Marshmallow Melties

Hello! Hope you all are having a great week! This weekend is Halloween and I am sure you all are not short on sweets this week, but alas, here is one more for you! Enjoy!

Kate sent this to us and I have to admit I got a good giggle out of it, check it out!

The Original

http://www.aturtleslifeforme.com/2011/04/caramel-marshmallows-oh-my.html

 

 

These cute treats look fairly easy/self explanatory and a lot of people will already have everything needed for these on hand! Kate found these not quite as easy to recreate, let's see what she had to say...

 

The Pinstrosity

 

 

"I did let them dry on wax paper, as shown in the photograph. The caramel never really set up and was a bit stringy, which I expected because it's caramel. But when I tried to dip it into the chocolate, it seemed to re-melt on contact and the chocolate slid right off. I resorted to pouring chocolate over the tops, just to try to combine the flavors a little. You can see how well that went. When I finally tried to take the marshmallows off the waxed paper, the paper stuck and I had to stuff to the whole thing in my mouth and loosen the paper with my tongue. The worst part is that they didn't taste like much. All those flavors seemed to cancel each other out and all I tasted was sweet. Totally Lame."

 

What do I think happened here?? The caramel and chocolate never set-up, just like she said, and I think that what she was missing here is cold. After she dipped them in the caramel I think I probably would have stuck them in the fridge (or freezer) to help the caramel set up and then when I was ready to dip them in the chocolate they wouldn't turn to mush. Then I would stick them back in the fridge or freezer let them set-up again and enjoy them after an hour or so. With all of that being said, I have never refrigerated marshmallows (I am not much of a marshmallow person...gasp!) so I am not sure if that would mess with their taste/texture, but as far as this pin goes I really think the cold would react well with helping set-up the ingredients. Perhaps Kate's house was hot, or she left them next to a stove or oven that was on, I can't be sure.

Another thought I had was that the caramel was the apple dip kind of caramel, the kind that never does actually set up, this kind of caramel is proverbially viscous. In this case, cold will not in fact cause the caramel to set up. The same goes with chocolate if it is like a chocolate fudge sauce that goes on ice cream, this too will not harden when encountering cold. Just a few thoughts.

 

Anyone have any other tips or tricks for Kate's treat?? Let us know in the comments!

Happy Halloween all!

Stay tuned for a post this weekend for Pumkintober!!!

 

 



Sunday Surprise: No Bake Oatmeal Cookies

Greetings everyone,

Happy Sunday! Oh boy, have I got a blog post for you today. The odds were stacked against me, and at two or three points during this recipe, I thought "This is going to be a genuine Pinstrosity". But, alas, I triumphed-ish.

So I should probably start this post by saying that I  really wanted to make these cookies for Pinstrosity's Pumpkin-tober.

But I ended up forgetting several crucial ingredients when I went to the grocery store (why do I think I can shop successfully when I don't make a list? I totally can't). Naturally, I didn't realize this until 9:00 PM, when I got the fever to bake said cookies.

Then, I thought I'd make some delicious oatmeal cookies. I was sure I had all of the items for those in the pantry already. But, nope, nope I did not. Being unable (and unwilling) to give up cookie making for my Saturday night project, I settled on these "Chocolate Oatmeal No Bake Cookies". Yummsies.

And note, when I type "settled", it wasn't like I was upset about those at all. I mean, look at that picture. GET IN MY FACE!

Here's the recipe listed on the original blog:

Chocolate Oatmeal No Bake Cookies
1/2 C Butter
2 C Sugar
1/2 C Milk
4 Tbsp Cocoa
1/2 C Peanut Butter
3- 3 1/2 C Quick cooking Oats
2 tsp. Vanilla

Add the first 4 ingredients in a saucepan. Bring to a rolling boil, and boil for 1 minute. Stir in the next 3 ingredients and drop onto wax/foil paper. Let cool until set. 

Now would probably be a good time to disclose that tonight, for no particular reason at all, I did not do a hands-on inventory of the things I needed for this recipe. I was just naturally sure that I had it all. Bad choice. especially considering that I couldn't make the original recipe because items were missing. As a writer, you'd think that I would have caught the ominous foreshadowing of this. No such luck. We shall call the lack of inventory Mistake #1.

Mistake #1A: Not enough butter. Nope. We're at the bottom of the container. Maybe a couple of teaspoons, at most. 


No problem, I figure. I'll just use Butter Flavored Crisco, despite never having used Crisco in this way. What could go wrong? 

I started with the whole "Add the first four ingredients in a saucepan". Mistake #2 (while Mistake #1 - no inventory-  is still in progress): I started cooking BEFORE gathering the ingredients. What the heck was I thinking?! 

Here we go... Milk, sugar, and Crisco

Here, see? The shortening is melting. That's cool.

Is it supposed to be separated like that? Like... not sure how much you can actually tell, but the shortening was just a yellow layer on top of the milk and the sugar. It didn't seem to be blending at all. Very oil/water. Hmm. Troubling... 

Photo in motion...ooooh....ahhh....

But, not nearly as troubling as what I found next (on the Crisco container):

As you can imagine, since this stuff was already heating in the saucepan, this was not an ideal moment to realize this. Even worse, the recipe instructed me to "bring ingredients to a rolling boil". Gulp.

I turned up the heat a little more, and then this started to happen:

I panicked and removed the pan from the burner (on the off chance that this was what Stage 1 of a grease fire looked like). But, the good news was that it started to mix up, kinda...

Pardon the messy stove.

Next item on the recipe? Quick oats. Awesome... I'll just go ahead and add my 3 - 3 1/2 cu-- oh no. Literally, as I am pouring the quick oats into the pan, I realize that there are only two cups left in the container. And, naturally, we only have one container. Mistake #1B.

Oat to  sugary grease ratio was all sorts of off.

At this point, I'm like, 'welp, this is over and done with. May as well figure out how to dump it in the trash...' Until... dun dun da dun!!! (Prince Oatmeal rides in on his valiant steed)

Individual packets of oatmeal that Rob bought at Target, but didn't like. So they've just been sitting in the pantry for a couple of months. Strawberry or not, into the pan the last three packets went.

Ahhh....much better.

It is only at this point during this "baking" session (if you can even call it that), that I realized I never added the cocoa, as I was instructed in Step 1.  Mistake #3. Whoops. I started scrounging around in my pantry only to discover...... no cocoa. 

ARE YOU KIDDING ME RIGHT NOW!?

Mistake #1C. Seriously. Almost lost my mind. But, again, I'd already made it this far, so I couldn't just give up. Right? Right.

Solution?

Indeed. Ovaltine to the rescue. I mean, it's powdery and chocolately, so, really, I felt like I was going in at least kind of the right direction. I added the vanilla for this photo too:

In the interest of full disclosure, this tasted amazing. I gave it a little nibble and was quite impressed. Because, really, I was still amazed that it wasn't on fire.

Carrying on. Last ingredient: peanut butter. 

And this, ladies and gentleman, was the first PLANNED substitution for this recipe. Skippy Dark Chocolate peanut butter was a Nutella competitor that I found at the dollar store awhile back. I quickly decided that there was no competing with Nutella, so about half of this jar has been hanging out in the pantry, waiting for its purpose. And this recipe was just the ticket.

The bad news? My 1/2 cup wouldn't fit into the container. And, I know, I know, I could have spooned it out into the 1/2 cup, but that just seemed like "too much work". I decided to just "eyeball it" because really, who cared at this point? I didn't really. It was tasty, but I was pretty cranky about how all of this was unfolding.

I scooped this into cookie sized balls and waited. After ten minutes, it didn't look like it was any closer to being "set"-- so I opted to put it in the fridge, with the other half in a pie dish.

This may have been a mistake, but as you can imagine, I was pretty much ready to throw the towel in anyway. I fell asleep and ended up leaving these in the fridge overnight. Here's the final product:

Rob quite likes them. Though they're not nearly as nice looking as the original post. They also have little specks in them. Maybe shortening? Who knows.

I actually find these to be waaaaaay too sugary/a weird consistency (almost....grainy?). But, of course, I don't blame that on the original post. I feel my version of this was a recipe unto itself, what with all of the fails. I do want to say this though, think of what a solid recipe this must be if I could replace butter with shortening, forget/replace cocoa with Ovaltine, use plain AND flavored oatmeal, and a different kind of peanut butter and still coming out edible. Hats off to the original post, I say.

Let's review the morals of the baking story:

1. Do not, unless you are absolutely sure of what you're doing, start baking at 9:00 PM.
2. Do a complete inventory of the ingredients needed. Seriously.
3. Do NOT start to bake until inventory is complete (or, what you start working on can be used for something else, I suppose) 

Learn from my mistakes!!

Have any of you tried the original post? What did you think?

Thanks for hanging in there with me. Hopefully, I'll have something else for you soon!

E-hugs and e-kisses,

Rachel