There’s always a contingent of people who refuse to follow the rules. Usually, they do so for the sake of social and political progress, but that’s not my style. No, I break the laws of baking, because I think I know better. That, and I never have the right ingredients in my kitchen and am too lazy to run down to the nearest bodega to grab butter.

So, of course, when I make a cake with turnips instead of eggs, I have no one but myself to blame if it comes out tasting like bark splinters with a dash of powdered sugar. Every time that happens, I go to a corner in my apartment, any old corner will do, and cry over my stupidity until the taste of splinters leaves my mouth (it’s usually four to six hours). And, that’s what I’ve always assumed other similarly-minded idiots did after their self-imposed kitchen failures. However, a year ago, while scrolling through Instagram, I stumbled upon the NYT Cooking Comments Instagram page. That’s when I learned that instead of confining themselves in a corner for the foreseeable future, many people take to a recipe’s comment section to blame the recipe and its author. As you will see, the results are nothing short of hilarious. I’ve included my favorite NYT Cooking Comments post below to get the knee-slapping going.

If NYT Cooking Comments interest you, then you must check out @studiotwomby’s account. Tomby is a TikTok creator who’s going viral for his chuckle-inducing reactions to ridiculous recipe comments from the Reddit thread, I Didn’t Have Eggs.

If you learn anything today, it’s that whenever you’re using an online recipe, check the comment section. It might just give you the will to live as these five I Didn’t Have Eggs posts did for me.