Win a bundle of cookery books worth over £80

Trying to impress a young man, I followed coq au vin with syllabub which I'd practised previously. In the 1980s I thought this would be exotic and new to him. Since it takes a very short time I left him with a glass of wine and hastened to the kitchen to whip up the syllabub. Keen to rejoin and impress him I quickly put the electric whisk into the bowl. I sprayed myself, the wall and the ceiling with syllabub. As my friend tasted what was left he said approvingly 'Yes, very similar to the one my mother makes!' Aaagh!

I was cooking a stew in a pressure cooker and forgot about it. When I remembered, it had completely boiled dry and the pressure cooker, instead of having a flat bottom, had a rounded concave one. Needless to say the stew was completely ruined and the pressure cooker never again sat flat on the hob.

In my teens I made a Christmas cake. All went will with the first stages. The cake baked beautifully and the marzipan went on smoothly. I iced it just before Christmas with icing formed in peaks all over the sides and top. I left it in the kitchen on one of the upper shelves - big mistake. I don't know whether Mum was doing a week's worth of laundry or what but the kitchen was filled with steam and, in consequence, the icing slowly melted and dribbled down the cake and all over the board on which it was resting, as well as the shelf it was on - and some of those beneath!

When I was first married in the seventies we both worked full time and I tried to be organised. One morning after making toast under the grill (no toaster) I prepared that night's dinner. I left potatoes peeled and in water in a pot on top of the cooker. Next to that a pot with mince which I had browned and put gravy in all ready to be cooked when we got home from work. Imagine our surprise when we came home to a house full of black smoke. We could hardly see in front of us. My hubby was saying," I thought you were cooking the food when we got home you've nearly burnt the house down. " I swore I hadn't put the rings on under the pots and thought I was going mad. Once we fought our way through the smoke haze in the kitchen we discovered it was the grill that had been left on and we were lucky as a tea towel was very near it and could have went up in flames.
There is a happy ending to this story and that is,as the grill was below the rings the pots were on the mince and potatoes were cooked to perfection. We didn't have to wait for dinner that night but did have to wait until we had opened all the windows and the smoke had gone.

Having made stock, do not pour the saucepan contents into a colander held over the sink.....

If you successfully make stock ( see above ) and reduce it so you can freeze it in an icecube tray to use in small portions, do not let your husband put these 'ice' cubes in cocktails.

One night after I was newly married my husband fancied Haggis. I had never cooked it before but followed instructions and it looked ok,along with mash potatoes and turnip, however I thought it looked a little dry so I made an oxo gravy. All you Scots on here will know.........Sacrilege.

I welded pasta to the bottom of a pan, put it onto boil and forgot about it, 2 hours later smoke filled the kitchen.

Around 1974 I was living in Brussels. One evening we had guests for dinner so I thought I play safe and do braising steak with carrots/onions etc, fancy potato dish and nice breads. I had never met the couple before, they were work colleagues of my ex.
Well.... the steak braised and it braised and was still tough, in the end I had to just serve it. We chewed and chewed until I had to say...please just leave the steak.

Next day on my way to work I noticed the horses head above the butcher shop. That had been my first introduction to horse meat. !!

My first microwave and I used the recipe in the booklet to bake a chocolate cake for my son's 8th birthday. The sixth attempt was just about edible, all cooked on the one day !!

There was the time I boiled a ham on the cooker top, forgot about it. The windows were shut. Much later the electricity went off. While trying switches I went into the kitchen and water was dripping from everywhere, the ham was stuck to the bottom of the saucepan.... and the dripping water on the walls had run into one of the sockets which had 'blown' and knocked off the electric.

Not long married and two friends arrived unexpectedly at tea time. Not to be stuck I had two of the infamous Fray Bentos steak and kidney pies in the tin. Got them into the oven and put on some potatoes and veg. After we'd eaten and table was cleared..... I had a violent projectile vomiting episode, followed within a few minutes by my husband. This happened in the lounge all over the carpet and soft furnishings. Friends made a discreet departure. They phoned next day to say that they were ill on the way home. We've never eaten a tinned Fray Bentos pie since.

I cooked a Gammon joint a few Christmases ago and my son in law was unwell next day, he still tells people his mother in law tried to poison him. Nobody else was ill.

I made a lasagne and the white sauce was like clumpy custard. My friends tried to eat it but had to give up as it was truly disgusting.

I have many! When I younger I was cooking an omelette and left it for two seconds to put the cheese back in the fridge I then got completely distracted, I came back to egg all over the wall and nothing but black in the pan!

When I first cooked pasta I didn't drain it, left the house and when I came back from the movies it was all over the place.

I have just had a cooking disaster. As storage space is limited in my tiny kitchen, my microwave doubles as a bread bin. I thought I had put my mug of home-made soup in ready to cook, but in fact I had only decanted it and left it on the side. Therefore I have just 'nuked' the remains of a wrapped sliced loaf! Fortunately the smell of melting plastic alerted me, but it is now in the bin!

On holiday with my son and grandson we bought some local pasties for our lunch. Back at our holiday cottage I decided to warm them. I put them in the small oven and turned it on (or thought I did). I had actually turned on the grill. Sometime later smoke was pouring out of the oven and the smoke alarm began screeching away. The pasties were on fire! My grandson (then aged 2) was traumatised. For years afterwards he would come out with "Why did you set light to the pasties, Granny". He is now 12 and thankfully has grown out of this. BUT my DIL was recently asked by my 2 year old DGD to explain the word 'burnt' and to tell a story about 'burnt' What did she tell? That's right, the pasties. My DGD asked the other day "Why did you burn the pasties, Granny?" Groundhog day or what?

My mother in law would always do Boxing Day dinner for us as we'd spend Christmas Day with my family. She thought she was a little bit of a Michelin starred chef. We'd have a running commentary through the whole meal of how marvellous it was as she reeled off the list of herbs she'd used - all home grown! Anyway my husband would tell her that I could do a good dinner to which she'd turn her nose up. He suggested this one year that I'd do the dinner for a change. She finally agreed, it was no big deal as i would do a roast ever Sunday anyway. However my oven had other ideas. I think the pressure of cooking for such royalty was too much for it, every single aspect of it burned!! All except the veg which was as sloppy as anything. My darling husband kept telling us all how wonderful but the mother in laws face said it all! It's safe to say Boxing Day dinner was back at hers the following year, although my Sunday roasts were back to themselves the following week!

I melted butter the other day for a dish I was cooking and I left it too long, it totally burnt the pan, stunk my house out to the point where I could hardly breathe and made it so smokey it was like a dodgy stage from Top of the Pops!!

I once used salt in a chocolate brownie instead of sugar, disgusting.

Made a birthday cake and completely burnt it. Completely black and the house stunk for ages.

Sorry that should read 'frisby'.

I had joined a slimming class and was full of good intentions so when making a sponge I used sweetener instead of sugar and low fat spread instead of butter - my children played frisky with it all afternoon and it still survived.

i once microwaved a cheesecake to defrost. Disaster

Oh dear where do i start. I remember doing my O level cookery exam and i was making a cherry pie. I was running out of time and used tin cherries. Unfortunately i did not realise they were not de pipped. The pie looked nice when finished, however when the examiner came round to try some she chipped a tooth when she took a bite into the pie. I failed miserably and to be fair my cooking has never really improved.

I was helping to look after my sister in law and family when she was poorly.
I made apple crumble,can't really get it wrong can you,unless you use salt instead of sugar. In my defence the jar was not labelled. My Brother in laws face was a picture.

Newly married and trying to impress new DH he said he loved rice pudding, with a nice golden crust, so I asked my MIL how to make it from scratch.

The amount of pudding rice looked lost in the dish so, thinking she'd written it down wrongly, I poured in half the packet, added more milk and sugar and put it in the oven.

Sometime later I could smell burning so I opened the oven door to an avalanche of molten rice pudding.
It not only filled the bottom half of the oven but then flowed across the kitchen floor, under the cooker and units.
I cried buckets trying to scrape it all up, DH was helpless with laughter and when he told his mother it just confirmed her opinion of me

The oven never really recovered, the smell of stuck on burnt rice still haunts my memories and if DH wants rice pud he can open a tin!