Talking About a Baking Disaster
Jess: I had a terrible baking disaster once. We had just recently moved into a new house, so it was a- a new oven, a new- a new stove that I wasn’t familiar with.
Jess: Um, and I was a baking a cake. It was my friend’s birthday, so I was making a cake.
Jess: So I had to mix the ingredients. Everything was ready. Um… thought I had preheated the oven, um, put the cake in, and- and left it for the 20 minutes it needed to bake.
Jess: Um, but when I went back to get the cake, um, it was black on top. It was completely crispy and burnt, and I realized that it was still soft and wet in the inside.
Jess: Um, and I had to look at the settings for the oven and realized I’d actually had the grill turned on rather than the oven. Um, so it was a complete disaster.
Vocabulary:
baking disaster – a total failure or a big accident that happens while cooking things like cakes, breads, or cookies, “Forgetting to add sugar made my cookies a total baking disaster.”
recently – not long ago; happening a short time in the past, “She recently moved to a new city and is still unpacking her boxes.”
familiar with – knowing something or someone well because you have seen, used, or met them before, “I am not familiar with this computer program, so I need help using it.”
ingredients – the different food items you mix together to make a specific dish or meal, “Flour, sugar, and eggs are the main ingredients for a cake.”
preheated – heated an oven to a specific temperature before putting food inside to cook, “The recipe says the oven must be preheated to 180°C before you start baking.”
crispy – hard, dry, and easily broken (or in this case, badly burnt and hardened on top), “I like my potato chips to be crispy, but this bread is too hard.”
realized – suddenly understood or became aware of a fact or situation, “As soon as I walked out the door, I realized I had left my wallet inside.”
settings – the controls, dials, or options on a machine or appliance that change the way it works, “You can change the settings on your phone to make the screen look brighter.”
grill – a control setting on an oven that cooks food using intense, direct heat from above (often called a “broiler” in American English), “Turn on the oven grill for two minutes to melt the cheese on top of the toast.”
complete disaster – a total failure where everything goes completely wrong, “The outdoor birthday party was a complete disaster because it started pouring rain.”