We all have bad days in the kitchen. Even the most experienced amongst us. Yes, I have a food blog and am passionate about being in the kitchen creating new dishes all the time, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have mishaps, disasters or outright fails in the kitchen.

Luckily they don’t happen too often and I can laugh at myself after the fact. Just the other day I was frying poppadoms and not concentrating on the task when oil splashed on my arm. Lesson learned. Always pay attention and BE CAREFUL when working with hot oil. Now I’m sporting burn marks on my forearms that will take a while to disappear.

Another flop I’ll always remember is the time I made éclairs and they didn’t rise. In fact they were basically pancakes. Now I know to check the freshness of my eggs by cracking them into a bowl first and not adding directly into a cake mixture.

I asked some friends to share their kitchen fails with me and they were happy to oblige. Read them here and then email me with your funny kitchen/cooking stories and you’ll be published in the next edition of Kitchen Catastrophes.

Rushni starts us off with a velvet tale.

The first time I tried my hand at baking alone I decided to make red velvet cupcakes. I did the separate mixing bowls and just getting the right colour red. In my mind everything was going really well. They even baked so beautifully, rising so pretty in true cupcake style.

When I took them out of the oven they looked so cute and I was super proud. I set them out to cool down and after about 5 minutes I came to check on them and my beautifully risen cupcakes were flat on top. I panicked a bit but then thought this could be saved with the sour cream frosting. So I looked at the instructions for the recipe and followed it exactly like they said I should. I took my whole tub of cottage cheese added the icing sugar and my frosting wasn’t exactly firming up. It was completely runny like water. I called my mom and she explained that I had to make the frosting bit by bit and not add everything in at the same time.

By doing it bit by bit I would have gotten the right consistency. So I had all of this and what did I do then? Well a friend said the same thing had happened to her so she just dipped the peaks of her cupcakes in the frosting. I naturally did the same except my cupcakes had no peaks and were completely flat. They ended up looking like little Reeses peanut butter cups except they were red and white. Needless to say I have never baked Red Velvet cupcakes again. – Rushni

It would seem flour is not Tina’s friend.

Kitchen Fail 1: I was trying to make pancakes, but I substituted normal flour with rice flour, and the pancake didn’t just break and flaked everywhere when I was trying to fry it. A million pieces of sad goodness.

Kitchen Fail 2: Tried to make falafel things with stuffed insides. And I put loads of flour to try and get the falafel to stick together. After frying it for 15 min, I assumed it was done but it was really just very squishy inside… and tasted like raw flour that wanted to be a falafel – Tina

That time a South African staple sizzled too much

I’m married to a pastry chef – and therein lies the pleasure and the pain. While I’m treated to the amazing things he can dream up at the mere whisk of his spatula, the pressure is always on when I need to cook.  Lacking the necessary skills, I often resort to frying things up and to my embarrassment when I attempted to make the simplest of boeries, I ended up burning it.

All my husband could do was shake his head asking, ‘how on earth do you burn sausage!? – Selene (Editor’s note: Selene tells me all boeries she made after that were delicious.)

Sometimes it’s so bad even a dog won’t eat your food.

I cooked some scrambled eggs but tried to be creative. I decided to add brown vinegar, mayonnaise and paprika to the eggs. I thought it would be delicious. It wasn’t. It couldn’t go to waste so I thought I’d give it to my dog Shasha. But Shasha wouldn’t eat it. – Allie (Editor’s note: DO NOT TRY THIS RECIPE. EVER. )