It's Wednesday! And March is halfway over already! Where has it gone! I feel like I do this every month, "Oh it's almost the 15th, what the heck! Where has the month gone?!" Anyone else do this?!
It drives me batty! I feel like I have all the time in the world to get things done and before you know it it's Christmas again. *le sigh*
I do want to let you all know how sad it makes me how busy I am that I can only post on Wednesday, Friday and the occasional Monday. This going back to school stuff is busy! But I am grateful for my time to come back and write to you all!
Cue readers..."Enough of the chit chat lady, show us some Pinstrosities!!"
With no further ado, here is Meredith's Birthday disaster that she managed to salvage!
The Original
It's things like this that make dieting making healthy choices hard. This looks AMAZING!!!
Darn you delicious sugar and chocolate!!!! *shakes fist in the air*
Meredith makes a mean chocolate chip cookie (a classic at everyone's home I would assume), and her Hubby's birthday was coming up. She decided to make her chocolate-chip-cookie-loving-man a cookie cake for his birthday! However she kind of forgot about her plans till last minute...
The Pinstrosity
Bummer :(
So what happened?! Meredith tells her tale here:
"Last week was my husband's birthday... and ... we already had all of the ingredients to make the cake! The instructions seemed straightforward and I couldn't wait to make it.
Except that I did wait.
I forgot all about the fact that I needed to make the cake until his actual birthday. Which was fine, the recipe said it only cooks for 18-20 minutes so I thought I was good.
Until I got home late from work.
Then I got in a hurry.
Then the Pinstrosity happened.
Everything went well until I got to the step that says "remove from over and let cool for a couple minutes on the cookie sheet, then transfer to cooling rack to cool completely". I was in a hurry, so I rushed the "couple minutes" to 5. But of course the cookie cake was not cool and it totally. fell. apart.
I started to tear up and realized, well, there's always Pinstrosity.
Seriously, the thought of you guys helped me fight through the tears and keep pressing forward.
*Meredith we are glad you kept going!!! That's what we are here for! It happens to everyone and don't get down on yourself! You rock!!*
And by pressing I mean I picked up the pieces of cookie cake that had fall all over the counter, placed them back in a cake shape, and pressed/smooshed them down until it looked like a cake shape again.
Then I made the icing and covered it up as best I could. After adding some sprinkles and candles it looked halfway like a cake.
It tasted fabulous!
I had planned just to pipe the icing around the edges like in the picture but because the cake fell apart I had to spread it over the entire cake.
The result was tasty, but terrible looking!
At least I got a laugh out of it! The good news was that everyone that tried it thought the cake TASTED delicious, and I guess that is the most important part!"
Meredith we are glad that you kept going and served that yummy cake! You will never forget this birthday, and neither will your husband! I am sure he was so happy that you thought to do all of that for him! Here is her "after" picture!
From what I can see, she went all out! I see presents, sprinkles, cards, cake, icing, candles, and from the looks of it a balloon string!
You put a lot of love into this and I think that is what is most important and endearing!
And I think you did an awesome job repairing the cake! It looks yummy to me!
As for how to make this not happen next time.
One word.
Patience.
I have SO been there, this last year we went to a friends place for Thanksgiving and I made a Gluten Free cake for her grandmother (Chips whole family is gluten free so we have some experience with gluten free cooking/baking) and it took EVERYTHING that I had to not ice that baby the second it came out of the oven! I just wanted it to look pretty! Not to mention how much I love decorating cakes. And can I just say that just because you love doing something-decorating cakes- doesn't mean you should, case in point can be found here.
Anyway I think we can all take away two awesome things from this:
1. Wait for that cookie cake to cool or it will CRUMBLE.
And in case you just can't wait...
2. Almost anything can be fixed if you use enough icing. ;)
Happy Wednesday Pinstrosipeeps!
Stay tuned for Marquette's post tomorrow!
I think that was a great save and, really, who cares what a cookie looks like as long as it tastes good, right?
ReplyDeleteWe used to make giant cookies instead of birthday cake sometimes when we were kids. Each party guest (parties were small; usually me, my brother, my best friend, and her sister) got a lump of dough to roll out, shape, and decorate as s/he wished. We usually made cats. Everybody liked cats.
Bit of cookie-decorating knowledge: Don't put candy corn on a cookie before you bake it! You'll end up with puddles of burnt sugar. Learned that the hard way in 1987. Press them in after the cookie comes out of the oven.
M&M's and red licorice bake OK, though.
I have to say, if I saw instructions that told me to wait a couple of minutes, I would absolutely think that 5 minutes was plenty. I mean, let's face it, the word couple generally means 2! To me, this is one of those situations where the instructions weren't detailed enough (especially if you cook once or twice a year, like me).
ReplyDeleteHelpful hint: put parchment paper in your pan. When I cook sugar cookies I just lift the parchment off the pan as soon as it comes out of the oven and set the cookies aside to cool. I wait a little bit for chocolate chip cookies because they generally need to cook a bit longer. And when I make cake balls I don't even bother to measure the parchment...I just throw a sheet in the pan and let it stick up over the edges. When the cake comes out of the oven I just lift the parchment and dump the cake steaming into the mixer. It blends better with the icing if it's hot. Anyhow, I have rolls and rolls of parchment paper. I don't bake anything without it now. It will make cookies seem much more approachable as you can move them around without breaking them.
ReplyDelete