Sorry, ChatGPT and Gemini can't improve on my mom's handwritten Apple Pie recipe

Generative AI like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude are good for so many things, and recently I’d read they’d gotten an upgrade that helped them do much, much better with text. So I decided to use the AI’s vast skills to recreate something I cherish.

Let me explain.

I’d just moved into my first home, and with Thanksgiving approaching, I wanted to bake a pie, but not just any pie: my mother’s Apple pie. She lived hundreds of miles away, so there was little chance she’d show up to do it for me. As she dictated over the phone (this was years before text, and she rarely used email), I quickly wrote down what I deemed her relatively skeletal instructions. I scratched them on what I had on hand: a notepad from some doctor’s office that included a text ad for something called “Lasix.”

Apple Pie AI

Hard to read? Sure, but I expect AI to nail this task. (Image credit: Lance Ulanoff)

First, I took a photo of the recipe (shocking that it was the first time I ever did it) and then I had a whiff of apple-cinnamon-scented inspiration: what if I asked AI to make me a “better” version?

Considering the improved text capabilities of ChatGPT and Gemini, I thought they might be able to build a cool infographic, complete with a hopefully accurate interpretation of my handwritten text and lovely art to help illustrate the process.

I started with Gemini, feeding it this prompt:

“Turn this recipe into a useful infographic. I want entertaining and colorful but clear cartoon-style art. The instructions should make sense. Also, this recipe was written on some paper that includes extraneous information. Please ignore that.”

Apple Pie AI

So much weirdness in this. (Image credit: Lance Ulanoff)

The result is indisputably cute and visually useful, but closer examination quickly revealed some bizarre missteps.

First of all, the recipe called for “9/4 – 1 cup All tbrp All purrose” with the image of a bag of sugar next to it.

There were a ton of misspellings like “tablesoposs,” cixttre”, “Suples” and my favorite, “Dash nutamon”

Granted, my handwriting is not good, but I expected that Gemini would go beyond text-to-image translation and apply some understanding of how apple pie is actually made. I was wrong.

At one point, it recommends “Sprinkle Spitter” on top of the crust.

I deemed the result unusable and gently delivered the bad news to Gemini:

“Okay, this is a good start, but there are errors in here. I see misspellings and completely wrong and superfluous words, the inclusion of a cheesgrater (won’t need that). Also, just call it “Apple Pie” not “Apple Tart Pie”

Also other random errors:

The flour amount is 3/4 to-1 cup

There’s no such thing as “nutamon”

What’s “suples”?

Overall, try again.

What’s “spitter”?

Gemini offered lots of apologies and revised the infographic.

Unfortunately, it came back with almost as many misspellings. Even “Dash nutamon” survived.

Apple Pie AI

Lots of missppellings, but close to followable. (Image credit: Lance Ulanoff)

I tried to be more explicit. telling it to make sure the infographic only includes “real words” and that it should use what it knows of pie making to ensure it all makes sense.

I also realized that the cryptic mention of a pie crust recipe was throwing it, so I told it to keep that separate from everything else.

Apple Pie AI

I wonder why Gemini never understood that you don’t put whole apples in the pie. (Image credit: Lance Ulanoff)

It’s better, but the cheese grater remained, as did “Dash nutamon” and a handful of head-scratching misspellings and word duplications.

ChatGPT 5.1 did marginally better. The art is, again, cute and visually useful (though the apple piece sticking out of the top of the pie doesn’t make much sense. It also leaves out some details and doesn’t appear to understand what you do with a rolling pin.

Apple Pie AI

Cute, incomplete, and why does it look like we’re putting mustard on the pie? (Image credit: Lance Ulanoff)

Claude Sonnet 4.5, arguably, did the best job. It’s a clear recreation of the recipe, but with virtually no cute art. So it’s less an infographic than basic, but useful instructions.

Apple Pie AI

Just the basics, no real art, but I guess it gets the job done without any of the hoped-for charm. (Image credit: Lance Ulanoff)

This exercise is yet more evidence that, for as smart as these models are, they can sometimes trip up on the simplest tasks.

My recipe was poorly transcribed and confusing, but the whole idea of these AIs is that they do more than just copy and instead apply some understanding, using their deep access to knowledge and ability to derive meaning to provide the correct and useful information.

I can’t imagine what would’ve happened if I had assumed that ChatGPT or Gemini could reproduce my mother’s recipe in a useful way and thrown out my original scrap of paper.

Naturally, I’ll never do that, and for many obvious reasons.

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