These Cooking Fails Show Not Everyone Is Winning at Quarantine Life

Quarantine has inspired even the least epicurean among us to dabble in self-taught home cooking. But don’t be fooled by those Insta-genic shots of perfectly fluffed dalgona coffee and fresh, crusty sourdough bread taking over our feeds. The truth is, spending extended periods of time experimenting with food at home doesn’t automatically make you a master chef.

While many people are sharing culinary victories during quarantine, home cooking also comes with a lot of tragic fails. There is even a Malaysian Facebook group dedicated to people sharing their epic culinary flops.

And in times of coronavirus-induced anxiety, these spectacular cooking misadventures are bequeathing us with the chaotic energy we didn’t know we needed.

This attempt at char siu bao is commendable, though not exactly delectable. Where are the fluffy buns?

This guy tried to make eggs in a hole but ended up with this mangled mess. Maybe just pretend you were making french toast?

Does it technically count as a cooking fail if you didn’t even know something was roasting to charred oblivion in the back of your oven?

I didn’t know lighthouse cookies were a thing, or that they would be so NSFW.

OK, this crusty bee actually looks kind of cute.

Just look at these cursed bunnies.

This is what it’s like when your cookies are more uncooperative than people who insist on going out during a lockdown.

You try your hand at baking to run away from the anxieties of a global pandemic but your cakes try to run away from their pans.

When your loaf of bread turns out to be one tough cookie, it might be time to, er, axe the project.

Not sure what this home baker was going for here, but I’m definitely getting some Princess Mononoke kodama spirit vibes from those bruised cupcakes.

Find Koh Ewe on Instagram.