Appliance of science
This is not really a tools-and-wood kind of story. It does, however, involve people trying DIY cooking.

At university my friends and I decided to bake a birthday cake for our friend V. Our ranks included an engineer, a mathematician and me, an organic chemist. There was an oven in V's kitchen, so the plan was to sneak into her house, ninja bake, then present to her a lovely warm birthday cake.

None of us were particularly handy in the kitchen, indeed had never baked a cake before, but were confident that we could do it ourselves using our combined degrees and the power of SCIENCE. Our apparatus included a plate, a fork and a metal mixing bowl.

We were dimly aware that flour is ordinarily involved in cake, but there our certainties ended. We didn't know if sugar was involved, we thought maybe eggs should make an appearance and we flirted with the idea of using butter. All this discussion turned out to be academic, however, as we only had a bag of flour and some bananas.

"Well, sugar is just sucrose, and bananas have a lot of fructose in them. So we can use bananas in lieu of sugar. Agreed?"

Aye.

"Butter is just fat! We don't want V to get fat do we? So let's skip that. Besides, bananas must have a little fat in them. Let's just chuck in an extra banana in lieu of butter. Agreed?"

Aye.

"Eggs. Pshaw. What's an egg? It's just a bunch of protein with some cholesterol in the middle. Do bananas have protein? Yeah, they must do, sportsmen love bananas. Besides, bananas don't have cholesterol in them, so they're probably better than eggs anyway. So no eggs- just another banana. Agreed?"

Aye.

We happily set about mashing the bananas into the flour, all the while smugly congratulating ourselves on the altruistic application of our degrees. We transferred the sorry mass in the mixing bowl into the oven, and somehow decided that a low temperature would probably be best.

We were taking no chances. Raw eggs can kill, and there were some banana eggs in there, so, erring on the side of caution, we let the banana cake bake for two hours. What emerged was a gloopy, horrific mass. To try and disguise its true, awful nature, we tried spraying some canned cream onto it, but sadly the cream dispenser was almost empty, and a brief hiss of gas sprayed a desultory couple of flecks onto the surface of the beast.

The DIY cake did not look the masterpiece we imagined it would be. In fact, V told us that the cake was one of the worst things that had ever happened to her, but that she was grateful for our demonstrating so clearly the awesome power of the DIY impulse in men.
(I grew it myself, Fri 4 Apr 2008, 10:01, 4 replies)

Huh!
Baking is an art and not a science, I don't care what Hester bloody Blumenthal says.
( girlinthehole, Fri 4 Apr 2008, 10:04, closed)

Reminds me slightly of my last attempt to bake:
It was only the second time I'd tried to make a Victoria Sponge, and I'd got it right the first time.

About 5 minutes before it was done, one of my friends rang. Four minutes into conversation, I remember the cake. My sister was in the house, so I asked her to take it out of the oven while I carried on talking.

Not thirty seconds later: "Crow, it's not done yet."
"Well, just leave it on the cooling rack and I'll take a look in a minute."
I just wish she'd think a bit more sometimes before following instructions blindly. When she said it "wasn't done yet," she meant "the middle is just a big column of goo."

Lo and behold, I wandered downstairs, still on the phone, to find a victoria sponge, balanced precariously half-on, half-off the rack, with a soggy pile of goo seeping out of the middle. I returned my attention to the telephone:
"Can I call you back in a minute?"
"Is everything alright? What are you doing there, anyway?"
"Making my own birthday cake."
(LongJohnBaldry, Fri 4 Apr 2008, 10:26, closed)

banana
y didn't you just give her a banana with a candle in it
(Athvi, Fri 4 Apr 2008, 11:36, closed)

Sounds worryingly familiar...
My two greatest cooking disasters both involved cakes (in the loosest sense of the word) and studentdom. The first involved an approximation of ingredients, though I think I did have sugar (no eggs though). My fatal flaw was in the choice of cake tin - I didn't have one. The closest thing I had was an aluminium camping pan-like thing which, according to the man in the army surplus store who sold it to me for 50p, had originally been the casing from a landmine. As it didn't have a non-stick coating, I reasoned that greaseproof paper would be a good idea, though had to make do with tinfoil - they both come on rolls, how different can they be?

Anyway, I grew tired of picking the tiny scraps of tinfoil from the resulting 'sponge', and as it had the density of uranium I binned it with a satisfying *thunk*.

Not having learnt from my first attempt I did try baking again a year later - this time it was a packet sponge mix, so I just had to add the wet stuff and bake. I even followed the instructions and measured stuff (roughly), but the resulting biscuit looked pretty inedible. As I lived in a rather nice flat overlooking the harbour I chucked it off the balcony into the water, so the seagulls could enjoy it once the water had softened it a bit. They took a quick look, and decided that their usual diet of binbag contents and student vomit was much more appealing - I think the cake bobbed around for two or three days before finally sinking.
(Photon wasting your time since, Sat 5 Apr 2008, 2:12, closed)