My Worst Baking Disaster

Today I’m sharing the story of my biggest kitchen fail to date. My worst baking disaster ever, by a mile. Just FYI, this happened two days ago. This is not a tale of times gone by. So, why am I sharing this complete failure? The essence of relatability I guess. In this world where every photo is staged and we try out best to make everything look as good as possible, I think it’s important to share that it doesn’t always go that way. 

I want to clarify this early on, just for the sake of the thousands of people who have made/ or are thinking about making a recipe of mine, this flop came from trying to follow someone else’s recipe not my own. It was a random recipe I’d found online, I’d never made any of this person’s recipes before. But I don’t want to name and shame from one bad experience either.  

However, here’s a vegan red velvet cake from a food blogger who I’ve had nothing but good experiences with in the past.

What was I making? 

It was my mum’s birthday yesterday! And I make a cake every year. This year, I was thinking red velvet. I wasn’t sure whether to go for a cake, cupcakes, a loaf or red velvet brownies but I’d settled on my theme. In the end, I tried to follow a red velvet brownies recipe. That recipe contained gluten, so I was making a couple of smaller changes, but they shouldn’t have made much of a difference. I was swapping a cup of plain flour for a mix of GF plain flour and oat flour, I’d kept everything else the same.  So, there would maybe be a slight change in texture, but nothing crazy.  

Suggested Post: Vegan Peanut Butter Brownie Cake

My Baking Disaster – A Series of Unfortunate Events

What went wrong? 

Guys, EVERYTHING. I was a little thrown by the recipe to begin with. The basic brownie ingredients weren’t anything like my regular method, but I trust the process. Sometimes with baking things don’t make sense and then they magically do somehow. So, I went along. Everything was fine. The brownie batter was a bit thinner than mine usually is, but it still looked like it would work out.  

The recipe was supposed to take 35 minutes. I checked it somewhere between the 30-35 minute mark to see how it was doing, if it was going to need longer etc. The top was cooked perfectly. And the brownie batter was still a liquid sloshing around underneath. It was visibly thicket than when I’d put it in, but no more than a third cooked. But that sheet on the top layer was a perfectly thin crisp that was ready to burn if it had much longer than another 5 minutes.  

How do I fix this? 

Okay, forget the recipe. She’s not working for me. It was time to use my own brain and figure this out. Looking at the mix and texture, I decided my best bet was to turn the oven up a little and spoon the mix into cupcake tins and try to make individual fudgy brownie cupcake ish things. I still wasn’t convinced it was going to work, but it was the only thing that I thought might.  

Oh and at this point it was also very obvious that there was literally nothing at all red about my red velvet. This mix was brown. Yet another disappointment.  

So, I lined up some cupcake foils.  

As I’m scoping out the mix, I can see where the oil in the recipe has separated and there’s a pool of oil sat on top of my greaseproof paper. It keeps getting better… 

And then, through 100% my own fault, the situation went from bad to a complete disaster. I’m not sure if I caught the lip of my case tray on the shelf of the oven, or whether I’d put it on the shelf at a bad angle. But as I was putting them in the oven, the tray toppled over and cake batter was suddenly all over the inside of the oven door, the floor, the bottom of the oven. Everywhere? 

And then I had to make it again 

Obviously, this was a birthday cake. If I’d been making regular recipe, I’d have quit for the day. But that isn’t an option when there’s an occasion to cook for. After spending far too long cleaning the kitchen, a dog walk was completed then another cake was made.  

This time I ditched the idea of following a previously untested recipe and figured it out for myself. The result went down well (recipe coming next week).  All was recovered in time for the celebrations.

In case anyone has had any kitchen disasters recently, I hope this makes you feel a. But better about life. I still have no idea what went wrong with the original batch. Nothing about how badly wrong that went makes sense from a ‘this is how cakes work’ sense. But things don’t always go to plan. Clearly. And there’s always room for your next attempt to be better.  

If anyone feels like sharing some fails of their own down below, please let me know your kitchen fails too.  

Until next time, 

Sophie 

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