This year's mishaps (err... adventures) in the kitchen

It might seem like I always cook beautifully delicious meals and desserts for my Business Man... that he must be the luckiest man in the world to live in this household. (Well, he is, but not due to the food. He's lucky because he gets to live with me!)


The beauty of writing a blog is that I get to choose what goes on the blog. So what if I only choose to post the recipes that are deliciously successful?


So, I thought I'd go back through the pictures & recipes that didn't make it on the blog this year... at least we can all have a good laugh?


First up is a peanut butter-caramel corn... for which I had high hopes. I was in charge of bringing snacks to Bible study that night, and thought that peanut butter-caramel corn would be just perfect.

Until the peanut butter-caramel mixture got all crunchy and wouldn't spread over the popcorn. Huge clumps of peanut butter amidst random popcorn pieces. Gross. I was lucky we had a brownie mix in the cabinet.

Next up were some buffalo chicken nachos. The idea was good, but something was just off. Maybe the bleu cheese was old? Kinda reminded me of smelly socks. And yes, we still ate them. What else were we supposed to eat for dinner?

Bourbon pecan pie brownies. I was so excited for these. I'm hoping my only problem was that I under-baked them. Yes, doughy is good, but not when they are glued to the pan. These were nearly impossible to remove (note: the picture is while they were still in the pan because they wouldn't come out!), but that didn't stop me from scraping them over bowls of ice cream.

And then we have the cinnamon toast crunch cupcakes. Cinnamon cupcakes with cinnamon toast crunch folded into the batter... sounds good, right? Except for the fact that the cereal got completely soggy. Especially the cereal pieces on top. And I even took these in for my students... and later found 6 cupcakes in the trash. Sorry guys.

Baked barbecue chicken mac & cheese. I need to try this again. While it looks great, it didn't taste great. The sauce was grainy; the chicken was dry. What a waste of good cheese.

 Then there was the time I got all excited to make cake pops in a new flavor - carrot cake.

And then the balls sat on the tray in the fridge for a week until I finally threw them away.

This summer I tried to make a spicy pasta salad with smoked gouda. It photographed beautifully - but the flavor? Meh. Maybe it was the whole wheat pasta. It was just very bland. Another waste of delicious cheese. (I may or may not have picked all the cheese chunks out...)

Oh, and I can't forget about the time when I tried to 'improvise' my way through Better than Crack Brownies from How Sweet It Is using only the ingredients I had on hand. Word to the wise - go out and buy the right ingredients. Definitely worth it.

And whatever you do, don't mix up the butter wrapper into the brownie batter. Bad idea.

Not only was there frozen pizza, but there was burnt frozen pizza.

And the croutons... I'm sorry croutons. It's just that I didn't realize that if I went outside and shut the door, I wouldn't be able to hear the oven timer going off. You died a painful death.

And while this salad looks super cute in the trendy white bowl with the precious label, it was NASTY! Some things just aren't meant to be... sweet potato salad being one of them.

And there we have it. A wrap-up of my mistakes in the kitchen this year. Now I'm off to redeem myself by attempting homemade marshmallows. Wish me luck.