The things we got wrong
This is a log of the mistakes we made before we knew better. It’s here so you can see what happens when even the best recipes—ours included—run into real kitchens, real hands, and real expectations.
You’ll find the things we got wrong first, the ones that mattered most, and how we fixed them. It’s not a list of triumphs. It’s a list of what almost wasn’t: the numbers that didn’t add up, the methods that failed, the pages that should never have gone live.
If you spot one of our own, we want to know.
Three we had to fix
These are the three biggest mistakes we caught before they became habits. They’re signed by the person who found them—or the one who had to clean up after.
The log of corrections
- 1Oven temps that lied
We published a ‘foolproof’ apple pie recipe with a 375°F bake, but every tester’s oven ran 25°F hotter. The crust burned before the filling set. It stayed up for three weeks before a reader sent a photo of their charred disaster. We swapped to a two-stage bake—400°F for 10 minutes, then 350°F—and tested it in three different ovens. Joelle Barrera fixed it.
- 2The ‘perfect’ crust myth
Our ‘no-roll’ pie crust tutorial promised no flaking, no shrinking, just a ‘golden, even crust’—until a baker in Chicago sent us a video of their dough cracking open like a map. Turns out, we’d mismeasured the butter. The fix was simple: 1 cup cold butter, cut into ½-inch cubes, not the ‘softened’ ¼-inch pieces we’d called for. Joelle Barrera caught it when she tried it herself.
- 3The missing ‘or’ in instructions
A lemon meringue pie recipe told readers to ‘whisk egg whites until stiff *or* soft peaks form.’ The *or* was in the original draft but got dropped in editing. A reader’s email—‘I didn’t know which to pick’—brought it back. We now flag every ‘or’ in bold. Joelle Barrera spotted the omission in a final proofread.
What those three changed
These mistakes taught us three rules we now break if we must—but only after testing, testing, and testing again.
Rules that came from mistakes
- Never trust a single oven’s calibration. (From *Oven temps that lied*)
- Measure butter in cubes, not blobs. (From *The ‘perfect’ crust myth*)
- Every ‘or’ in instructions is a decision point. Bold it. (From *The missing ‘or’*)
The people behind this
Joelle Barrera is the founder and editor of *Pie Recipes Sweet*. She’s the one who signs the corrections—because if you’re going to own up to mistakes, you might as well own the whole kitchen.
What you’ve just read is how she works: by fixing what she breaks, then writing it down so the next person doesn’t have to learn the hard way.
Keeping a log like this isn’t comfortable. It means admitting that even the recipes you swear by can go wrong—and that the ones you trust most are the ones you’ve had to fix. But the alternative is pretending nothing ever fails, which is worse than a burnt crust.
Joelle keeps this list because she’d rather you know the truth than trust a lie.
Her worst mistake wasn’t public. It was the time she promised her mother a ‘perfect’ pecan pie for Thanksgiving—and served it with a crack down the middle. The fix? A second attempt, eaten in the kitchen while her mom laughed.
That pie didn’t make the site, but it taught her more than any published recipe ever has.
If you find something we got wrong, tell us. The contact page is where to do it.
There will be a next one
This list isn’t finished. When we find another mistake—whether it’s ours or a reader’s—it goes here. No excuses, no excuses-only fixes. If you’ve tried a recipe and something didn’t work, we want to know. The contact page is where to start.
The recipes are grouped by category: Appetizers, Beverages, Breakfast & Brunch, Desserts, Main Courses and Reviews.