That's our long-time mantra in the King Arthur Baking test kitchen. And when you're testing literally hundreds of recipes a year, well, mistakes are bound to happen. And happen, and happen ... The nice thing is, we simply call every flat cake, burned cookie, and misshapen dinner roll a "test result" and add it to our "testing data."
So those everything bagels that turned out so tough they'd qualify as dangerous weapons? The savory doughnut holes with caramelized onion and blue cheese filling whose kindest tasting comment was "EWWWWWWWW"?
Good data! Back to the drawing board.
Still, even though we know "stuff" happens, it's never cause for celebration when that chocolate cream layer cake you've labored over for hours suddenly decides it's too hot in the kitchen and collapses into a puddle of mushy mousse. Words fly, stomachs tense — and then, inevitably, we laugh: at the silliness of the scene and the absurdity of stressing over something as benign as baking.
But most of all we laugh because we love our work. Baking is always a pleasure: the good, the bad, AND the ugly.
So here we are, sharing for the 13th year our roundup of test kitchen blunders. If it's been a while since your last smile, you're in luck: we dare you to witness all of these mess-ups without breaking into a grin!
Burnt offerings
How easy is it to forget something in the oven? Very. Easy. We know you've all done it; so have we, many times. Check out some of our most "charring" memories.
Everything about this Nan-e Barbari was perfect, until "someone" forgot to set her timer and, well, golden brown morphed to inky black. We would have loved having s'more of these cupcakes, but that was before their topping went from fluffy marshmallow to incinerated charcoal.So when you bake bread in a black cast iron pan it's the bottom that tends to burn, right? Hmmm ... Good trick, that!No, these aren't fancifully shaped chocolate cookies. They're pie crust scraps sprinkled with cinnamon sugar, and baked to "golden" (im)perfection!And then there was the cruller experiment. Never multitask when you're deep-frying! This picture made the rounds as "the dog poop doughnuts." Sorry, I know, you'll never be able to unsee this ...
Our bowl runneth over
With all of the sourdough baking going on over the past year, we're sure many of you experienced starter that just didn't respect its boundaries. Well, it's not just starter that can't contain its enthusiasm, given enough time (and its owner's forgetfulness).
Ellen, the friendly lady you'll often speak to when registering for one of our baking school classes, shared this dough explosion with us. You can see it, right? Finish kneading, tilt up the mixer head, the phone rings, and 3 hours later — whoooops ....Chef Susan, our test kitchen veteran and peerless Instagram stories queen, notes that Just Bread dough is relentless in its pursuit of freedom: neither bowl, plastic, nor lid stops it.
Smash ... cake
Ah, that moment when you take your bread or cake out of the oven and turn the pan upside down onto a rack, expecting immediate release of your hot loaf — and nothing happens. You fret, you tap, you shake (you say words your children shouldn't hear), and then, finally, success!
Or not.
Who among us has never experienced this scenario? It's no trifling matter! Oh wait, maybe it IS a trifling matter... Coffeecake trifle, here we come!"OK, this may look like the dog's breakfast but I've got this lovely lemon glaze, so why not?" A perfect illustration of those words we've all uttered at one time or another: "It'll still taste good."I mean, really? You couldn't wait to show me your beautiful holey interior, Mr. Sourdough?When the recipe calls for 2 cups of blueberries in those muffins and you say, "Hey, if 2 cups are good, 3 cups are better!" NOT.Apparently it's not only cakes and muffins that go bump in the night. With many of us King Arthur test bakers baking at home this past year, there was plenty of opportunity to make a mess — as Chef Susan, her new dream kitchen in progress, will attest."Oh, Felix ..." (or words to that effect) were no doubt uttered when fellow blogger Kye discovered Felix the cat had decided to test the shatter strength of a bottle of balsamic vinegar. As Kye noted at the time, "Thank goodness it wasn't the vanilla!"
Hey, shape up!
If there's one thing you can usually count on with baking, whatever your batter or dough looks like going into the oven, it will undergo a significant change before it comes out. Bread rises; cookies spread; cake domes. Sometimes uncontrollably.
A colleague requesting anonymity confessed that she forgot to add the carrots to this carrot cake. The cake clearly wasn't pleased.If you're a Sesame Street fan, you can probably hear Kermit singing "One of these cakes is not like the others; one of these cakes just doesn't belong ..." Our visual merchandiser, Brook, calls this her "over-zealous cake monster with its nice level-headed buddies."Banana slices, an extemporaneous addition to our Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins recipe, started out on top. But after 10 minutes in the oven they decided to exit the summit — producing this goggle-eyed monster effect.The fantasy: cake batter baked in ice cream cones for a whimsical hand-held treat. The reality: cake batter baked in, over, and out of ice cream cones. Facepalm.Julia, one of our newer customer service team members, says of her first bagel experience, "I think I did a number of things wrong ..." While we'd never call making bagels with the assistance of a 2-year-old child wrong, you can definitely get some rather unusual results!
Paleo by comparison
Developing special-diet recipes is a huge part of what our test bakers do. Oftentimes, especially at first, the results aren't quite as special as we'd envisioned ...
Jonathan, doing double duty at our baking school and on our Baker's Hotline, is the master of understatement: "Sometimes pretzels don't cooperate. Especially when they're gluten-free." Ain't that the truth.Annabelle and Morgan from our social media and digital engagement teams tasked themselves with trying out our paleo flour on a few non-paleo recipes. Annabelle said of her sandwich loaf (left; slice at lower right), "Oh my good gravy ... 10/10 would not recommend." As for Morgan's fried dough (upper right), she concluded, "I think that maybe the dough would have benefited from an egg to help hold it together." Ouch.
Spread out ...
Oh, please don't! It's amazing how cookies can start out as perfect spheres of dough and end up looking like the Caspian Sea. What's up with that, anyway? See "One reason cookies spread" for an answer, but in the meantime — misery loves company, so enjoy these "spreads."
I confess to being responsible for these chocolate chip cookies — er, cookie. "Honestly, I followed the recipe exactly!" But unfortunately, it wasn't a King Arthur recipe. Lesson learned. "I LOVE chocolate and mint, so I used a chocolate cookie base and thought, I’ll add junior mints (instead of the peanut butter chips called for) – BRILLIANT, right?" Apparently not. (The baker who submitted this shot pled the 5th.)Michelle, one of the long-time veterans at our flagship store in Norwich, Vermont, says she tried to fit her sister's oatmeal cookie recipe onto a single pan. As Michelle concluded, "Not a good idea! I laughed so hard ..."
And that's what we all do, isn't it? You can fuss and fume when baking disasters strike, or you can simply smile, scrape the mess out of the pan, and enjoy. After this Year of the Pandemic, when it often felt like there was barely room for hope, let alone laughter, it's a relief to chuckle over silly things like April Fools' Day.
PJ Hamel grew up in New England, graduated from Brown University, and was an award-winning Maine journalist (favorite topics: sports and food) before joining King Arthur Flour in 1990. Hired to write the newly launched Baker’s Catalogue, PJ became the small but growing company’s sixth employee. PJ w...
April 1, 2021 at 11:35am
Thank you for the charming story and recognizable photos! We've all been down this road many times. I've said more than my share of bad words, eaten the parts of the cake that weren't a total loss and passed off cookie disasters as "intentional".
April 1, 2021 at 11:35am
Nice to knw I'm not the only one. Really enjoyed the photos and commentary. It sure brightened a gloomy NH day!!
April 1, 2021 at 11:07am
I started baking before I was in kindergarten. I learned to read and do fractions because of baking.
My most infamous disaster occurred when I was in Junior High, and mom got a job outside the home. One of my daily chores (Joys) was making supper and baking dessert each day. Mom has a recipe for Fruit Cocktail Cake. All it says is stir in one can of Fruit Cocktail. I did. It took forever to bake...
It turns out the fruit was supposed to be drained.
The cake was quite moist, there were actually strings of syrup that went to each piece of cake as it was served. My younger brother, and his friends called it SWAMP CAKE. 45 years later, they still tease me about it!
April 1, 2021 at 12:28pm
In reply to I started baking before I… by Jill Reynolds (not verified)
I had one like this too. My Mom had taken me to tea at Marshall Fields, and we had Lady Baltimore Cake. I thought "I can make this!' I was ten. I found a recipe in one of Mom's cookbooks. It called for chopped nuts, but we only had salted peanuts -- so that's what I used. Then when I went to make the seven minute icing, I needed a triple recipe, and could only find one of the beaters for the mixer so I patiently beat that stuff for 42 minutes (3 x2 x7) and it peaked. So I put it on the cake. It looked gorgeous. Sixty-three years later my brother still teases me about the slice he dropped on the floor which landed like and tasted like concrete. Sigh. I am, however, a Ph.D. mathematician -- just not a Ph.D.baker!
April 1, 2021 at 11:07am
Thanks! I don’t often laugh out loud when I am reading my King Arthur email....but these photos and comments did the trick!
Hilarious!
April 1, 2021 at 10:50am
Thank you for starting my day with a laugh, and for making me feel like my baking is well within normal limits! My first bagels (a King Arthur recipe) were sadly flat, though edible. Then there was the cake that took me all day to make and decorate that was so dense it would have been a great door stop....but it looked pretty. You know things are bad when no one, even me, wanted a second piece and the rest of the cake went in the trash...no fooling!
April 1, 2021 at 10:29am
Well I can say I have been down this road a time or two and will be down there again.
April 1, 2021 at 10:22am
This presentation was very comforting, since as you stated , “it’s happened to all of us”.
Oh my, at 76 years of age, I’ve had, well let me just say, my share of baking tragedies. I agree laughter is the best medicine.
April 1, 2021 at 10:14am
Hilarious & loved the finishing photo. Props to all who fessed up.
.... a few of those have been seen briefly in my kitchen, but only by me.
April 1, 2021 at 10:12am
It’s so nice to see in pictures that I’m not the only one that has baking disasters made me laugh thank you so much🤭🤭🤭🤭