Crash 'nd Burn - Epic Kitchen Disasters....

*Photo from here. Let me know if I'm violating any copyrights, and I'll take it off.

Anyone who's given me a patient sympathetic ear in the last few months, knows that my oven isn't exactly in the best of health. It blows a fuse after maybe half an hour , and then after every five minutes or so. In the throe of it's tantrums, it's also managed to blow the microwave oven, with constant voltage fluctuations.

So I try to stay away from the oven, it's been ages since I've baked anything, and with a sigh that would make a martyr proud, I longingly stare at all the beautiful things that the world around me is baking, and go into a dream world where there are no bratty ovens and no circuit trips.

But yesterday was different, my Hulk-esque bug for baking finally took over, and I decided to make cookies that I had bookmarked since almost 3 months. So, I mixed the flour, cocoa, baking soda and sugar , shut down all other electrical equipment and nervously started preheating the oven. Added the butter...rolled out half the cookie dough, scrounged around for a small round bottle lid and cut cookies. Put 'em on my blue cookie sheet, and shoved 'em in, breathed a sigh of relief, so far so good. Then a little more confident, I started playing around with the other half of the dough, adding chocolate chips, rolling, re rolling.....and then that ominous burning smell! I was so happy that the oven still hadn't given up, that I forgot to check the cookies, and the first batch was burnt to cinder!!! So much for the oven not shutting down on it's own!!



It's always depressing to have a failure on hands, especially when you're already dreaming of the finished product. Like the candy basket I promised my niece, but gave up after 5 batches of failed sugar syrup, and one batch of botched caramels. I've had my share of using dead yeast granules, making rock hard muffins that could be used as instruments of pain, dhoklas with so much baking soda that the tongue starts boiling, and of course; the worst; wrong estimation of quantities that sometimes lead to me feeling like a possessed machine that spews cupcakes after cupcakes after cupcakes, and drowning everything including people in a sea of food. Once I've even managed to cook so less that everyone had to end up eating a can of baked beans and bread!

But if you can survive the disaster and still want to venture into the kitchen, then that's what happy food endings are made of! So have you ever had an epic kitchen disaster? Do tell me all about it!!!