How not to bake

[Bloodybridget]

Decided to make brownies for a pudding tomorrow night. Very simple recipe.

I melted the butter and sugar on too high a temperature; most of the sugar was little hard lumps. Beat it ineffectually with a spoon for a while, then put it through a colander, then returned the lumpy sugar to the saucepan and bashed it with the potato masher for as long as I could manage.

Added the beaten eggs to the lumpy butter and sugar mixture, then realised I hadn't melted the chocolate (which should have been added to warm butter and sugar but . . ). Use the microwave, I thought, but determined not to make it seize. 10 seconds on low, another 10, 10 on medium, repeat, 30 on medium. It was then melted enough for me to stir it for a while and complete the job.

Adding the chocolate to the mixture, I knocked the egg box which was on the table, one egg fell to the floor. Of course it broke; did you need to wonder?

Brownies will be out of the oven in a minute. I reckon at best they will feature bits of crunchy sugar.

Beat that for sheer incompetence!

Naturally I broke the whole thing in half getting it out of the tray, and they're undercooked.

Never mind OP - go buy yourself a nice dessert for tomorrow night.
Too early for wine?

Oh dear, OP, full marks for perseverance and I hope they were still edible!
You reminded me of a poem from the 1950’s:

The bride’s first cake:

She whisked the eggs and sugar
With a very solemn air
The milk and butter also
And she took the greatest care
To add the baking powder (which beginners often omit.)
She mixed it all together and
She baked it for an hour.
But never quite forgave herself
For leaving out the flour!

I was just about to post about the cupcakes I made without any flour in and then I read that poem @Babdoc !!

I have also made a cake (carrot) without flour!

StepladderToHeaven, I confess I can surpass that - I once made carrot muffins without the carrots!
I vaguely wondered why there seemed to be much less mixture than usual, but it was only after they were in the oven that I spotted the bowl of pureed carrots still on the worktop!
I grabbed them out of the oven half cooked, and tried to belatedly beat the carrots in but you can imagine the result…

Ahh you got further than I would.

I love the 'just add water' baked goods at the shops .

Brownies stay undercooked in the middle, and stay in the pan until they're cold, OP. There was no way of getting them out without breaking it.

Sounds like a messy, but educational start. They will taste delicious anyway.

Are you not just supposed to melt the butter without sugar, then mix in the sugar? Melting sugar sounds a bit hazardous for brownies!

Yes melt the butter then mix it with the sugar to a slurry.

Op just buy some vanilla ice cream and dollop the brownies on top, top with whipped cream and a bit of coacoa if you’re being fancy.

What recipe did you use @Bloodybridget?

My yd loves baking but she has a knack of the outside of the cake being cooked but the middle still being raw! I tend to leave her to it so no idea what she's doing wrong (temp too low or not long enough I suspect) She does make some amazing vanilla biscuits though.

You never know how they'll turn out. I made gluten free banana cake last weekend and forgot to put in the butter. And it rose properly and tasted great, so I now have a recipe for fat-free gluten free banana cake.

OOh, OP, that could have been me!

I recently carefully weighed all the ingredients for a loaf in the bread maker, put them in, in the right order, chose the right programme, switched on and in the fullest of time smelt the usual gorgeous baking bread smell. Programme finished, I went eagerly to the machine, lifted the lid and. Found - gloop. Why didn’t I remember to put in the paddle?

It was a BBC recipe @longtompot. I have made brownies many times before, mostly successfully!
@picklemewalnuts I didn't have time to leave them to cool completely in the pan because I wanted to take some to my niece, whom I was meeting for lunch. Hopefully the ones at home will have solidified somewhat. I know some people like them very squidgy, but I don't.
@5zeds and @LadyCluck they will still be served tomorrow, I was planning to offer vanilla icecream too so they'll probably be ok.
@milian next time I will definitely melt the butter first! Or at least put it in the saucepan under the sugar, not the other way round.
Thanks to those who shared their baking failures!

@Nocaloriesinchocolate fantastic! Reminds me of all the times I've been surprised that my phone hasn't charged, before I realise it wasn't switched on at the socket.

Could’ve been worse Op, there was a Celebrity Bake Off contestant who put the buttercream into the oven, instead of the cake mix…

How about forgetting to add flour to a cake?! That was one weird tasting not-a-cake-by-any-definition cake! 🙈

I love that poem @Babdoc! My worst was getting confused at the butchers in Italy and confidently confirming I wanted ‘a whole chicken’ and discovering in an open kitchen said chicken had more feet and guts than I expected…just had to confidently keep smiling through the following 15 minutes of ‘oh jesus christ, oh god someone save me’.

I made lemon curd a while ago.

And left out the lemon juice.

Slothkin, when I was young, (long ago, dinosaurs still roamed etc) my local butcher was just like that.
A line of dead rabbits hung dripping from hooks over a sawdust floor. If you asked for a kidney to go with your steak, he opened his cold room and hacked a kidney out of a half sheep, gaily asking you if you wanted the suet left on it!
As for the rabbit - he would cut the head off if you asked him to, but you had to gut it yourself!
Life was very much “ in the raw” in those days - we had no supermarket with vacuum packed, neat portions of meat.

I must admit it would have been a very useful cooking lesson if I wasn’t attempting to be seductive at the same time Babdoc 😂 He did marry me though, so the sight of me pulling the burnt foot off a mangled chicken leg can’t have been too horrendous…

Aww, Slothkin, and they say romance is dead…!

Have a look at Jane's Patisserie triple chocolate brownies - she walks you through it step by step!