Your first cooking or baking experience

I had a touching experience this week when I looked back at a website that I created six years ago about cooking. I am not going to name the link ...it's old anyway.

But on the baking section of the website I mentioned my first experience in the kitchen:

I have (until this week) forgotten that my mother (who has passed away in 2005) had left a message on the website guest book saying:


Since then I have mastered carrot cakes but the memory just touched me and made me wonder about the first cooking experiences of others. Often, they are pretty funny stories.

Do you remember the first thing you made, why you made it, and how it turned out?
Or have you had some other "oops" experience with cooking? I did catch my kitchen on fire once making caramel

When I was five my mom gave me a Betty Crocker EZ Bake oven. I made little cakes in dixie cups off the heat of a light bulb. No really. I did.

Gills, I had forgotten all about those! We had one too. But my cousin hogged it. Thanks for bringing back that memory.

I used to have to make my own lunches in elementary school, used to get up and heat up the small tin of Campbells Soup and put it into my thermos for lunch or make my own sandwiches... my mom never used to get up with us in the morning. So we had to do breakfast- usually just toast with peanutbutter or cereal.
She did always make sure we had something to eat, but she never prepared it for us.
I was also in Brownies and Girl Guides and my cooking badge was always one of the first ones I got.

I used to love making home made soup with dumplings or cinnamon buns from scratch. My brothers fav thing was pancakes to make.

As kids we generally had to cook one night a week.

also growing up on a farm we learned young to kill a chicken, pluck it and eviserate also geese or ducks that were hunted. Also learned young how to fillet a fish.

I have been cooking since I was about 4yo. There was even a picture of me in the Memphis Commercial Appeal helping my mother cook while my sister, who is 7 years older, just stood there trying to look all cool. Of course, I was cooking full breakfasts at the age of 6 and she couldn't even boil an egg when she got married.

Eurovol,
See, this is just cool. I have been teaching my son to cook since he was also about 4. We started off with things that did not require him to be on the stove.

At 12 he could prepare a full breakfast and can make a dinner as well. Nothing fancy mind you, but good enough to eat.

Can you believe that some German mothers actually insinuated that letting my son cook was tanatmount to child abuse!!!?

one of the reasons I cannot have relationships with German men.

I was a girlguide leader, we took 32 girls ages 9-11 out for a camp weekend, and would you believe, there was actually girls that had never cracked an egg? I was astonded.

I started baking cakes from scratch when I was 8. Good old Betty Crocker! But I did once manage to forget the flour - I was 24 at the time.

yeah Carm, I can believe it

I am not sure if it is just the fact that my son has been raised by a single mom that he is so self-sufficient or if it is just that Germans over-protect their children to the point of making them whiny little brats.

I feel uneasy saying that, ... but I have noticed it. I have to be fair and say that it could just be the parents and children in my neighborhood.

Sarabyrd: Betty Crocker rules

um..am I the only person who has caught the kitchen on fire?
it was my mom's fault, she called me and wouldn't stop talking so I forgot about the sugar in the caste iron skillet.

I've only recently started cooking and baking but I'm happy to report that so far I haven't had any mishaps. I never learned how to cook from my mother, actually I never really did many chores at all as practicing the piano always took precedence over house chores. I always had the idea that cooking was something magical that you had to spend hours studying different tricks and making one tiny mistake or deviance from a recipe would ruin everything. I'm pleasantly surprised at how easy it is to cook really good meals and why not, I love eating, I really should take pleasure in the preparation as well.

I set the stove on fire making pommes dauphine - the paper lining the baking sheet touched the heated grill on the top of the stove. We put it out immediately but that was an unforgetable Christmas dinner.
My friend set fire to her kitchen making Schweinshaxn. Greasy soot - eeeeeeeeeeeew.

Me I think (but I don't have that many memories from my childhood) the real first time that I try to do something on my own, meaning no guide. I must have been 7 or 8 maybe 10 but don't think so.

My mun had a meeting, and she came back late. My brother and sister were not there and I was watching robotcop I think. I decided that it would be nice to have some popcorn. Only mistake was that I forgot the fat. Result burn corn! It was smelling in the whole flat. No arm but well... Then I cleaned up the mess. And when my mun finally came back. She was all sorry to be so late. We started to talk I enjoyed the moment we had just the two of us. And she went to the kitchen and she is all like: "it smells like burn" And I am like euhhhh really ? after like 10 minutes of feeling guilty like I broke a lamp or something I confessed. She gave me one of her magic hug. And laughed a good time, while the corn was popping.

As weird as it sound, it was one of the happiest moment of my childhood. so I learnt my lesson : fat is GOOD!

Now I am a fairly good cook for french standard, which is different than the German one. I love to cook especially for my girlfriend's breakfast, when she just opens her eyes in front of some homemade pancakes and scramble eggs with spinach.

ohhhhhh this post was personal... But it feel good to bring back good memories.

Well I caught a tim hortons on fire does that count?

My mother has pictures of the first time I ever baked (with her help, I assume). I think I was four. Peanut butter cookies.

(yes, the pictures are of the messy process as well as me very proud with the results.)

I don't remember the first thing I made on my own.

I never had any big accidents like that, burnt toast or too much tabasco in the Spagetti sauce, but never set the kitchen on fire. Even in the camper with Propane stove.

As a kid, we used to do a Christmas cookie evening, we had no supper (we ate cookie dough and cookies),we would make cut out cookies all night long. Mom or dad would roll them, we cut them out, then decorated them. My mom still does this with my neice and nefew (7+6 years).

In SA we had compulsory housecraft lessons I had to attend. This was a long time ago. I had to bake a cake. The cake exploded in the oven. I then had to clean the whole oven. Regarding baking it's since been a one-way trip all the way down. A friend of mine finally gave me a book "Backen mit dem Kuehlschrank". I hate baking in general. Cooking is interesting, baking is just crap. Except for stuffing chickens and roasting them or making anything which isn't ridiculously sweet. Then I enjoy it very much and it normally works out find. All in the mind I guess.

Aaah, Majorbummer, I remember my first "huishoudkunde" class. We had to make custard. I added a cup of sugar and a CUP of SALT Tucking into that eeeeeuu..
oh man! Did I hate cooking in school.

I remember arshoo posting re. setting his kitchen on fire.

The first thing I made was around 5 years old, a cup of tea for mum and dad on the weekends first thing in the morning. Coming from a tea growing region this was really a right of passage (especially when living in the UK and being told countless times that the English don't know how to make a good cuppa) - warming the teapot and teacups, just the right amount of tea leaves, allowing to brew with a tea cosy and then heating the milk (a must for a proper cup of Asian tea). Memories...

Shame Melrose. My deepest and most sincere sympathy. My housecraft teacher hated me.

I managed to make an unintentional Gluhwein reduction once. Reduced to a crisp and filled the apartment with purple smoke. It stank for weeks..

It was not my fault mind. I got sidetracked by sleep. The flatmate made the discovery.

We had cookery class at Middle School with one of the projects being inviting one of the Teachers to lunch,. I bet they got fed up with the crap they were forced to eat and enjoy once a week. Horrible it was. Horrible. First thing we learnt to make at school? Egg and Cress sandwiches

good lord yes. Every week it was the same food wasn't it? Mince follwed by trifle. Rank

Can't remember. I think we had a choice of of two menues. Wasn't some egg boat salad thing included followed by pie? And we invited Mr Coombes. He looked well... urrmmm... chuffed by the offering

I too started cooking with my mum at a very young age. She used to make normal shortcrust pastry which we then used to cut into shapes and bake, just for the fun of it! The first thing I made myself were probably fairy cakes. Which actually, I really quite fancy now...

I once made a cake that was then used to prop open a broken sash window. I can't remember the first thing I cooked - it may have been pancakes in primary school.

I started baking when I was around 4. One of my mates at kindergarten flipped out after eating one of my brownies, I think the weed to food ratio was a bit heavy on the ganja side. You live and learn.

The first time I attempted to cook or bake something, I was 10. I tried to bake a cake for my sister's 6th birthday and used a packet cake. Should have been easy, right? Well it might have been if I had not used 2 litres of water instead of the specified 2 cups. I thought it was a bit runny, but I poured the mixture into 3 cake form thingy's (I also wondered why it was so much too). One of them had a bit of a leak and made a right mess of the oven - I rechecked the packing too late and took it all out again. My dad came home first and saw the mess I had created and managed to salvage it with some self-raising flour, a couple of eggs, sugar and cocoa. The cake was edible and everyone thought it was sooo funny.

I have never baked a cake since. I can cook reasonably well now, though - despite the less than auspicious start...

7 or 8, with a babysitter over, and we decided to 'bake' though i'm not sure how much experience she had either, as the recipe consisted of crushed saltine crackers, crushed oreos, and milk. Mix it all together, put blobs of goo on paper plate, stick in microwave oven, and out come these rubbery chocolate blobs. Still ate them of course - Oreos make everything taste better

Can't really remember, but since I had to "cook" for my little siblings quite often, I must have started quite early.

Only can remember my brother's first attempt: he was about 10 that time and tried to bake a banana cake, since that's his favourite cake. He got everything together, got the measurements right, but the outcome was rather disappointing... all that was left after some-whatever-minutes in the oven, was some thin black something in the form... turned out he forgot the flour...

He still suffers from that day, since he normally gets asked if he didn't forget the flour whenever he tries to bake something...

Not my first experience but the first solo cooking experience was trying to make a curry for my parents when they came back I was 11 or 12 and we had a stream in the garden. I looked through the recipe went to the freezer but we had no mince so I put four of the best steaks through a mincer and proceeded to make it a gooey sticky black mess. The fun came with the rice ( how much do I need) easy put the dried rice on to a plate to see how much is needed, times by three and cook. Because I did not want my parents to be angry that I had so much rice, well over a full pressure cooker I though I should dispose of the excess in the stream. Great evidence gone I heard my parents car they came in furious asking why the whole 50 meters of the stream was full of rice and on the banks. Thankfully they saw the funny side and thanked me for a burnt and expensive curry

Oh man, I wanted one of those so badly when I was little. My parents never gave into what I wanted and said the EZ bake ovens were dangerous and silly. I ended up buying myself one when I was 21! It was great. My friends and I would have cocktails and make little tiny cake concoctions on the weekends until one of them ruined in by sticking marshmallows into it which expanded and sort of caught fire to it and melted the plastic of it.

I don't remember a first baking experience - at least not a young age. I do remember my first cooking experience - about 11 years old - Kraft macaroni and cheese, back when the cheese was that orange powdered stuff. Very proud of myself I was

One of my earliest memories is making home made tortillas with my grandmother. To this day, the smell of corn flour makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

I was 11 years old when I whipped up a batch of peanut butter cookies using my Grandma's recipe. It seems that I ended up baking more of my hands than the cookies! I remember my Mother trying to explain the burns on my hands to family members.

I was about 10 when a friend and me decided to play "restaurant" with my family as the happy eaters. All of them ordered Kaiserschmarrn and so we opened the cook book and made three portions (my siblings sharing one) by multiplying the recipe by three. We ended up with quite a lot of food, as we didn't realize that the recipe was already meant to serve four.

and yes, I still like Kaiserschmarrn, didn't help to cure my sweet tooth.

I have fond memoried of making brownie batter from the box... then just eating the dough, the first thing I ever made from scratch was either brownies or chocolate chip cookies, whichever survived the batter stage.

When I was quite young I served my Dad a really tasty breakfast in bed on Father's Day - slices of garlic sausage sprinkled with hundreds and thousands. The wonderful Dad that he is, he ate them all up. I had made some for my Mum too, but she hid hers under the bed.