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Funny Baking Stories ....


Art

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Ok, I just heard a really funny baking story from my wife and so I just have to pass it along. I am sure that there are lots of other similar stories so please feel free to share yours.

This happened to a friend of my wife (relayed by a mutual friend).

Apparently, what happened is this... Her son was an Eagle Scout and all the parents of the Eagle Scouts were supposed to bring a cake for a cake decorating competition. Well, when she baked the cake, it fell and she didn't have time to bake another layer. She looked around for a solution and came up with what I guess could be called a creative one ... She stuffed the hole with paper towels and frosted over it. She decorated it elegantly with frosting and topped it off with a bouquet of flowers.

Well, the big night came and the father and son went off to the scouting event with the cake leaving the mother at home. They won. Since they had won, they were asked to share their cake with the rest of the scouts and their fathers. You can guess what happened.

When they came home, both father and son refused to talk to her for a month ! To this day, when it is her birthday, people from the area bring her a buckets of frosting along with roles of paper towels and ask her to bake them a cake. I suspect, she will never live it down.

Ok, what's your humorous story? (If it actually happened to you, you get bonus points but it should at least have happened to someone you know.)

-Art

Amano Artisan Chocolate

http://www.amanochocolate.com/

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I was mortified at the time, but can laugh about it now.......

A couple of years ago, I was trying to get more practice decorating cakes, and was therefore making cakes for every birthday in my office of 23 people. For a February birthday, I made a lovely chocolate cake, iced and elaborately decorated in chocolate buttercream, with scroll work on the sides, roses, and fancy borders. As it was February, I figured it would be safer to leave the cake in the cool of my car, rather than have it sit in my warm office for 6 hours before serving. It was a sunny day, so of course, when I went out to retrieve the cake after lunch, all of the piped decorations had melted into a sticky mess. I managed to smooth everything out with a butter knife from the company kitchen and it tasted fine, but what a blow to my ego!!

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I have had a lot of baking disasters (like forgetting the sugar in 6 apple pies and taking them to a party) ... that is for sure ...The only funnyish story I can think of ..was the first time I made a yeast dough at the top of the world in Santa Fe. I did not know there was a difference when you go to that high an altitude in how yeast rises ...I live at sea level so I use a standard amt of yeast...

well my girls wanted cinnamon rolls so I made a HUGE batch of dough(you can never make too many cinnamon rolls for them that is for sure!) like I always do and went for a walk ..when I came back the BLOB had crawled out of my largest bowl... off the counter and across most of the kitchen floor ...it was still oozing when I walked in .....

the kids thought it was hysterical ....I had no idea!!!!

now I use half the yeast for every recipe and stand by watching it !!!

Edited by hummingbirdkiss (log)
why am I always at the bottom and why is everything so high? 

why must there be so little me and so much sky?

Piglet 

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One of the places I used to work had 2 pie doughs, a pate sucree and a regular pie dough. One morning I was feeling energetic and decided to make my staff quiche with mushrooms, spinach and cheese. It would have been much better if I'd remembered that the "regular" pie dough had a pound of brown sugar in the recipe. Tasted pretty weird.

If only I'd worn looser pants....

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Years ago, before I started my bakery, I baked specialty cakes from my home. A woman had ordered a cake for her husband's big 40th birthday bash. White cake with lemon curd filling and buttercream frosting. It was a triple layer halfsheet cake. I spent all day and night making it. My son, 4 years old, loved to see the finished products. He was outside with my husband when I loaded the cake into the back of our station wagon. I went into the house to get my purse and keys, and as I started for the door, my son ran in breathlessly, saying "Mommy, I hurt the cake!" He was really upset. I figured he had put his finger into the cake to taste the frosting. I told him not to worry, I could fix it. He said, "Mommy, no, I really hurt the cake!" and started to cry. I went outside to find the cakebox on the driveway, and the cake lying in an enormous, crumpled heap. My son had pulled the box out to look at the cake. My heart sank. My husband, who was supposed to be watching my son, was sitting in a chair reading the newspaper. Fortunately, the woman throwing the party had a good sense of humor. I was able to make cupcakes in time for the party. And I didn't charge her a cent.

Edited by etalanian (log)

Eileen Talanian

HowThe Cookie Crumbles.com

HomemadeGourmetMarshmallows.com

As for butter versus margarine, I trust cows more than chemists. ~Joan Gussow

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This is kind of a funny baking story in a savory kind of way. And it's bad that I'm ratting out my husband, but this is really funny. As a baker, you know you have a thousand big & little bags of unidentified white powder. (Honest, Officer, it's flour!)

So this kind of highlights the occupational hazard of being married to a baker. But so my poor husband was frying catfish and he thought he had a bag of flour. It was the damnedest tasting catfish. I mean the guy can cook but this stuff was weeeird. He breaded it in confectioner's sugar.

Just to be fair, I left the salt out of a huge batch of bread once, 100's of loaves. See but that's not funny. Catfish breaded in powdered sugar, that's funny!

:laugh::laugh:

Edited by K8memphis (log)
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I guess this applies to baking: I am from the south, and as most of you know, sweet potatoes are a staple here. My husband John is from Scotland, and had never before tasted sweet potatoes. In Scotland, white potatoes are the staple, and he would eat them at every meal and does when I don't cook. Anyway, a few years ago, I brought home some sweet potatoes to bake for him-just simple and plain with butter was my plan. When I came in from wherever I'd been, he had decided to stuff them the way you do white potatoes. He was concocting a stuffing of butter, sour cream, broccoli and, yes, even green onions and bacon bits on top. on top. :blink: I gently tried to warn him that this would end badly, but he was happy with his plan, and dug in. At first bite, he seemed to think everything was okay. After that, I swear I think I saw him turn green. He actually gagged down the whole monstosity because his Celtic pride dictated that he must. I tease him about it occasionally when I serve him sweet potatoes, and to this day, he can't see the humor in it. :laugh::laugh::laugh:

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Three stories ...

In a cooking class I took years ago, we were broken up into groups and had to make chocolate chip cookies. One of the other groups misunderstood that "1 1/4 cups flour" meant 1 AND 1/4 cup flour. They only used 1/4 cup flour. Needless to say, their sheet cookie wasn't, um, exactly what the instructor had wanted.

My cousin decided to bring brownies to a summer family picnic using one of those very old family recipes that was handwritten in like 1904 and just barely legible. The recipe called for "an egg", but she misread it as "8 eggs". To add just another level of misfortune, she had decided to triple the recipe in order to make enough brownie batter. It didn't strike her as odd that she was going to need two dozen eggs to make 3 batches of brownies until she broke her ninth egg.

And finally, myself. I had an early penchant for baking and would often go through my mother's Betty Crocker cookbook growing up and try new recipes. I decided that I wanted to surprise my mother with a batch of divinity -- light and creamy candy. The recipe called for light corn syrup. Having none, I made the assumption that corn syrup and corn oil MUST be the same thing. Oddly enough, the candies sort of came together. I was beaming with pride until my mother (bless her heart) managed to choke one down and followed up with the question, "Um, what did you use to make these?"

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Baking for a friend's newborn's baptism party I used a baloon to sculpt a chocolate cup as a decoration for my cake....

This was last summer, it was hot! In the car on my way to the party my wife had the cake on her lap. Whenever the sun hit the cup on top of the cake directly, you could actually see it start to melt!

I must have been a funny sight, manouvering and jumping from shadow to shadow from the parking lot into the building where the party was. I also tried to shield the cake from the sun using my body, walking "backwards" .-)

I have almost no experience in baking cakes, and I would never had thought that my chocolate decoration would be so voulnerable to direct sunlight :-)

It also belongs to the story that my first atempt at the cake ended up on the floor.... This was well documented here on eGullet

Edited by glennbech (log)
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Thanks to my mischievous 5 year old baking helper, I accidentally baked three metal measuring spoons in a bundt cake last week. :wacko: What a surprise I got when I cut into it! They were actually arranged very artfully, in even points around the cake, standing vertically. She never confessed, just giggled madly whenever questioned....little nutcase!

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Thanks to my mischievous 5 year old baking helper, I accidentally baked three metal measuring spoons in a bundt cake last week.  :wacko:  What a surprise I got when I cut into it!  They were actually arranged very artfully, in even points around the cake, standing vertically.  She never confessed, just giggled madly whenever questioned....little nutcase!

This is hilarious! :laugh:

May

Totally More-ish: The New and Improved Foodblog

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Last night, inspired by the discovery of some saffron I'd forgotten I had, and the receipt of a gift of some preserved lemons, I sat down at my computer and Googled up a recipe for English Saffron Bread.

The recipe went together very well. I omitted the (optional) currants, and used finely diced preserved lemon in place of rind. I had to add a little extra flour, but it did ptoduce a nice smooth dough.

Since my kitchen is located just off the garage, it can be quite drafty in the winter so I use my electric oven as a proofing box. I turn it on for about 45 seconds, then leaving the light on holds the temperature at right around eighty degrees.

I checked after about twenty-five minutes and thought the dough was rising too slowly, so I decided to give it a warm-up. I clicked the oven on, and went to let my dogs outside.

A few minutes later I smelled not "The exotic scents of saffron and lemon will fill your kitchen", as predicted by the recipe header, but .... burning plastic! :shock:

I rushed to the kitchen, hoping it maybe it was just the plastic "shower-cap" bowl cover melting, and it wasn't too late to save the bread! No such luck. The plastic bowl itself had melted around the dough ball and was beginning to drip down the racks. :sad:

The good news, aside from not having started a fire, is that I'd only made one half the recipe, (one loaf), so I have enough saffron left to try again. Not tonite though. I have to clean the oven. :wink:

SB (it was a lovely color too! :rolleyes:

Edited by srhcb (log)
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Several years ago I was doing an "edible science" topic with my students (aged 9-12 years old). On this particular day they were in small groups of two or three following written instructions to make ice cream.

Each group had a small ziplock bag, a large ziploc, ice, salt and milk sugar etc to make the mixture. The idea being that the mixture was zipped into the small bag which was then placed in the large one with the salt and ice, and then given a good shake. I'm sure you can guess where I'm heading here...

One group (just one!) got ahead of themselves, didn't bother reading all of the directions and poured their icecream mix over the ice and salt. They didn't even observe what the other groups were doing and had no idea they'd messed up until they actually tasted the very salty icecream. You should have seen their faces. :shock::blink::shock:

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  • 2 weeks later...
Last night, inspired by the discovery of some saffron I'd forgotten I had, and the receipt of a gift of some preserved lemons, I sat down at my computer and Googled up a recipe for English Saffron Bread.

.....

A few minutes later I smelled not "The exotic scents of saffron and lemon will fill your kitchen", as predicted by the recipe header, but .... burning plastic! :shock:

I rushed to the kitchen, hoping it maybe it was just the plastic "shower-cap" bowl cover melting, and it wasn't too late to save the bread!  No such luck.  The plastic bowl itself had melted around the dough ball and was beginning to drip down the racks. :sad:

The good news, aside from not having started a fire, is that I'd only made one half the recipe, (one loaf), so I have enough saffron left to try again.  Not tonite though. I have to clean the oven.  :wink: 

Undaunted by my prior experience, I tried making this bread again last night, with a few modifications to the recipe based on my previous attempt, and produced a very nice bread which I've named: Saffron Lemon Bread (sans plastique fondu), thus proving the old adage: "If at first you don't succeed, clean the oven and try agian".

SB :rolleyes: )

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  • 2 weeks later...

I have forgotten sugar in my baked goods more times than I can count on two hands. This is so ironic, because the name of my bakery is "sugar.". There's this one lemon tart recipe in particular, that I forget sugar in almost every time. The result is a dry, cracked, coagulated yellow mess that tastes like sour patch kids. And then there was the blueberry muffins that ended up in a glutenous mess (I thought they looked dry so tried to add more sour cream). It's gotten to the point that people who share kitchen space with me put up little signs around my workspace to "don't forget the sugar". Pretty funny.

Stephanie Crocker

Sugar Bakery + Cafe

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