How not to make oatmeal cookies.

[Croney]

I haven't made cookies in years so I found a recipe for 24, on my phone, and clicked to adjust the recipe to 12 cookies. In the middle of adding ingredients, the phone page reloaded when I wasn't looking, and reverted to the recipe for 24 cookies. I added twice the flour and then realized what had happened. So I had to make 24 cookies after all, by upping the other ingredients. But I must have misremembered which things I needed to double. The cookies are edible, but they're more like oat cakes and they taste ok but just...blah. This wouldn't have happened with an old-fashioned paper recipe! Lol

[elleng]

1. That's just ONE reason I don't have one of 'do everything' phones!

Good of you to try.

[Croney]

2. I suspect it was "operator error!"

But yes, sometimes simple things are better.

[Yonnie3]

3. I have troubles too

I can't blame a phone though. I'll forget I've added an ingredient and add it twice or completely forget it.

There is a method called mis en place. You see it on the cooking shows. All the ingredients are prepared and measured in advance. Since I've started following this I've done much better. I don't always follow it rigorously, it depends on what I'm cooking.

[elleng]

4. A oui, and reminds me of my French lessons!

[procon]

5. I once made oatmeal cookies with cups of salt instead of sugar.

Bleah! At the time I stored my staples in plastic containers with the labels on the lids and somehow they got swapped around. Those cookies were inedible and hard as rocks.

[Croney]

6. Salt licks for cattle? ha

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

9. I was once making sweet and sour pork

When I went to thicken the sauce, instead of taking the yellow Argo cornstarch box, I grabbed the yellow Arm & Hammer baking soda box. Adding bicarbonate of soda to an acid mixture made a remarkable mess.

[procon]

11. Years ago I was on the phone with my new SIL, explaining how to make SOS.

She had never eaten it, but my brother had been pestering her to cook it for him because as kids, we grew up with Creamed Chipped Beef on the menu. I was reading from our old family recipe as she was cooking it, and I said, 'now stir in 1 can of Condensed Milk'. I heard her gasp, and she repeated in obvious disbelief, 'the whole can?'

Yep, I said, that's right. Well, to cut to the final scene when she proudly served my brother that plate of Creamed Chipped Beef, it was almost like our cherished family recipe, except she had confused Sweetened Evaporated Milk for Condensed Milk. Needless to say, it was Diabetic level sweet and not fit for man or beast. Its almost a half century later we are all still around to rib her about "her" special recipe for SOS.

[PennyK]

13. I did that just last week!

Boy, was i aghast to see the bubbly mess. We did go on to eat it (I kept my mouth shut) and it tasted just fine.

[Major Nikon]

7. I am almost always multitasking when I cook

As much as possible I like to have all my ingredients listed by weight. That way I just gather them together and dump them one at a time in a bowl that sits on the scale. As I add the ingredients, I set them off to the side so I know what I have already added.

I do use my iPad almost exclusively for recipes as I have most of them scanned, or I look them up online. I like the King Arthur Flour web site. They have recipes for pretty much all commonly used baked goods that almost always turn out perfectly, and you can easily switch between volume and weight.

[Croney]

8. List ingredients by weight?

That sounds like something my engineer husband would do! My cooking technique is usually "throw in some of this and a little of that." I must admit: I'm not much of a cook. 🙂

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

10. When I bake, it is always easier working by weight rather than by volume.

The amount of flour in a cup of flour is highly variable, depending on how packed down the flour is.

I also prefer working with grams, since it makes scaling recipes up or down much easier.

[dem in texas]

12. British cook books are all by weight

Since the British baking show has been on PBS, I have bought a few British baking books to try some of their fancy tea cakes. I have to convert to USA measurements; cups and teaspoons. Old American cookbooks called for imprecise measurements, such as goblet-full, tea-cup full, pinch or handful.

I am like you, my cooking does not stick with the recipe - that said, I have cooked for so long, that I know the basic formulas for most common items, such a cake batter, cookie dough, bread, cream sauce. etc. I make up many of my own recipes, using the basic formulas.