16 Cooking Fails That Made People Wish They’d Just Ordered Pizza

Cooking is an unpredictable thing. Even simple recipes can turn into a disaster if the ingredients, mood, or oven decide to conspire against you. But it’s from these very stories that the funniest photos and jokes are born. In this article, you’ll find 16 cooking fails that can make you want to both cry and laugh at the same time.

• When we were in our first year living in the dormitory, we took turns cooking. I came back from classes, feeling very hungry. The girl on duty said, “I made pilaf.” Sounds great! I put some on my plate, tasted it, but it was just rock hard.
  It turned out she had fried the meat and vegetables, added rice, fried it again, but didn’t add any water. We had to cook the “pilaf” for another hour, and meanwhile, I just ate bread with mayonnaise and drank sweet tea. We ate all kinds of things in the dorm. © LudmilkaTomsk / Pikabu
• As a teenager, I got a job. Before leaving, I put some meat on to boil and forgot to turn the hob off. By lunchtime, I returned home, and there... was just an enormous number of flies. We lived in a house that was on the edge of the forest.
  I don’t know where so many flies came from! Green, fat, garbage flies. But they were everywhere. They were getting tangled in my hair, flying into my ears, nose, and eyes, there were so many on the window panes that it was dark inside.
  In a panic, I called my dad at work, “Daaaaad! There are flies here, come!” When he came, he grabbed his head, threw open the windows and doors, got out the vacuum cleaner, and just started vacuuming them up while I ran around whacking with a towel. © irmiz / Pikabu

“I baked a funfetti*.”

“I tried to make it blue, but the sprinkles bled and turned it cement-gray.”

*Funfetti is a sponge cake where colorful sprinkles are added directly to the batter. When baked, they melt, resulting in a cake with “confetti” inside, full of bright colorful specks in the slice.

• Once, my friend and I decided to make hot chocolate. The recipe included cocoa, starch, milk, and sugar. She mixed up the bags and poured kefir instead of milk. Waste not, want not — we decided to make chocolate pancakes out of it, added flour.
  We plopped it on the pan and remembered that the starch was added even before the kefir. We didn’t dare to try it, so we threw it away. © FaenirMorne / Pikabu

“My attempt to make a vegan cheesecake”

• Recently, I decided to try my hand at cooking. Previously, culinary arts didn’t really attract me, but something clicked, and I decided to make dinner for the whole family. I took on the recipe for lasagna, thinking I’d definitely cope with this popular dish. I prepared all the ingredients and carefully followed the recipe.
  When it came to assembling the layers, I started with the sauce and... that’s when everything went wrong. The sauce turned out too watery, and the pasta sheets just started floating in it. I tried to salvage the situation by adding more cheese, but that only made it worse — everything became sticky and unappetizing.
  In the end, instead of a delicious dinner, I ended up with something no one in the family wanted to eat. But despite the failure, I wasn’t upset — it was a lesson that cooking requires patience and experience. Next time, it will definitely turn out better. © Palata 6 / VK
• Tried to make a fire truck cake for my son’s birthday. Foolishly used a silicon cake pan and probably filled it too full. The cake batter overflowed the pan and spilled onto the bottom of the oven, leaving a misshapen, half cooked hunk of cake for the main body of the fire truck. He had a nice store-bought cake that year. © mgov999 / Reddit

“The cake was picked up by the groom’s father on the wedding day.”

“If I had gone myself, I would have honestly asked for a simple strawberry sponge cake and some of my money back. Probably the ugliest cake I’ve ever seen.”

• I understand that you’re upset, but I find it quite funny, and I hope that in the future you will look back on this with a smile. It looks like a character from a Wes Anderson movie. © 123hop / Reddit

• My beloved grandma came over and decided to make dinner while my boyfriend and I were at work. We’re sitting there enjoying some chicken with potatoes under cheese, and then for some reason, I felt an urge to ask her, “Grandma, did you go to the store? Not everything was at home, right?”
  “Well, I got the chicken at the market, but you had the rest.” “And the cheese?” At this moment, my boyfriend turns pale. “Yes, I found a piece in the fridge wrapped in paper, it was dry and kept breaking, don’t buy it again.”
  So, in short, Grandma baked the chicken with Parmesan that’s $150 per kilo. © Overheard / Ideer
• The other day, I made compote for the first time in my life. It seemed to turn out incredibly delicious, great for a first try. Why “seemed”? Because I never actually tasted it.
  I decided that the compote needed to be strained, since no one was going to eat the fruit anyway. I put the strainer right in the sink and poured the compote in. Then I stood there for a long time, staring at the strainer, pondering... By the way, the fruit was pretty good. © Palata № 6 / VK

“Made a unicorn cake for my little cousin.”

Photo “expectation vs reality”

• Oh my God! I laughed so hard. Do you take orders? I want such a cake for my next birthday. © Lady_Dont_Tek_No / Reddit

• This was before I learned how to cook. One of my friends asked me to butter the bottom of the pan, so I did just that. I buttered the underside of the pan and set it on the stove... © timeisnomatter / Reddit
• Once, I decided to surprise my friends with a dinner using the most complex recipe I found on the Internet. During the cooking process, it turned out that I had mixed up sugar with salt, making the dish completely inedible.
  When the guests tried the first course, their faces stretched. I barely held back laughter and confessed my mistake.
  In the end, we decided to cook something together and finally made pizza. We spent the entire evening laughing about my culinary failure, and it became our tradition — to cook together while watching me hide the sugar. © Ward No. 6 / VK

“My kid literally called it a monster and wouldn’t even sit at the table with us so long as it was there.”

• It happened during my first year in college when I was living with a friend. My mom brought a whole bag of groceries and quickly left without much explanation. After unpacking the bag, we found a bunch of food and a plastic bag with something white.
  A couple of days later, classmates were expected to visit, and I decided to bake a charlotte. The dough was very difficult to mix — it became very stiff, and I could barely stir it. After somehow shoving this wonder into the oven, we met our friends. The charlotte tasted terribly bitter, and after picking out the apples, we threw it away.
  When I told my mom about this over the weekend, her face changed, and she cried out in horror, “That wasn’t flour! That was wallpaper adhesive for you to stick up the wallpaper!” © Overheard / Ideer

Wife gifted me with this absolute banger today.

“I ate 2 more plates. For the most curious: white beans, butternut purée, and hard-boiled egg.”

• What did you do? Tell us so we won’t do it. © Unable_Celebration64 / Reddit

Admit it, watching others’ mistakes is always more fun than dealing with your own. But each failure like this is also a reminder that in the end, we are all human. Write in the comments: what moment from your culinary practice still brings a smile to your face?

And here are more culinary experiments that are more comical than delicious.