S'more Pinstrosities Headed Your Way!

We just had a s'mores activity with the girls at church and it got me curious to see what submissions we have that had anything to do with s'mores. There are quite a few! Enough actually that if I put them all in one post, it would take forever to load and look through. So, I decided that I'd do a post with some of the submissions, and then in subsequent weeks I can do s'more. Bahahaha...bet you didn't see that line coming. Just kidding, I'm sure you saw it coming and that you're completely prepared for s'more of my hilariousness. 

Well, I'll leave off the late night humor (I really shouldn't write posts late at night...or maybe I should do s'more of them at night, but then they may be a little loopy) and get to the part of the post that you actually came here to see. 

Original Pin #1:

http://www.sheknows.com/food-and-recipes/articles/976181/smore-dessert-pizza

S'mores Dessert Pizza, with a graham cracker crust. That looks so fun and yummy! 

Brooke tried this pin out and this is what she had to say:

"My roommate and I tried making this delicious looking s'mores pizza. Unfortunately we only had colored marshmallows, no marshmallow fluff (so we tried making our own) and not enough time to let the dough rise. Also, all of the chocolate chips burnt instead of melting. We were super excited to see and eat our bound-to-be-beautiful creation."

Pinstrosity #1:

"No words can describe the horror we felt when we took it out of the oven. We stood in silence just staring numbly at the pan. After like 5 whole minutes of silence we both dropped to the floor laughing like hyenas on nitrous oxide gas. Then we ate it. We ate it all. It was delicious. "

Original Pin #2

http://www.theaprongal.com/2011/11/baked-smores.html

Brenna had this to say about her experience: "Looks fantastic doesn't it? I had really high hopes because Christmas is coming around the corner with bonfires and cute nights with the family this would be a great idea right? Well i followed the directions to the dot made sure everything was right even used normal flour, everything to the dot. When it got down to it, the dough became really sticky and not anything like her pictures portrayed. It didn't spread very well and the amount wasn't enough to divide it in half and use for a top layer. My mom and I added more gram crackers to the dough after we had attempted the bottom layer in hopes that it would spread easy. Well it didn't. It barely covered the fluff. The one thing she did write was to microwave the fluff to help it spread and that made it really easy. But the dough was just terrible. We attempted to put some oil on the dough to spread it some which helped with the bottom layer but it just didn't work."

Pinstrosity #2

"Though in the end the tasted wonderful and we will be making them again with some slight improvements. "

Original Pin #3

http://springraine.blogspot.ca/2012/02/marshmallow-brownie-cupcakes.html

S'mores cupcakes! Sydnie tells this story:

"So I found this recipe on pinterest.... You know how it goes. Saturday we were having a church pot luck and I wanted to bring something fantastic, so I tried these brownie cupcakes. Let's just say it didn't quite work. I followed the directions, and baked them at 325 for 25 minutes. and this is what I got:"

Pinstrosity #3

"The marshmallow not only bubbled out of the brownie onto the pan, but then completely dissolved into the brownie, leaving me with really hard/chewy brownie muffins. I found someone else's pin and they said that they only baked theirs for 20 minutes. I also think that I maybe should have splurged for a better brownie mix. I was in a hurry and just opted for the super cheap store brand one. In conclusion, I would like to give these a 4 on the GCT fail scale. My husband tried them and said that they tasted good, if you could ignore the hard chewy texture."

And of course, no s'more post would be complete without a s'mores cookie. 

Original Pin #4

http://www.chef-in-training.com/2011/08/peanut-butter-smore-cookies/

Tonight I just had my first peanut butter s'more. It's a regular s'more, only you smear PB on one of the grahams before assembling. It's amazing! Never going back to plain s'mores again. So this cookie sounds absolutely heavenly. Andrea thought so too and gave it a try. 

Pinstrosity #4

"The cookies would have been good had the marshmallows not exploded into a sticky mess, making them impossible to eat! "

Even though these pin tests didn't turn out quite like our submitters hoped, they sure make me want to go and make me s'more marshmallow/graham/chocolate/PB goodness to eat. Maybe I should just get me a glass of milk and then go to bed. But, if you give a pregnant lady of glass of milk, she's liable to just want s'more. Or s'mores. Or watermelon with ranch dressing. 

(just kidding on that last part...thankfully I haven't had any bizarre cravings)

Reruns

After we post up a Pinstrosity here on the blog, sometimes we never see another submission from that same pin. And then there are the pins that I'm sure we'll always be getting submissions on as long as we're running the blog. These are the classics and they never fail to make me chuckle. These submissions are like watching reruns of Napoleon Dynamite...that movie never gets old and gets more and more funny every time we watch it. So today, I thought I'd give you some of these "reruns" of old Pinstrosity classics and the fresh submissions we've received for them. 

The Original Pin:

http://queenvannacreations.com/blog//2012/02/01/ice-ballons/

Colorful ice balls. Great for lining the walk for a winter party. 

The Original Pinstrosity Post:

http://pinstrosity.blogspot.com/2013/01/food-coloring-explosion.html

There are easier ways to repaint your kitchen. 

This past January, after a lake effect storm up north, Jenn decided to give these a try.

"So here's my attempt at the ice ball thing. I had it all planned out.. even had a good balloon delivery system (BDS) to ensure that there was no chance that the food coloring ended up anywhere else in the house. Fun fact... I don't use liquid food coloring.. only Wilton gel... after the 1st one ending up all over the wall and sink I went to plan B... the toothpick delivery was amusing.. and the faucet is finally starting to run clear now. Yes dear neighbors, I'm the crackhead making multiple trips outside with no jacket in sub zero temps to deliver my little landmines to their happy homes in the snowbanks. Do you know what happens when you have wet hands and go to open the door back inside? Dude! I'd also like to blame you people for the looks I will be getting for the next few days with my purply red blue green hands.. but we both know that's not the 1st time... so I can't blame you for that one.

Pinterest ice balls the next day... its -8 and I tried them.. they are all very hard. I cut the balloon off the red one and it seemed okay... peeled it back to the immediate glug glug glug of the non-frozen inside pouring out..."

The "Rerun" Submission:

"So yea that will make people stare..heheh" I love that "bloody" balloon. Makes me laugh every time I look at it. Jenn did eventually have success though after 48 hours of the water balloons sitting out in the sub-freezing temperatures:

So, not a super quick and easy pin, but not unattainable either! 

What about those "[blank] in a jar" pins. We get quite a few of those. 

The Original Pin:

Rainbow cake in a jar! 

The Original Pinstrosity Post:

http://pinstrosity.blogspot.com/2012/06/sunshine-in-and-out-of-jar.html

Misty submitted our rerun of this classic Pinstrosity. She said, "Rainbow cake in a mason jar fail!  I think I added too much batter.  I wasn't sure exactly how close to the top it was supposed to be when I put it in the oven.  The pin said to use 3 tbsp of each color.  It didn't look like enough, so I added a little bit more.  Guess I'll learn to trust the recipes from now on. "

The "Rerun" Submission:

So we have the "[blank] in a jar" pin...what about the "[blank] in a mug" pins? Those are classics too. 

The Original Pin:

http://www.number-2-pencil.com/2012/03/06/chocolate-chip-cookie-in-cup/

The Original Pinstrosity Post:

http://pinstrosity.blogspot.com/2013/06/cookie-in-mug.html

Elizabeth tells this story: "I should've known. Anything that is "quick and easy" and can be cooked in a microwave? I'll be there. I wanted to make a quick delicious cookie but I should've realized that the "Brownie In a Mug" that I made in 5th grade would've ended up just as horrible. I made a brownie in a mug for my brother's birthday, and being the boy that he is, he will eat anything that has chocolate in it. Later that evening, he threw up. Coincidence? I think not. This "Cookie" ended up tasting like frito corn chips and tons of white sugar. It ended up as a crummy mess. The recipe stated that it needed only 40-60 seconds, but it was way undercooked when I pulled it out. I kept putting it back in, and now I have this."

The "Rerun" Submission:

"I think microwave deserts have a thing against me."

And of course if we are going to mention cookies, we can't leave out the ever present and totally awesome cookie bowl. 

The Original Pin

http://www.wilton.com/recipe/Sugar-Cookie-Bowls 

Sadly...too many people just read the pinterest pin's caption and not the recipe on the website and end up with this:

The Original Pinstrosity:

http://pinstrosity.blogspot.com/2012/03/cookie-bowl-mayhem.html
http://pinstrosity.blogspot.com/2012/10/cookie-bowl-mayhem-take-2.html

Cali sent us in this rerun submission. "So I thought it'd be a great idea to make these cookie bowls that I saw on pinterest to put a no bake cheesecake mousse into for my roommates and I to enjoy, but it just ended up being a ridiculous mess. Note to self, do not use a "just add water" pre made cookie mix if you are trying to be creative. I ended up chiseling off the cookie on the pan and crumbling it up to use it as a crust for my cheesecake mousse on the bottom of muffin paper. Whatever, still tasted the same so I say it's a 3 on the GCT scale!"

The "Rerun" Submission:

And then there's one of my favorites. This hails back to the very beginning of Pinstrosity with one of our first posts. 

The Original Pin:

http://blog.hwtm.com/2012/01/diy-tutorial-creative-yarn-chandelier/

The Original Pinstrosity:

http://pinstrosity.blogspot.com/2012/02/bunch-of-hot-air.html

Melanie says, "My friends and I just moved into a new suite and the blank white walls were desperately in need of some decoration. My suitemate saw this craft and asked if I would try it. I bought balloons and glue and got out my utilitarian brown yarn and skimmed the directions…big mistake. Turns out, in order for this to work, you need to mix the glue with corn starch and water. And you need to dip the yarn in the glue mixture, not coat the balloon with it. When I popped the balloon, the whole thing crumpled. It was a sad sight to behold. I hung it up anyway, as a testament to the necessity of reading directions."

The "Rerun" Submission:

Oh these make me chuckle, I love it! I could add so many more, but you probably weren't looking for an epistle to read today. That just means we'll have to do another "rerun" post in the future. Oh darn.

Have a Pinstrosity on your hands, but we've already posted someone else's submission of the same project? Send it to us anyway! 

Party Problems

Em and Camille threw Merle an awesome Pre-Birthday party this past weekend. We thoroughly enjoyed it. It was such a fun spin on the normal Baby Shower (not that Baby Showers are bad at all, I just loved their creativity and spin on things). Birthday parties are a blast. Well, any party is a blast really. I just love parties and putting together events. If I were a cat and had 9 lives, in one of them I'd be an event planner. Where we live just isn't very conducive to being an event planner...you need somewhere with more people really. But I do love our rural area. 

Anyway...Merle's Pre-Birthday Party has me in a party mood, so I thought I'd go through our submissions and pull out some that have to do with party planning and shin-dig shenanigans.

So...what's the staple of any party? The food. We try so hard to put forth food that not only tastes fantastic, but that looks like it belongs in a food museum as well. Sometimes we end up with both good looking and tasty...and sometimes they are just one or the other. Or in sad cases...neither. So to start the post off, I give you a few Party Palate Pinstrosities:

Original Pin #1

http://www.raspberricupcakes.com/2013/04/gummy-bear-layer-cake.html

I do love me some gummy bears (just not in ice cream...they get too hard and weird in ice cream). This cake is fun and colorful and sure to please just about any kid! 

Amber's son loves gummy bears, so she decided to give this a go for his birthday, but as the post didn't have any instructions, just a picture, she had to wing it.  Here's how hers turned out:

Pinstrosity #1

Amber says, "I told my son it was a gummy bear avalanche cake. NAILED IT!"  

Round stacked cakes can be a booger. I've only made one and it took me a while to get it not too lopsided or full-of-crumb frosting. The hardest part? Getting the bottom pretty! The plate/board is so hard to keep clean and/or to wipe clean. That's why I stick to pan cakes (where they only come out of the pan when you cut it up and serve it). I'm just not that adventurous. So when I see people try these round stacked cakes, I applaud them, regardless of how they turn out.

 So cakes aren't the easiest. What about cupcakes? 

Original Pin #2

http://www.ivillage.com/rubber-ducky-cupcakes/3-r-139110

I'm impressed that Tré even attempted these. I would look at them and think, "How cute! But not a chance." I'd give up before even trying. So hats off to you Tré. In his email he explains, "My daughter turned 1 last Wednesday, so we planned a Rubber Ducky themed party for her this weekend.  I got a little cocky and decided I'd try these."

Pinstrosity #2

"Well, a few things didn't go as planned...  The frosting I used to hold the head and tails on was too warm, so they started falling apart. Then the beaks refused to cooperate; I don't know what was supposed to happen there.  Then we put the eyes on with the frosting too warm, and that all melted...  I ended up with weeping zombie ducks.  My daughter still loved them, but really..."

Zombie ducks, bahahaha. I love his description. At least the daughter was happy! 

So the cake isn't always a success...but drinks. Those are the easy part, right? Hehe. 

Original Pin #3

You know how this turns out...I love this. Jen says, "I threw a baby shower for my best friend this weekend. I was using Pinterest for inspiration for a lot of decorations, foods, and games. One pinterest project went particularly wrong, however. Since the theme of the shower was penguins, we decided to take this punch recipe and use penguin rubber "ducks" in place of actual ducks. Furthermore, we were not able to find blue Kool-Aid and thus used the suggested replacement of blue Hawaiian punch. Let's just say the punch didn't turn out exactly as shown on the pin... "

Pinstrosity #3

"Our punch was a polluted mess! The color of the "bath water" turned out to be more of a green-brown murky color! Then, we put the rubber penguins in and they all fell over...

The bright side? It was delicious and quite hilarious. We named this new recipe 'Global Warming Punch.'"

Once we have the food figured out for a party, if we have extra time and energy the next step would be the decorations. How fancy do we go? Just the food table? The entire room? The entire house? The front porch? Here's a submission with party decorations that didn't quite match the Pinspiration:

Original Pin #4

This was a pin uploaded to Pinterest. I've spent nearly an hour trying to track down the original pinner/creator but I keep hitting dead ends.  But here was the caption on the pin: "Took $1.00 table cloths, cut slits and braided the tops to create fun party wall cover ups for my daughters birthday party at home."

Marissa saw this and gave it a try. "The pin said to use three table covers from the Dollar Store, and I did buy 3.  However, two were rectangular and one was round so I ended up using two.  As you can see I FAILED lol."

Pinstrosity #4

Luckily, the food and decorations don't make or break a party. Sure, they help...but you don't need a Disneyland worthy party for your guests to have fun and for the party to be a success! 

Thanks to our awesome readers/submitters for the party Pinstrosities!

Doggone Cute Cupcakes

I am a pet person. Like REALLY a pet person. Unfortunately for me (and fortunately for my Husband who IS NOT a pet person) we live in an apartment. One day I will have my Irish Wolfhounds, a big back yard and my one sassy cat.

 

Until that day I live vicariously through Pinterest whose obsession with pets 1) Can be a bit alarming  2) Sometimes hilarious  3) Maybe a little over creative and 4) Awesome because pets are awesome and we love them to death. Also 5) Grumpy Cat...because I love her (my apologies Tardar Sauce, you are in fact a girl...misprint!).

http://blog.catmoji.com/2012/09/cat-of-the-week-10-tard-the-grumpy-cat/

 

 

Michell sent us this pin she made for a friends birthday. She said her friend really loves her West Highland White Terrier pooches.

 

If you don't know what that is...exhibit A:

http://blog.catmoji.com/2012/09/cat-of-the-week-10-tard-the-grumpy-cat/

 

Adorable right!?!

 

The Original

http://www.familycircle.com/recipes/desserts/decorate-playful-puppy-cupcakes/?page=1

 

Can I just say that people are SUPER inventive with cupcakes?!

 

Well Michell went to make these and first go round this happened...

 

 

The Pinstrosity

 

 

These puppies look more like an undercover Miss Piggy ( I think the eyes look like sunglasses lol)!

No worries, Michell had patience and persistence and tried again with MUCH better results!

 

The Pin-Win!

 

 

 

 

I think Michell's are WAY cuter than the original!

She said her kitchen was WAY to hot making all the icing melt on the cupcake AND the proportions of the ingredients weren't a good match.

She changed up some of the supplies, cooled down the kitchen and went to work. The size of the large marshmallows as the snout were way too big for her cupcakes, I think she either cut the marshmallow in half and used that as the base of the snout or just built the snout out of icing. Either way it looks awesome! Unfortunately you have to be subscribed to the original website to figure out all their design secrets, so she was going off a picture here! She did great (second go round), her final product turned out adorable!

 

Hope you all have a awesome Tuesday!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Show-and-Tell Saturday!! Roses Are Red...

Roses are red,

Violets are blue (or violet if we are being picky here)

Cupcakes are yummy

Get into my tummy!!!!

 (I'm obviously NOT a poet, and now you all know it....)

 

Today we have an AWESOME post by Meghan. I wasn't able to get my head together after the big family reunion last week to craft (finish OR start anything), so I have a fun post submitted by a reader this week instead.

 

She figured out all the issues of her pin, laid it all out for us, and came out with a delightful result!
Seriously Meghan these look fantastic!! You did a great job!!

Check out today's Show-and-Tell Saturday!!

 

 

Show-and-Tell Saturday

 

The Inspiration Pin

 

http://cakecentral.com/t/672414/cupcake-bouquet-disaster

 

 This cupcake rose bouquet is adorable, and delicious! These would be great for gifts, or cute at parties and also they are a functional way to display your amazing frosting artistic talents!

 

Here is Meghan's version!

 

Show-and-Tell

Pin Win

 

So I just love everything about this! The colors, the pot, the icing art, all of it! This is just awesome Meghan!

 

Here is what she had to say about it:

"This is a project that started to go south several times during the middle, and ultimately did not end up as I envisioned it, but was still mostly a success.

I made this for my boyfriend, as he often gets me roses as a "just because" gift, and I am never sure what the guy gift equivalent of flowers is. I do love baking, though, and this seemed like a cute way to show him my appreciation. 

Issue #1: while I am quite good at baking tasty desserts, I have little to no skill at decorating. My previous attempts at decorating with icing have tended to look like they were done by a five-year-old who was "helping" Mommy decorate. Nonetheless, I looked up a few tutorials on making icing roses and felt sure that with the right tools, I could succeed in making a rose. I rushed out and bought a basic decorating kit that included a petal tip and a flower nail, and got to work.

Issue #2: I had gotten a cute little red and white flowerpot at WalMart to make my bouquet in, and I wanted my roses to match it, so I set out to make a deep red icing. I had icing gel food color in "Red Red," so I assumed that it would not be too difficult to achieve truly red icing. An ungodly amount of food coloring later, my icing was still distinctly pink, and I decided to give up. Oh well, my boyfriend is pretty secure in his masculinity and would not flinch at pink cupcakes.

Issue #3: The icing rose tutorials I'd read recommended royal icing or a "good, stiff buttercream." Royal icing tastes horrible, and I hate the sickly sweetness of the standard powdered sugar-based buttercreams, so I chose a Swiss buttercream that has gone over well in the past. It's light and airy and not overly sweet at all. It also proved far too soft to make roses with. The "cone" of icing you build the rose around would just wobble and fall over as I attempted to put petals around it. I popped the icing in the freezer for a few minutes to firm it up, and ended up with icing that was too stiff to squeeze out of the piping bag easily, and that started to bleed red food coloring in an unsettling way as it warmed up.

Issue #4: I committed a familiar Pinstrosity mistake and just skimmed the pictures in the original pin and thought I had the gist of it. Portion cups, flowerpot, hot glue, icing roses: got it. I failed to notice that the pictures that showed perfect little icing roses on the bouquets were made with MINI cupcakes. To make icing roses large enough to cover a standard cupcake, I would have needed to buy a much larger petal tip. I now had squares of waxed paper that were covered in deformed, strangely disproportionate roses that continued to bleed red food coloring. Disgusted, I failed to take a picture, scraped all my icing into a container, and threw it in the fridge to regroup and start again the next day.

The next day, I gave my icing a thorough beating in the Kitchenaid, and the food color that had bled out reincorporated really nicely and actually made it look a little redder. I put a really large star tip on my piping bag and, starting at the middle of each cupcake, piped the icing on in a big swirl. The softness of the icing actually worked well here, and my cupcakes ended up looking pretty roselike. The one in the front of this picture was the best one; I tried to hide the really uneven ones at the back of the bouquet. I'd intentionally underfilled my cupcake liners a little, so the cupcakes nestled perfectly into the portion cups. I had some silk flowers lying around, so I stripped them of their leaves and used them to cover up some of the mess I'd made hot gluing the portion cups into the flowerpot. After this picture, I disassembled the whole thing and put the cupcakes, along with some extras in case of disasters in transport, into my cupcake carrier and reassembled it at my boyfriend's house. He did immediately drop some of the soft, red icing onto his shirt, and given the amount of food color I used, I doubt the stain will come out. But other than that, it was a pretty big success.

I plan to reuse this idea in the future, when I need small gifts for friends, and I assume it will go more smoothly now that I know what I'm doing."

 

So readers, there you have it, todays Show-and-Tell, I love that she went through and broke it down, found where she perhaps had gone wrong and fixed the problem. She even went back through and reread the directions, and her project turned out amazing! Thanks Meghan!
Some day I will get brave and dive into icing flowers, but for now I should probably focus on breakfast!

Happy Saturday all!

 

Sponge Spillage

I had a lovely Birthday yesterday. And thanks to Em for the sweet post yesterday. I got projects planned, some of the house clean, made 2 cheesecakes (tried to make one a prickly pear cheesecake...it tasted yummy but didn't set up so it was cheesecake soup), and then Cameron and I spent the evening out at my Aunts house with her family, my cousin and his family, and my sister and her family. It was such a fun way to spend the day. Nothing huge and fancy, but it was perfect. I even got to have leftover cheesecake for breakfast this morning (that may be my favorite part of making cheesecake...eating it for breakfast the next day). 

Speaking of cake...I opened up the email this morning and read over some of our recent submissions and I found a great cake related one for you today. Today's submission comes from Cathy in the UK. She started her email off like this: "My name is Cathy, I'm from the UK and my brother first pointed me to Pinstrosity last year. I love the site and oddly enough seeing so many projects go wrong has encouraged me to try out some crafty things myself. Since following Pinstrosity I have learnt how to sew, visited craft fairs and tried out more recipes (including the cookie bowls that you tested out, thanks to your instructions they turned out perfectly!)." I can't tell you how happy that made me! She gets the point of Pinstrosity! YYEEEAAAA!! Okay, carrying on with her story.  "In fact so many of my projects have turned out well, I was disappointed that I didn't have a Pinstrosity to submit....until yesterday. "

That day she found the following pin and was inspired to get baking:

The Original Pin

http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/736x/48/9a/44/489a44491418042448850a9434cce0cc.jpg

As this photo didn't link to an actual recipe, Cathy looked around and found a great recipe on the BBC website that she used:

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/532634/grannys-victoria-sponge

This is a Victoria Sponge Cake (it looks HEAVENLY!). Cathy says, "It's a staple British cake recipe and is meant to be very easy."

She whipped it all up and "It was all going so well. I thought I had made a pretty good looking (if slightly messy cake)."

https://redrosestyle.wordpress.com/2013/08/04/cathys-kitchen-victoria-sponge/

"I went to get my husband Rob to show him and by the time I got back, disaster had struck!"

The Pinstrosity

https://redrosestyle.wordpress.com/2013/08/04/cathys-kitchen-victoria-sponge/

"I had not waited long enough for the cake to cool down, which the instructions told me to do. Oops! So now the cake was very very messy! But it didn't stop me sharing the cake with my family, and it didn't stop my family from eating it all up! And despite the spillage, it still tasted great and I can recommend the recipe, you just have to follow it exactly!"

I think this is a boo boo many of us cake newbies make at least once. I know I have...a few times. You think, "Oh, it's cool enough!" only to have your icing or filling to start running and oozing. Luckily, as Cathy pointed out though, it still tastes great even if it doesn't look magazine perfect. As my cousin Missy (who ran a cookie bakery for a while) says, "Taste before beauty!". 

Thank you Cathy for sharing your story and photos (and the recipe! I definitely need to try this one out). Happy Wednesday everyone, I hope it's fantastic.