Write about your most epic baking or cooking fail.
Nearly 40 years ago we were due to be entertaining some friends & part of it was to try and serve up a special meal.
I scoured the recipe books & happened on a recipe for Baked Alaska. It sounded straightforward forward enough so I just skimmed the instructions & thought no more about it.
Came the day of the dinner & I got home from work with all the necessary ingredients & set to work.
It wasn’t until I was part way into constructing the pudding I sensed that all was not well.
The ice cream was already starting to melt under the meringue topping. I grabbed the book of words and frantically scanned down to see that the oven should have been preheated!
By the time the oven reached heat the tray of gooey mess was sloping around & honestly putting it in a hot oven seemed like adding insult to injury.
There was no time to create an alternative so with all the aplomb I could muster I served the unsuspecting guests.
They duly ate it but politely declined seconds so I knew I had reached an all time culinary low.
Thankfully we are still friends with those folks & hither too the dish can now be looked back on with the degree of humour the situation deserved.
Alas it was in the days before food pictures were a thing so all evidence of the crime was lost. I have never felt the need to have a go at the recipe again preferring instead to select it from a menu, prepared by professionals.
I would say what it taught me was no matter how cringeworthy a situation is at the time it’s often never as bad as all that. We all make mistakes & I certainly learned to check the small print! A valuable life lesson indeed.
