It is safe to say that cooking is a quintessential part of adulting. When attempting a new dish, even having the best intentions, we still run the risk of being a dismal failure. It is essential to keep in mind that developing delicious recipes requires a significant amount of practice and experimentation.
These are some disasters that you won't want to replicate, but you will want to laugh at. Unluckily for these individuals, the majority of the outcomes result in laugh-out-loud stories. Do you want to find out exactly how severely you can screw up in the kitchen?
These are the things any chef or mother would dread seeing. Take a look at these kitchen horrors!
A Failed Mission
First of all, the state of the oven must be addressed before we can even talk about those candy corn cookies. This kitchen has yet to get the TLC required to look acceptable, to say the least. One thing is certain—you can count on being let down if you try to whip up this quick and easy candy corn concoction.
Without context clues, this image is utterly puzzling. Who would have thought this piece's creator was supposed to be candy corn? The idea is to bake a kernel for each piece, but this seems like a kindergartener’s depiction of a cob.
That Is A No On The Sushi
Who doesn’t like sushi? This delicate dish is supposed to be crafted with lots of care by a master sushi chef, but looking at this picture, it does not look appetizing at all, to say the least. The creator must be trying a new internet trend, but for obvious reasons, this is a no from us.
There is a distinct lack of freshness in both the sushi and the lemon. The placement on top of the champagne flute is not the elegant detail this chef had in mind. It would certainly look more delectable if it had been placed on a small plate.
That Looks Like Something Else
This picture makes anyone's imagination run wild because it looks like it belongs somewhere in your garden or local baseball pitch, don’t you agree? It seems like it could be tough to bite into these ugly balls of coal.
I don't see how they let something as simple as these little garlic rolls become so charred. For anyone who aspires to bake at all, it’s a wise decision to buy a watch or set a timer so that you know when it's time to stop and avoid having to eat scorched balls of ash.
A Wet Blanket Is Never Good
Everyone loves the party classic pigs in a blanket. It is the go-to dish for potluck parties. For one, it is easy to prepare—and best of all, they can be made in batches. This treat should be simple enough for an amateur to bake, but we also think we might’ve just been proven wrong.
This horrendous rendition of the classic comfort food dish is a total failure, to say the least. Who knew that cozy jams and hams could explode in their blankets? Just look at the picture and tell us who in their right mind would be taking a bite of these pastries.
Adult Cookies?
There are many things to consider when baking cookies. However, we think that the person who made these should have taken into consideration the consistency of their recipe when choosing an intricate and delicate cookie cutter shape like this.
These are the worst bunch of lighthouse cookies we’ve ever seen. Or Space Needle cookies. Okay, we admit we don’t know what the cookie cutter is supposed to be—but thanks to the burgeoning outcome of this batch, we’ll never know.
Scary Meat-Head
When calling someone a meathead, you might have something slightly different in mind than this atrocious dish. This head is meaty, alright—but something is unnerving about eating a fleshy face straight out of the oven. That said, it would make a great addition to any Halloween-themed party—as it is undoubtedly terrifying.
The smile on this “face” looks creepy, and the bacon strips all over it make it look like it was meant to be a mummy that was raised from its tomb, ready to pounce on anyone. This should come with a warning when served on a platter.
Mary Baked A Little Lamb
This failure made us chuckle. It is supposed to look like a cute lamb, maybe the one that Mary lost, and definitely not like a fluffy cloud that got squished and stuck into a plate of sticky butter. Not anyone can follow simple instructions from a cookbook, it seems.
Or this is another example of false advertising. The next time you would like a cute little edible lamb, go for the store-bought option instead of wasting resources on something that looks like an alien pile of cheddar-cheese popcorn.
A Plan B, Anyone?
Just by looking at this picture, you can tell that a storm somehow got into the kitchen and left a huge mess. That storm was put in charge of dinner and, during the course of cooking, let loose with full ferocity. The level of destruction on display here is—quite frankly—impressive.
We have no idea how someone could mess up their kitchen so much. But, assuming it was in part due to a faulty stovetop, the result is nonetheless shocking. If this is how the kitchen looked before the food was served, we can’t imagine what the food looked like.
Spicy Spaghetti
Before judging the cook, let us look at the bright side. The flames—they are very bright. This cook probably didn’t quite understand what their doctor meant by “burning carbs.” Or maybe they’re trying to burn carbs in their own way. Whatever it is, it sure doesn’t look safe.
Those carbs didn’t stand a chance. They were incinerated before they could even reach anyone’s tummy. Remember: if you’re ever making spaghetti and the pasta bursts into flames, it’s probably better that you never try to cook again—for your safety and the safety of those around you.
Hang In There!
That’s one way to cook your kebabs. It is not the recommended way of doing it, but who cares? We’re sure that cooking them with a hanger should work out just fine. As long as your meat is tender and juicy by the time you eat it, the means justify the end, right?
A convenient hook is an excellent tool for achieving a nice and consistent grilling temperature. When you are finished, clean off the grease, and then just put them back where they belong in your closet. Nobody will ever be the wiser! (we’re joking, of course—never try this at home).
One Minute Mug Cake Gone Wrong
Whoever said that baking is more like a science than an art? It’s easy and fun! We love watching people attempting to bake. This microwave mug cake was supposed to be easy and fun. Everyone on TikTok is doing it! But in the end, it turned into a disaster.
This picture looks like a science experiment gone awry. What is baking but a few compound elements mixed and put through high temperatures in the hope of receiving an edible outcome? To put a positive spin on things, look at this failure as a messy learning experience.
Bread Maker Disaster
The beauty of a breadmaker is its automation. You put all the ingredients in a pot at night, click the button, and wait for a freshly baked loaf of bread when you wake up in the morning—right? This freshly baked bread was supposed to get washed down with a cup of coffee.
Well, that was the plan. Instead, this disaster occurred. It looks like a bread ghost burrowed through the entire loaf from top to bottom. No more waking up to the smell of freshly baked bread. There must have been something wrong with the ingredients.
Sapange Boab
Imagine it's your child’s birthday party—it’s time to blow out the candles, everyone has been looking forward to that birthday cake, and you come out holding—this. Spongebob? What happened to you? It doesn’t even look like a bootleg version of the cartoon. It’s just terrifying.
The poor Spongebob looks like a prisoner who has just emerged from a smoldering flame dungeon dimension. His eyes are wickedly smudged, and the straws holding the arms and legs look like some kind of torture device. He doesn’t just look dehydrated. He looks like he just came out of a black hole.
Frightening The Baby
Gender reveal parties are getting popular these days. And before the gender is revealed, it can get tricky as to what gift to bring to the soon-to-be-born child, as so many toys and colors are gendered. It seems ridiculous that one has to worry about such things. The question remains. When you don’t know the gender of the child, what colors should you choose for the cake?
The person who made this cake certainly would not want to offend anyone by being the one to reveal the gender of the baby, so they went for the most gender-neutral colors—yellow and green. Not only that, but they didn’t want to imply the baby would also look human, either. What is this zoomorphic figure supposed to imply?
Alcohol Doesn’t Mix Well With This Dish
The culprit of this crime is standing proud and tall in the back of the picture. How else would someone forget the party snacks in the oven if it weren’t for someone already in “party mode?” Alcohol paired with some dishes is good—especially when well paired. In this case, not so much.
Nothing else except that bottle of champagne on the counter could explain it. A bottle of champagne might be good for toasts, but it wreaks havoc when imbibed in excess. Now that supper is ruined, they could just dine out instead—only as long as they take a taxi.
Mama Mia, What A Disaster!
Italian grandmothers everywhere would be rolling on their graves if they ever saw this disaster. Did no one tell this chef to place a tray under the pizza to keep it from collapsing? If they still want pizza, they should probably order it instead.
This was meant to be a nice meal, but instead, it ended at the bottom of the oven. Is it too soon to say that this little mess will be hard to clean, as well? Maybe take it one step at a time. Let the family worry about their next meal first since this one quite literally fell through.
When Did We Start Cooking Forks?
Absent-minded cooks should not be allowed in the kitchen. It is hazardous for the people in the house and those eating the dish. This is a waste of perfect cutlery and definitely a hazard for anyone crazy enough to cook again using this pan.
It should be left unsaid but do not leave your forks with plastic handles on the burner while cooking—this will result in the ruining of your pan and your child’s favorite fork. The luminescent green stain will remain forever as a reminder that attention is key while working in the kitchen.
Fresh Sushi
Ah, sushi—the easiest dish to ruin and the easiest to misinterpret. In essence, it is a simple task: fish over rice. But then come the questions, such as: should it necessarily be “raw” fish? This picture certainly looks like they are trying to make whoever they’re serving to laugh or hiss.
This person has shown, without a doubt, that the closest they can get to producing sushi is a bed of rice topped with an object shaped like fish. Our thanks go out to whoever thought to incorporate that dab of wasabi on the side of the plate.
A Green Troll In The Kitchen
There is a troll in the kitchen. You might want to scream at the sight of this baby green troll—we wouldn’t blame you. We only hope that this is delicious as it is unsettling. The little guy seems pleased with himself as he demonstrates a smile despite being cooked in the oven for quite some time.
The small green troll has a diaper pastry on him, suggesting that he is just a baby. Whoever concocted this spinach kid must have a good sense of humor, and for goodness sake, we also hope they have good taste for everyone having to take a bite off him.
Opposites Attract
The idea was to make these cookies look like the yin and yang, but it did not pan out that way. The baker used a bit too much rising flour on this cookie, and now it doesn’t look the way it should. In fact, it looks pretty much bonkers.
Although the cookies might have a pleasing flavor, they look as though they are desperately trying to escape one another. Better to practice the correct ingredient quantities before bringing them out to light. Things can only get better from here!
Not Quite The Mermaid
Comparing the cake to the reference picture and the difference is like night and day. The cake looks like it was drawn by a five-year-old. Ariel deserves better than that; she is one of the original Disney princesses. This red-haired princess needs a makeover.
Attempting to imitate Ariel's voluminous red hair with a sprinkling of baby-pink frosting won't do the job. This face isn't even worth discussing. No need to go out of your way; a simple chocolate cake will do. That's a safe bet that won't ever let you down.
Demonic Hotpot
We simply can’t make out what kind of dish this was meant to be. We can see that someone made a successful hot molten lava fitting for an end-of-the-world party. It looks hot enough to burn the roof of your mouth—and your entire body—if you aren’t careful.
This takes the words “hot meal” to a different level. It is a good thing that they could move this out of the stove when they did because the pot would have erupted like a volcano if it had been heated any longer. The question is, what exactly were they using to cook? A baby star?
Chonky Hoss
Cookie cutters are a bit of a gamble. Sometimes they work out, but there are times that they overwhelmingly fail. Take the picture below, for example. This was meant to be a cookie-cutter masterpiece, and it ended up looking like a confused cloud at best.
This was supposed to resemble a wild horse trotting down a field, but it looks more like a bloated hippo from the way the cookie came out. We can’t abide this horse shaming. It should have turned out differently, but that being said, horses are notoriously difficult to depict in any kind of art.
Are Fairies Real?
The viral pancake challenge has exploded all over the internet, bringing forth a splurge of cartoon pancake facsimile attempts. Speaking of splurging, it looks like someone was attempting to make a goofy pancake muppet. Oh, this is Tinkerbell? We bet the child who got this for breakfast scratched their head in confusion too.
Tinkerbell turned into Tinkerblast, with its clumsy and deformed wings and wonky legs that are curved like tree trunks—and to top it off—the creepy eyes! Was this pancake Tinkerbell eaten? While we’re sure it was just food coloring, the green and yellow parts don’t exactly look appetizing.
A Close Encounter Of The Egg Kind
Eggs can be cooked in various dishes. It is very versatile, to say the least—and delicious when left in the capable hands of the chef. This dish is supposed to be a simple sunnyside-up egg but it kind of turned more like a scene from a science fiction movie.
This alien, rather than generating Alien-style eggs of its own, looks like the titular character from "E.T."—specifically, the part where he is linked up to equipment in the lab. Take this thing away from me right this second! I guess we could call this the close encounter of the egg kind.
That’s One Sharp Knife
One of the best parts of being a high-level chef is developing rad knife skills. Knife handling is something they cover in Cooking 101. It’s the first thing that they teach because it's one of the most-used skills in the kitchen. Plus, safety comes first!
Check out what happened to this delicate fish when this amateur chef cut it with a knife. We guess the cook here did not bother attending knife skills lessons. They are either really frustrated or just as strong as the hulk. Whoever this is had better calm down.
Rice Surprise
At first look, this looks like a cake with fondant icing, but upon closer inspection, it’s not. This cake has been in the rice cooker for far too long. It jumbled up into one clump. It also looks like it got a bit burnt on the bottom too.
We are curious to know if this rice is still edible. How are they going to sample it without it all breaking apart? If you are hungry enough, you probably wouldn’t mind breaking it down and gobbling the whole thing, but given the opportunity, we would pass this up.
The Tower Of Rice
Asian great-grandmothers everywhere would turn over their resting places if they could see this food sacrilege. If there is one thing that Asians should know, it is how to treat their rice right. Based on this picture, we would like to conclude that whoever cooked this is not Asian.
We are still determining how this even happened. Rice that has been overstuffed with water while cooking spills over the pot and will not rise that high. This picture must have involved some kind of photographic trickery, and we would like to know how they did it.
World's Worst Cookies
There is always room for dessert, but the notes beside the cookies might fill that gap with dread. You might rethink sampling one of these cookies after their creator branded them as the world's worst cookies with a note. Regardless, the message still asks the reader to “please take one.”
Do cookies feel pain? Maybe it’s the embarrassment of being called “the world's worst cookies,” but we don’t think that’s grounds enough to want to be eaten to death. This makes us rethink our decision to gobble up these seemingly innocuous treats. Maybe they have feelings, too.
Tough Cookies
Baking is a science. To create wonderful baked goods, you need to follow the correct procedures. You have to have precise measurements, the proper amount of time, and the right temperature. This illustrates a failed baking effort, which seems to have flopped in every category.
The end product? Clumpy cookies that had been overbaked to the point that they are now unrecognizable as food. It looks like the baker had all the right ideas when it came to spacing them out, at least.
There Has To Be A Better Way
There are times when you just want to declare war on all unopened jars. The unopened lid will challenge your strength and wits and will taunt you for being unable to overcome a humble lid. Based on the picture below, we already know who won in the end.
Where there’s a will, there is always a way. However, we hope this course of action was taken because the lid was screwed on too tightly—not because this seemed to be the logical way to open a jar of Jif.
Jinkies! Jankies!
The lovable Scooby Doo did not deserve this kind of treatment. If you squint your eyes hard enough, you will see a resemblance. At least they did a good job matching the dog's color. There’s a fine level of detail on Scoob’s collar. Just a pity about the rest of his face.
It’s hard to tell where he’s looking, but it doesn’t really look like he’s looking at us. We’re also not sure where his mouth starts—or how many mouths he has. Rather than “Scooby Doo, where are you,” maybe we should be asking, “what are you?”
That’s What We Call “Innovation”
Do not underestimate the innovative power of a college kid with a hungry stomach. When left to their own devices, these young minds can think of a hundred different ways of completing simple tasks, such as cooking an egg, in completely bizarre and unconventional ways.
No pot or stove? No problem. Just take the cleanest piece of foil and crumple it to look like a pan, and put your egg in there. Then, put it on top of a heat source—in this case, a flat iron. Just wipe off any food from the iron before ironing your clothes.
Too Much To Handle
Someone must have cooked their noodles for an excessively long time—so much so that they split the plate in a perfect circle. What kind of plate would break in such a way? It’s time to acquire some new dinnerware—maybe not from the same store as the one you got the frisbee plate.
It's incredible how those noodles simply sprang from the middle of the dish without any cutting tools. Even if plates break under pressure from heat, the conditions must be just right. It looks like this dish was too hot for anyone to handle.
Have These People Ever Heard Of Can Openers?
When push comes to shove, people can be pretty innovative. Put a few “hangry” stomachs together, and you’ve got a disaster on your hands. Just look at the poor can. They not only used a serrated knife to open it, but it looks like they also threw rocks at it.
This picture should serve as a reminder. When you go grocery shopping, make sure you have all the tools you need to make the dish when you get home. If you buy canned goods, then for goodness sake, buy a can opener, too, to avoid a situation like this.
Culinary Fusion?
We think this is what they mean by “spaghetti taco.” And by they, we mean crazy people. Whoever invented this is either a genius or a slob. New restaurants these days are not afraid to mix culinary arts from different regions of the world—but we highly doubt this kind of horror is served in any respectable food joint.
This doesn’t look even remotely appetizing. They should have chosen a lane— tacos or pasta. Well, they say that scientific advancements do not come without failure. Consider this a sacrifice in the name of culinary progress.
A Toaster Mishap
We aren’t sure what happened here, but we suspect that faulty wiring was involved somehow. How can you mess up an appliance as simple as a toaster? It should have been easy—plug in the device, put your bread on the top, press the slider down, and wait.
There’s usually an automatic timer that pushes the toast out after a set time. So what happened!?. For some reason, whatever they put in the toaster caught on fire. It’s a good thing that they saw it—and questionable that they took a photo—or else most of the house would have caught on fire too.
What A Mess!
It was a busy night in this kitchen. They would have been better off ordering out after this disaster. If that might seem like an expensive prospect, consider how much more expensive it would have been to pay for cooking lessons for whoever left this hot mess.
There is no shame in eating out, especially when kitchen nightmares like this would haunt you for nights to come. And it probably won’t just be the memories that haunt you—the smell of burnt bits in the back of the oven and beyond will undoubtedly remind anyone who steps into the kitchen of what happened.
Taste The Ruinbow
We give points for the multicolored cake, but that is where that point-giving stops. Rather than looking like a beautiful rainbow made of all the colors of the spectrum, it looks like someone dropped a sponge cake into a tie-dye bucket.
If we were feeling charitable, we would say that this cake looks like a rainbow that got taken for a spin in an astronaut training machine, then, after it stumbled out, stomped on by a leprechaun. But we bet it tastes just fine.
Cheesy Burger Indeed
What qualifies as a “cheeseburger?” Most of us could answer this simple question with little effort. It’s a bun with a burger patty and cheese, right? The cook who made this made a cheeseburger to the letter of that definition—but not to the spirit.
This “slice” of cheese is more like a feeble strip. The patty looks like it was just defrosted after 1,000 years in an avalanche, then warmed up with gravy before being slapped in between bread. It’s a good thing that they labeled it—otherwise, it would be unrecognizable.