Blog Every Day in January Day 8: Recipes That Didn't Go So Well

So I've had a lot of success with a number of recipes, and I really do enjoy trying new things when it comes to food. I don't know if cooking is something that I'm so passionate about that I would pursue it as a career, but it is definitely a genuine hobby of mine. That is to say, I get really excited when I find a recipe that I want to try, and I invest a lot of time and effort into planning and preparing new recipes. Seriously. Ask my friends--before I tried making macarons I read dozens of articles and watched hours worth of YouTube videos. I did extensive research on the perfect egg-white ratio for Ina Garten's cheese and spinach soufflé. I lost hours of sleep when I did the turkey for my roommate's Thanksgiving because I was so nervous that it wouldn't thaw or cook and I didn't know if my recipe would work. Moral of the story: I try very hard when it comes to food, and I do it because I like it.

Obviously not every recipe has been a big success. Once I messed up a batch of macarons so badly, that I just started smooshing them all into the pan and my mom and Sarah had to witness me having a mental breakdown and harassing the silicone baking-mat company via twitter. I also often forget to add salt to recipes that are so simple that it's like--how could this go wrong! I'll tell you how it could go wrong, YOU COULD FORGET TO SEASON THE ENTIRE DISH. Yikes.

Anyways, here are some of my top recipe fails:

7.) White Chocolate Fondue.

Don't be fooled by the picture, it 100% did not look like this. Let's start off with the fact that I was TWELVE YEARS OLD when I tried to make this. Forget about the fact that I am currently 21-going-on-22 and afraid to work with chocolate in any form other than cake, this recipe was HELLA HARD. And it required a full vanilla bean--which was HELLA EXPENSIVE and my mom never let me forget about it. I don't even remember which recipe I used, it was in some rando fondue cook book that my mom bought after I insisted we buy a fondue pot. We had just gone to the Melting Pot that summer before and I was fondue-crazy. Even as a 12 year old I was ambitious. I made this for my friends at a sleepover, and it was a soupy, floury, sugary mess. Seriously. We also tried making sushi that day, which essentially wound up being rice-and-seaweed balls. Good job, 12 year old Melanie and Friends.

6.) My mom's banana bread recipe.

This recipe and the fondue are lower on the list, because my failures had nothing to do with the recipes but rather with me being a moron. Seriously, when a recipe says to "grease and flour the pan", it means "take your stick of butter and get messy, and sprinkle that flour all around until NOTHING STICKS". In no way does "grease and flour the pan" mean "be distracted by 30 Rock's series finale and haphazardly spray the pan with Pam during commercial breaks". Also, don't add chocolate chips to a recipe when your mom tells you not to add chocolate chips to the recipe. Yikes.

5.) My beloved chicken parm panini from T'Licious (RIP)

Last summer my favorite place on Main Street, T'Licious, went out of business. Not only did they serve the best bubble teas with the freshest flavors, but they also had this bangin'-ass chicken parm panini. This is what the real thing looks like:

Beautiful, crispy, flavorful, melt-y, tomato-y heaven. I tried to recreate it this past November, and as you can see, it was NOTHING like the original. The breading and seasoning on the chicken was off, the baguette I bought wasn't crusty at all, and my tomato sauce smelled suspicious so I didn't put enough on the sandwich. Just a disappointment over all. WHY DID YOU LEAVE ME, T'LICIOUS?? IT WASNT YOUR TIME TO GO!!

4.) Thanksgiving Pizza. AKA: Your Digestive System's Worst Nightmare

I still maintain that this was an amazing idea, and that I can't believe more people haven't done it. It's just that the execution was...a little rough. The construction was: Boboli pizza crust, "thin" layer of mashed potatoes, gravy, cornbread stuffing, more gravy, leftover turkey, mozarella cheese. Then you bake it in the oven and put the cold cranberry sauce on top. HOW COULD THIS HAVE GONE WRONG?? The problem was that it was like two full meals worth of food per serving. Just too much. I felt sick for like a full day afterwards. Someone, please perfect this recipe. And send it to me once you've figured it out, because I don't think my digestive system can handle any more trials.

3.) "Fried" Honey Bananas

I saw this on Pinterest and thought "WOW what a simple and creative healthy snack!" which is true--it really is a simple and healthy way to change up a serving of fruit. And I'm sure that lots of people have had success with this recipe because of how simple it is, but I am not one of those people! I got really impatient with this one, and didn't let the pan heat up enough (which, fun fact, is a common mistake I make because I literally do not know how to wait). So this was a failure for me. And the reason why this made it so high up the list really has nothing to do with the recipe itself, but with how I messed this up so badly that the end product was literally one of the most disgusting things I've ever forced myself to eat. Since you add a water and honey mixture to add the sweetness, and since I decided that I wasn't going to wait for the pan to heat up enough for any part of this recipe, I wound up with soggy, gooey, goopy banana slices in sticky honey water. Honestly, I don't know what's wrong with me. Go look at the recipe and see for yourself how foolproof it is. I am ashamed.

2.) Greek Yogurt Macaroni and Cheese

I've seen a zillion different sources for this recipe, and they are all essentially the same thing: you cook some pasta, then you add some greek yogurt and cheese. And honestly, I don't know what I was expecting. It tasted like greek yogurt, cheese, and pasta. Imagine those three things happening separately. Now imagine them happening at the same time. That is literally what you taste. The greek yogurt doesn't transform into any sort of creamy goodness (...actually it curdled), the cheese doesn't melt into the yogurt, and the pasta doesn't absorb any of it. I'm telling you right now, unless you love greek yogurt SO MUCH that you would eat it on hot pasta, do not make this recipe. It is a lie.

1.) THIS FREAKING BREAD RECIPE

This picture from the website is absolutely ridiculous. That is NOT what this recipe looks like. I wish I had taken a picture of the flat, pale, and bland monstrosity that this recipe actually was for me. I've alluded to this recipe a number of times, but now I'm going to set the record straight. I've had questionable luck with bread recipes in the past, often because of impatience, faulty equipment, or bad circumstances. But in all other instances, regardless of texture or appearance, they've all at least tasted good. So I thought HEY maybe this recipe will work. HOO BOY WAS I WRONG.

FIRST OF ALL the amount of kneading specified in the recipe is so downplayed. I literally kneaded for a half an hour. Ask my roommates, I was getting REAL MAD in the kitchen trying to get this dough to form. I mean--come on. Give me a time frame of how long it takes for me to knead this bread. I was expecting 10-15 minutes, NOT 30-40. And yes, I was supposed to knead it for that long. The texture of the bread wound up being pretty great. WHICH IS A DAMN SHAME because

SECOND OF ALL this bread had LITERALLY. NO. FLAVOR. I didn't think that bread could be flavorless. I could not comprehend the idea of bread tasting like NOTHING. LIKE AIR. Especially with the amount of time I spent working with that freaking poolish. My roommate commented that it was "like eating hot water in bread form". GAH. I literally spent an ENTIRE DAY making this freaking bread. What a mess. I had to call it quits for a while after making this recipe, because I was so traumatized. BUT I WON'T GIVE UP! BACK IN THE SADDLE!!

How about you? Have you ever had any major failures in the kitchen? Let me know in the comments!