Well, for the past 3 years, i have not had an oven or stove. It just stopped working one day, and tired of waiting for SO to put in a new.one and tired of eating take out,I went and bought a hot plate and a tiny toaster oven to hold me over. (My fatal mistake. Now SO sees no need for a new stove or oven since I can make do, and since we bought a new house with working appliances and he doesn't wanna replace it til we move and he's fixing the house for sale)

However, I was determined to make him a cake for his birthday. I mean hell, I've made casseroles,pizza, peach cobbler, Apple strudel and cornbread and a.ton of other stuff in the toaster oven, why not. (Eat your heart out cuttrhoat kitchen)It was......difficult to say the least. I had to make one layer at a time. The first layer went in,and in about 10 minutes, one side had risen and was black on top and the other was still completly raw cake batter. I sent my mom a picture, expecting a sympathetic call with a heartfelt offer to come use her oven instead. I got the offer,albeit very hard to understand ,as she was laughing so hard she could barely talk. Apparently, it looked like a cake batter water slide one would find in candy land. Still, I prevailed, put the other 2 layers in, one at a time,turned the heat down and turned them a lot. They turned out pretty darn good. I'll never live that down. Though to be fair,my mother was not a good cook,.often putting things on the stove or in the oven, going to answer the phone, and burning everything beyond recognition. It is something i and all my siblings have teased her MERCILESSLY about, and still do. So now she has something to fire back with at least.

While getting ready for a St. Patrick's Day Hooley (party), which includes a baking marathon, I was making a recipe for Porter Cake (from an Irish cookbook), which looked pretty straight forward for a cake with a lot of dried fruit and some Guinness in it. The mixture was supposed to fit into a 9-inch round cake tin, but the huge amount of batter ended up fitting into my large Bundt pan because it was too much batter for two 9-inch pans. It was supposed to bake for 3-hours @ 250°F. Through the whole beastly business, and trying to salvage the recipe, I got an emergency call just as I was putting it in the oven and had to go meet my parents at the hospital, leaving hubby in charge of this beast in the oven.

I gave him quick instructions to check it after one hour of baking (making sure it didn't spew over the edge of the Bundt pan) and every 20-30-minutes after that, and how to check for doneness. It baked in two hours, instead of three.

The new name for the cake is "The Cake From Hell", and I have made it a couple more times, following my hand-written notes in the margin of the page.

First, I suggest changing the title of this thread to "WORST Baking Disaster". :-)

I have been doing lots of hard work in the garden. I do need some quick carbs at the end of the day.

In the pantry, there was a box cake "Carrot Cake" I bought for good health and quick carbs..

The cake came out pure glue. I thought I made a mistake in the preparation. So I read the label. Well, for extra "moistness" the cake mix had pudding mix in it, but I was shocked that for "carrot", they used artificial carrot coloring and flavoring!!!

Who was crazy enough to invent artificial carrots? And how expensive could it be to have real carrots?

The cake went into the compost bin, and I went to bed hungry all night.

Moral: You can't have your cake and eat it.

dcarch

I'm confused. Is this supposed to be about plain old disasters or things that should have been disasters and turned out amazing instead?

Another WORST baking disaster but it wasn't mine. To continue about cake mixes... Just a couple of weeks ago, I bought some cookies at a bake sale that were made (obviously, after tasting them) made with cake mix. They tasted just like if you were to eat dry cake mix out of the box. Who Knew that someone would make cookies with a cake mix and pass them off as being 'home-made cookies.'??? (Serves me right for thinking I'd have a carb & gluten cheat day.)

(Confessing that I have couple/ three doctored-up cake recipes that start with a cake mix and are pretty darned good.) But those cookies were just AWFUL.

Hmmm.. There are good and bad disasters.

I made a crumb cake where I made some disastrous butter calculation. Dinner was almost ready when I peeked at my cake mid-bake. There was a blobby something swimming in a sea of butter. I shut off the oven and went to serve dinner my guests - embarrassed by my mistake. My grammy who loved her crumb cake turned the oven back on behind me. Mid-dinner acrid butter smoke started drifting from the kitchen.

OTOH - my first pie at maybe 12. Cousins were visiting. We picked Raspberries and Blueberries. And one cousin and I decided we would make a pie. My mom and aunt watched with increasing concern as every bowl in the house were filled and emptied of a variety of ingredients - some very much less traditional. (I still tend to be a mad scientist cook.) And I am sure a fair amount got on the table floor etc... The adults finally left the house to avoid taking over and at some point a homely but delicious pie came out of the oven. Never exactly recreated.

Writersblock, I was asking for the latter--things that should have been less than great but came out wonderful. Whatever people want to share, however, is fine with me.

To clarify, the heavy, dense poppyseed hobo yeast cake that was the star of the irreproducible wondiferous bread pudding wasn't bad. Half of it was eaten as plain old cake. It wasn't anything Grainlady would have given a ribbon to at the fair, but still good eating. It was the trying to make poppyseed filling from scratch in the first place that was the disaster.

My disasters always seem to just be disasters, and nothing good (or even edible) can be salvaged from the wreckage. When I have a disaster, it's usually a spectacular one!

dcarch, I have to admit that were I stuck with nothing but cake from a mix, I'd also go to bed hungry. (sigh) I think those times are the reason I always have a box of Raisin Bran in my pantry, I can add sugar until it's like eating cake anyway. (grin)

Annie

I was making a PA Dutch lemon sponge pie. I had already prepared the filling and had just put the crust in a hot oven to prebake for a few minutes when DH yelled to help him rescue a chipmunk that fell into our pool.

By the time I returned to the kitchen, I had a burnt to a crisp crust and a bowl of lemon filling sitting on the counter. I put it into a glass casserole dish and baked it in a hot water bath.

Lemon sponge pudding topped with fresh fruit has become a favorite dessert of ours rather than the pie.

Did the chipmunk make it?

Yes. He/she was tired out from treading water but after about 20 minutes of rest on the grass, scampered off.

Ruthanna, you need a Frog Log for your pool ...frog log