under the foil and onto my mats in a cheesy, sausagey, mushroomy mess. I lifted the foil to see if any had hung on, but nope. It was sad and empty. Luckily I had just enough extra for the party. But my car smelled like mushrooms for days after.
December 1st, 2009 at 4:12 am
My most embarassing kitchen moment came when I artfully arranged practically the whole dinner, roast, potatoes, asparagus on one large decorative platter so I could make a grand entrance into the dining room and my guests. I tripped and it all went airborne. They laughed, I cried.
December 1st, 2009 at 7:09 am
This thanksgiving my boyfriend dropped a pad of butter into the bottom of the oven, which was on, just as gets were starting to arrive. It took us a half hour to get the oven to stop smoking and to clear the house out of smoke.
December 1st, 2009 at 7:14 am
Happy birthday to your blog!
My kitchen disaster began when I decided to make my foodie husband these fancy coconut-lime cupcakes for his birthday. Now, HE is the cook in the family and it took me a few years to even be trusted to cut up veggies correctly, so this was a big deal for me. I thought things were going well, until I decided to use our big mixer for the first time. Grooving to music while I worked, I must have gotten too enthusiastic and put it on way too high and the mix flew out and all over the kitchen, including all over me. Not having much time before my husband got home from the gym, I ran around salvaging what I could and adding extra of what I thought might be missing. Well, when my husband got home, he was welcomed by barely-risen something-missing cupcakes, and me looking like an I Love Lucy episode scrubbing batter out of the floor (the big gobs in my hair totally forgotten). Luckily, he loves me more for being amusing than for being a good cook.
December 1st, 2009 at 7:38 am
My kitchen disaster involves trying my hand at my most favorite chinese restaurant appetizer: steamed pork buns.
I don’t recommend this for a maiden voyage into Asian cuisine. The first mistake I made was forgetting that I didn’t have a steamer tray, so I improvised with an old window screen and some tinfoil. Ultimately I ended up with the vilest, most falling-apart-greasy balls of doughy yuck that ever were
December 1st, 2009 at 7:47 am
I was bringing a pie to my boyfriend’s mother’s house and I made one of the dreamcicle pies. I used fat free cool whip and it never set. I served my future MIL soup! My BIL still doesn’t let me forget about it!
December 1st, 2009 at 8:59 am
Ohh this recipe is beautiful…microwavable chocolate cake = happy college student!
My most embarrassing kitchen moment: I could narrate my banana cake story in rich detail, describing my dance moves as I jammed along to Celine Dion’s Christmas CD while mashing bananas, the look of joy on my face as I sampled the batter, my happy concentration as I sniffed the butter to discern whether it had reached the perfect level of “browning.” I could describe my expression of joy as I cut into my beautiful banana cake, my anticipation of the moist cake and sweet browned butter frosting. But then I would also have to describe my look of confusion as the knife caught on something hard –was it a large chocolate chip? Maybe a bit of congealed banana? Or some sort of mysterious cookie crust? No. Embedded in my banana cake was a melted refrigerator magnet that tragically and mysteriously managed to find its way into my batter. I’m still not sure what’s more disturbing: how the magnet actually got into the pan, or the fact that I had rendered my favorite cake poisonous. Haha, one thing’s for sure –my family will never let me live this down!
December 1st, 2009 at 9:04 am
For my Husbands and my first christmas, I thought it would be great to cook dinner and treats for everyone. Everything started out well. Then I realized that my Turkey was cooking for a really long time and it didnt look done. When my Mom arrived, she looked at it and said it was still frozen. I had put it in a table top oven and forgot to turn it on!!!!! That was blunder #1. After some much needed crying (and swearing!!,) I went to check on the veggies and cookies that were in the oven. I had forgot about them!!! They were burnt beyond eating. The dogs wouldnt even touch them!!!! That Christmas we went to the local chinese restaurant. It felt like the movie Christmas Story. We relive that day every year!!! Luckily I am a much better cook now!!!
December 1st, 2009 at 9:50 am
H to the appy. B to the irthday. It’s a birthday rap.
Crazy holiday baking story? I’m in my third year of law school, and it’s the first time I’m not going home for Thanksgiving. A group of friends is getting together to share the holiday meal and play an ever-raucous game of mafia. (Don’t you wish you were a fly on the wall during those games?) I volunteered to bring the desserts – pumpkin pie and apple cobbler. I had previously mastered the distinct parts of these recipes, but had never put them together…made the pumpkin filling, but w/ a frozen crust…made the crust myself, but w/ a different pie filling…etc. So the night before comes and do I ever have a plan. 1) make pie crust, 2) make pie filling, 3) finish pumpkin pie, 4) while pumpkin pie in oven, prep cobbler crust and filling, 5) bake apple cobbler, and 6) attain sense of achievement.
Best laid plans or something like that. My lovely, flaky pie crust shrinks to 1/2 its original size in the oven. So I start over and make another pie crust, doubling the recipe and using all of it. Even with so much extra, the crust shrinks again, but less this time. And at 12:30 am, I remove from the oven a sub-par, but still delicious pumpkin pie. I finally get the cobbler into the oven, and it’s worth loosing sleep to have one presentable dessert to bring.
No such luck. On the drive over to my friend’s place, a car in front of me stopped short, and I followed suit. Guess whose pumpkin pie flew off the back seat and landed in the cobbler? Mine. So I show up with two imperfect but salvageable desserts. I have such great friends; they didn’t care, and I carefully reconstructed the desserts.
When dinner was over, I pulled the pumpkin pie out of the fridge and set it on a burner on the stove and put the cobbler next to it. “I’ll warm the pie up,” I thought and turned on the burner. About 5 minutes later, somebody smelled smoke, and it was my lovely pumpkin pie. Rushing to remove it from the burner, I merely touched it, and the pyrex baking dish blew up and shattered, sending shards of glass, bits of pie crust, and globs of pie filling everywhere, including into the cobbler. Love’s labor lost.
After cleaning the kitchen, we searched out ice cream and cake and discussed the liquid qualities of glass in its ability to expand and contract. And then the townspeople killed me in mafia.
ps – I have still not solved the mystery of the shrinking crust.
December 1st, 2009 at 10:29 am
My epic holiday failure in the kitchen was a few Thanksgiving’s ago, when I was put in charge of the pumpkin pies. I was in a hurry, and had purchased store bought crusts to save time. I made the mixture, poured it into the pie pans, popped them in the oven, and took them out on my way out the door.
Low and behold, a few hours later when we went to cut them, I was having trouble slicing. Turns out, I’d baked the pies with the PLASTIC LINER still in the crust.
Needless to say, there was no pumpkin pie eaten that year.
December 1st, 2009 at 10:46 am
Every year for Christmas, my Italian grandparents make completely homemade lasagna to help feed the many guests we host each year. An hour or so after everyone arrived at the house, the food was all placed on the buffet table (our breakfast table) and we all grabbed a plate of appetizers and headed to the dining room. We all enjoyed the appetizers and laughed at the funny stories our parents were sharing of past get-togethers when all of the sudden my brother exclaims, “What is the dog doing on the table?!”. Our mischievous dog had jumped onto the table and was eating the lasagna straight from the pan! We all bolted for the buffet table and luckily ended up saving most of the lasagna. The lasagna incident is now retold every year at Christmas dinner.
December 1st, 2009 at 11:26 am
My disaster is half disaster half sabotage. I was in charge of this awesome homemade brownie recipe for Christmas Eve. She was seeking revenge against me from something (I can’t even remember what I did). She switched the salt and sugar. She had to buy a big bag of salt to make it realistic. Needless to say the brownies were horrible and I spent a good while wondering how in the world I had made such a huge mistake before she told me. Now when I make the brownies I taste the salt and sugar–just to be sure.
December 1st, 2009 at 12:11 pm
Years ago, I wanted to impress a boyfriend with my fancy culinary skills–I settled on flaming Cherries Jubilee. The sauce turned out well and flamed beautifully over the vanilla ice cream. All was going fine, until the first bite, that is. As I was worried about having enough cherries to go around, I had not tasted one. Can you believe I never saw the words on the can that said “unpitted cherries”. Do not ever tell this story to intrepid boyfriend’s father……I’ll never hear the end of it, even though it was over 40 years ago!
December 1st, 2009 at 12:20 pm
happy first birthday!
my family is half fish eating vegetarians and half beef and potato boys! for one of our first dinners i decided to tackle my first salmon filet bake with crab cakes. the cakes were done and dry a good 1/2 hr before the fish was ready!
needless to say, i finally got timing down in the kitchen!
December 1st, 2009 at 1:03 pm
One year for Thanksgiving we were toasting the marshmallows on top of the sweet potatoes, when it caught on fire! Fortunately we were able to scrape them off and try again. But no one was really paying enough attention to them, so they CAUGHT ON FIRE AGAIN!!! Third time’s a charm right? Nope. More fire. Finally we just sat by the oven watching the marshmallow’s toast before we prevented sweet potato conflagration.
December 1st, 2009 at 2:54 pm
Oh dear. When I first started my Food Prep class in highschool, I had a big thing with Cinnamon Buns. It was the simplest recipe ever, and I prepared the dough correctly and everything; I even invited my aunties and some cousins over to have a mini snack-meet! I probably should have practiced a bit more with the basics, because I ended up putting sugar on top of the buns INTO the oven, and when I took them out apparently they came out super hard because the sugar hardened! My crazy self however, didn’t even bother to check the softness/texture of the buns; all I knew was that they smelled good and were ready to be eaten. So I served them and I go back to the kitchen to do some clean-up when all of a sudden I hear my cousin start screaming and crying, “AHHHHHHHH!! MY MOUTH!!!” and then my auntie yelling “OH NO!! HURRY GET ME NAPKINS!!” and I run to the scene and ask “What happened!!” Apparently, my little cousin was losing his teeth and when he bit my hard buns it broke off his tooth and his tooth cut some of his gum which led to it bleeding to the point where it got even on his shirt :’( And this was no joke! He kept screaming and crying and everybody scrambled to get some benzocain and napkins and orajel or whatever it was to ease the pain… and my auntie got mad at me for serving something that wasn’t suitable for children, etc. It was super embarassing!
I didn’t mean to, really :/ Everyone was like “These are really.. hard.” Terrible. I’m never making those again. Now my whole family makes fun of me and tells everyone about my “Killer Buns, no we’re not talking about her booty.”
December 1st, 2009 at 5:08 pm
I am not quite old enough to have any holiday fails yet since I just started a family of my own. . . but I can remember going to my aunts once for Thanksgiving and they tried smoking a turkey. The thing was raw when they cut into it and I think we ended up eating chips and dip before finally giving up and going home. Hope that never happens to me!!
December 1st, 2009 at 5:25 pm
Needless to say, I have a bane about making mashed potatoes for Thanksgiving. I always wind up screwing the potatoes up somehow. The best screwup was last year when I added too much milk to the potatoes and it came out like potato applesauce. I tried serving it explaining to my family that it tasted good, but just the look of it they didnt eat it and I wound up throwing it away. Now anymore, I just get the frozen potatoes to mash and everyone enjoys it.
December 1st, 2009 at 5:36 pm
I made mushroom croustades (sp) for my future family in law. A dozen, brand spankin new folks I couldn’t wait to impress. I worked on the little tiny cups all afternoon, modestly walked into the gathering with the, “no really, it was nothing. Please, I was happy to, I’m so glad you enjoy these.”
The mushrooms were bad. Everyone spent Christmas day vomiting. All day.
I’ve been happily remarried for seven years.
December 1st, 2009 at 5:47 pm
I was very nervous when it was time for me to make my first Thanksgiving turkey. After extensive research, I bought a fresh turkey. I stuffed the critter, I trussed him. And then, for the next five hours, I doted on that stupid bird. Every ten minutes I basted him from tip to toe. In the end, the most gorgeous turkey emerged from my oven. Golden brown, crinkly skin — he was perfect in every detail. I was so proud… until my husband went to carve the first slice and there was no meat there! Turns out that I put the turkey in the pan upside down. So, for five hours, I had been assiduously basting the turkey’s butt. All the meat, meanwhile, was down in the drippings and came out pasty, white and boiled. My husband consoled me: at least the meat wasn’t dried out!
December 1st, 2009 at 7:03 pm
This being my first Thanksgiving married to my new husband and we decided to invite his entire family over. They are Hispanic, I am not. I decided to make a basic Mid-west thanksgiving dinner. While making the mashed potatoes, I did not realize that the top of the salt shaker came off…you can image just how much bread and water was consumed at dinner – all being polite and not commenting on the potatoes. Later, while putting away the leftovers, I finally decided to sneak a bite – though embarassed I couldn’t stop laughing! Needless to say, the ice was broken and all contributed their embarassing meal disasters!
December 1st, 2009 at 7:14 pm
It’s almost too shameful to say but I used Pumpkin pie spice seasoning in the Holiday stuffing instead of Poultry seasoning! This was when I was younger and I didn’t use it as being ignorant of knowing what I was supposed to be using in the stuffing recipe but I had accidently reached for it in the cabinet. *Note to self, always look at the label of your spices real well, especially if they come in the same size container and Name brand as other spices you might have or be using. Was pretty funny all in all!
December 1st, 2009 at 8:17 pm
Well, cooking in a strange kitchen is always challenging. The family camp has a stove with a feature I’ve never seen before. There are 2 knobs, 1 for on/off/temperature and one for varying degrees of bake/broil. Somehow or other (no one knows how since no one in this family seems to broil) the stove was set to broil so the top of the frozen turkey was crisped and the bottom still frozen and raw. Not very appetizing to cut into and being ‘at camp’ not a lot of other options either.
Still better than the year that turkey spoiled en route to the camp and wasn’t even able to be attempted!
December 1st, 2009 at 8:36 pm
My worst kitchen disaster: was it the time I skipped an entire page of a 3-page recipe? For pretzels, no less, which I had to serve the next morning to an 8th grade German class? No. I’m not sure why, but no.
It was instead my boyfriend’s birthday, our first together in the our first shared apartment, with all of his friends (people I barely knew). I had organized a surprise party. I got up early, sent my sweetie off to work, and called in sick. My plan was to go to the grocery store, then clean the extremely messy apartment while the cake baked. The grocery store was a 45-minute bus ride away, and cake ingredients are heavy. I was already tired by the time I got home. Still, I cleared away enough table to mix up cake batter, carefully greased pans, and got the whole thing into the oven before gathering up trash into grocery bags to be tossed from our back fire escape into the conveniently placed dumpster. I cleared trash from every room, pushing clutter aside to be dealt with later. Clouds were gathering, the temperature was dropping, and the wind picked up. For the last bag, I actually had to run 3 flights – I was sure that a tossed bag would not hit it’s landing. When I got back to the kitchen door, I found it locked. Locked! The cake was due to come out in 10 minutes! I tried buzzing my neighbors at the front door, but no one answered to let me in. I tried the super, but he was not home. Then the heavens opened and – while I smelled the cake burning – cold April rain poured on me in my shorts and t-shirt. I had to wait for my boyfriend to get home before I could in the house, and he brought a friend with him. We had our party in a terrible mess, with no cake for the birthday boy. I still cringe to think of it. He WAS surprised, anyway.
December 1st, 2009 at 10:39 pm
My worst kitchen disaster was losing my ring in a sweet potato casserole last Thanksgiving and realizing that as everyone was eating dinner. I wasnt sure if it was already eaten or not so we deconstructed all the food items left on the table and finding it finally in the sweet potato casseole. The ring could have been anywhere in the food or already eaten (it was small). Ive learned not to cook with jewlery on anymore!
December 2nd, 2009 at 11:12 am
When I was 12, I wanted to make my mom strawberry shortcake for Mother’s Day. I worked all day to gather the supplies, cut the strawberries, etc. The shortcake came out looking great and we sat down to eat it. My mom took one bite and spit it out. So did my dad. The problem? I have confused the cup of sugar with a cup of salt! It was awful! Even the dog wouldn’t eat it. It became a family tradition to NOT allow me to ever make it again
December 2nd, 2009 at 11:46 am
We make up a ton of cookies, candies and sweet breads to make as gifts each year and since the mini diva is a disaster we learned long ago that her job in the kitchen is to sit on a stool and look cute.
Well, as she added an extra 3 dozen to her list of people who needed our goodie trays I made her *really* help me by preheating the oven. That’s right, all she did was set the temp and go back to her stool.
5 minutes later, the oven blows up with a HUGE bang scaring the daylights out of us. Insides shattering and horrible, nasty smell and mess explosion. Trip to Loew’s the next day to buy another we couldn’t afford. It wasn’t delivered to the following day so 3 all-nighters making up for lost time.
December 2nd, 2009 at 1:30 pm
Happy birthday. Gotta love chocolate cake.
December 2nd, 2009 at 9:52 pm
My story is really humiliating and just shows what an amateur chef I am. SO back up 8 years or so I am in college. I am unable to go home for Thanksgiving because I have to work the dreaded Black Friday. I decided to cook a Thanksgiving meal with friends and I offer to bring the Turkey. I call my mother for the recipe she remind me to pull out some bag of organs, I pull out one bag of organs , cook my Turkey, bring it to the friends house, everything sure looks nice. My friend goes to carve the Turkey and there is a bag of organs still in there. OMG! Total embarrasment I thought I pulled out that darn bag of junk. I am mortified and sort of puzzled as what the heck I did wrong. I finally figured out what I did wrong almost 9 years later when I attempted to cook my second Turkey. There is not just one bag inside there are two. It was a moment of epiphany.
December 3rd, 2009 at 12:44 am
When cooking the potatoes, they boiled over and stuck to the bottom. No potatoes that year.