Oooh! I made sad rolls tonight. You know the kind that are undercooked on top and black on the bottom and lead someone to exclaim, "What's burning?"

So here's my never: Never bake rolls on the bottom shelf of the oven just because you ran out of room on the top shelf.

Here's my never, for baking: Never use self-rise flour in shortbread. It will come out puffy and icky and look much like I feel during my period, excepting the bloody bits. (And the sad thing is, I had thought I was using regular flour, but self-rise flour had magically replaced my regular flour. Stupid kitchenelves. Mrfleglrglargh.)

Something I learned the hard way: Never confuse baking soda for baking powder. Things get really really salty. And horrible.

And to this day, I remain confused as to the difference. -- Perhaps this explains the sad state of my pancakes? The box of the substance I have (baking soda? baking powder? sodium bicarb? who knows!) also suggests using it to 'freshen the fridge; clean hard-to-lift grime', so I've (wisely, I think) decided not to ingest it, no matter how alluring the prospect of a fluffy pancake.

They are definitely not interchangable.

You have baking soda (sodium bicarbonate), which does sometimes like to hang out in the fridge and fight odors. It's also happy to brush your teeth, clean your grout, or leaven your baking. When put that way, yes, who in their right mind would voluntarily ingest it. As chemistry goes, it's basic.

Baking powder is more acidic, and as far as I know, its only wish in this world is to leaven your food. You usually want baking powder in your pancakes, not baking soda. Though some recipes do call for both.

I'm a wonderful cook, but I was having a wicked chocolate craving and I had brownie mix, but no eggs. So I just used extra oil.

Worst brownies ever. They were oily and disgusting and mushy... so I gave them all to my two year old.

*dies laughing*

*hugs your sad, flat, hazmat cookies*

Hey, is that icon a detail from the cover of "Sailing to Sarantium" by Guy Gavriel Kay? Or am I on crack?

My chocolate chip cookies come out of a tube.

Never guesstimate the amount of baking powder needed for a recipe.

Not to be confused with baking soda. (And don't ask how many times I've done that one.)

See? Cooking should be avoided. Lovely to hear from you, by the way.

How's this? Last week I ruined a package of noodles that I miscooked. How can one MISCOOK noodles? It took alot of careful spatial miscalculation and astonishingly poor judgement - that's how! And I used the sad gelatinous mass in chicken tetrazzini anyway. Which forced me to run to my neighbors' house and UNinvite her and her two friends for dinner. Instead of having a lovely noodle dish I had a not so lovely gluten dish. Reheating required chainsaw action. It was a sad day in chez moi - even my cat didn't want any.

chemical reactions and all that rot. 'tis why you need fresh/adequate ingredients in specific amts; 'specially those key things like baking soda/powder. (heeeee)

Ah baking disasters! I learned my lesson about not trying out new recipes with company coming, after serving the lamest batch of profiteroles evah. They were dubbed flatiteroles. I even tried to blow air back into them. Danged pate choux.