Cheese in Brownies? Kale in Carrot Cake? These Recipe Reviewers Are Posting Their Ls

There is an endless array of recipes floating around the internet— from blogs to TikTok videos to this very news site.

To help users decide whether a recipe is worthwhile, lots of sites come with comments sections where users can review the dishes.

Some, like many of the notes on beloved New York Times Cooking recipes, are helpful hints, successful swaps or heartwarming stories about experiences with the dish.

But not all recipe reviews are helpful. Take, for instance, the user who made a teensy substitution in a Betty Crocker carrot cake recipe: They took out the carrots.

"Carrots have waaaaay to much sugar so replaced them with shredded kale. Cake turned out rather nasty, so two stars. Unsure what went wrong but its also dry," the review reads.

Enter the subreddit "I Didn't Have Eggs: Terrible recipe reviews."

It chronicles these hilariously bad recipe ratings, and pokes fun at the hapless substitution choices.

In another review highlighted on the account, a user asks if she could swap out the recommended coconut for cheddar. The supposed recipe author kindly responds: "I do not recommend using cheese in this brownie recipe."

Twitter had a good laugh at that one. "NOT THE CHEESE IN THE BROWNIE RECIPE," one user wrote.

Twitter user Sam Ferenchak shared screenshots of some of the r/ididnthaveeggs posts, pointing out the overall connective thread of user error in each scenario.

One review highlighted how the home chef removed oil from the recipe for Greek salad and then popped it in a freeze-dryer.

"Freeze dried Greek salad, anyone?" replied a commenter to Ferenchak's tweet.

Another commenter gave a sugar cookie recipe three out of five stars because the batter turned out too runny — then admitted that they didn't chill the batter for the recommended amount of time.

One person gave a Southern Living vinegar pie recipe one star, but left a comment that said they didn't even attempt to make the recipe at all.

In another recipe review, a commenter bemoaned "what a disappointment," then revealed that they decided not to use all the flour called for, and the end result was "super sticky."

But they still gave it a top score.

On a lasagna recipe, the reviewer gave five stars, but detailed a seemingly tongue-in-cheek experience that resulted in a steak sandwich instead of the beloved cheesy dish.

The thread, which was first created in July 2020, is filled with people leaving low-star reviews alongside comments that show they either made a completely different recipe, or made substitutions that simply wouldn't have worked in the dish.

Reddit users who post in r/ididnthaveeggs have fun with their captions and call out the glaring mistakes some of these home cooks are making.