71 Baking Fails So Bad They’re Actually Hilarious

If cooking is more akin to art, then baking is a science. The specifics and tiny details are incredibly important in the latter. If you substitute some ingredients for others, use different techniques and baking temperatures, mess up the quantities, and skip steps, you will end up with something radically different from what you intended.

Some kitchen disasters are completely out of your control, sure. But as a rule of thumb, when it comes to baking, if your end results look different from the gorgeous photos in the recipes, the responsibility lies with you. It’s back to the drawing board, then.

Be honest with yourself if you intentionally did anything different from the recipe, or if you might have misread or miscalculated something. If you spot your mistake, try making the baked good again, correctly this time, and see if you succeed.

Later, once you’ve mastered that particular recipe, you can experiment a bit to create something new. Or just move on to learning a new recipe and expanding your skill set.

Getting good at a new skill requires some dedication, patience, perseverance, and (if you can muster it) a good sense of humor. If we all quit the moment we made a mistake, nobody on Earth would know how to do anything. It’s pushing past our failure that creates room for growth.

Putting time into learning a new skill is one thing. But your efforts also have to be focused. In other words, it’s not enough to work hard; you also have to work smart. Think about where you could have messed up, consciously change your strategy, and see if you get different results.

Understanding the fact that we all make mistakes in theory doesn’t automatically make it easy to accept them. Failure hurts. Failure isn’t nice. Failure sometimes keeps you up at night, cringing at being so far from perfect.

But if you develop a growth-oriented mindset, your disasters won’t sting as much. Instead, you’ll learn to embrace them because you see them as opportunities and lessons to help you improve, instead of ‘proof’ that you’re somehow awful at everything you do.

Someone who has a growth mindset understands that they can improve their skills and grow as an individual. On the flip side, if you have a fixed mindset, you don’t see much room for growth.

As the Harvard Business School explains, individuals with a growth mindset view challenges as opportunities, embrace constructive feedback, learn and grow from failure, and believe in skill development.

Growth-oriented individuals believe that they are capable of improving their abilities, talents, and intelligence through effort. They see things as learnable with practice.

On the other hand, according to HBS, people who have a fixed mindset avoid challenges, don’t accept failure or mistakes, believe that talent is static, and shy away from unfamiliar things.

A growth mindset is empowering, while a fixed one is limiting. This applies to any new skill or endeavor, not necessarily just baking.

Building a growth mindset won’t happen overnight, though. You’ll need to turn it into a habit, step by step.

To start off, you can begin changing your perspective on challenges. Embrace them, instead of shying away from them.

It’s also essential that you celebrate your effort, not just flashy successes.

“Shift your focus from only praising outcomes to recognizing and rewarding effort. Understand that consistent effort over time is the key to mastery. Try to celebrate small victories and incremental progress, which are vital steps toward achieving larger goals,” HBR suggests.

Other things to focus on include staying curious and being willing to learn new things. This might mean being open to attending workshops, learning about new trends, or asking other people for help. The new knowledge you get can help you adapt and grow.

Furthermore, you have to be willing to prioritize your learning, instead of just seeking others’ approval. “This perspective shift reduces fear of judgement and frees you to pursue more ambitious, innovative projects,” HBS states.

And, of course, it’s important to actually spend time surrounded by people who embrace growth while challenging and encouraging you.

Which of these baking disasters did you find the funniest and most cringeworthy? Were there any that genuinely made you laugh out loud?

What are the biggest, boldest, bravest fails that you’ve ever produced in your own kitchen? Tell us all about it in the comments at the bottom of this list. And if you have photos of your food fails, we’d be happy to see them, too!

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