Flashback to the Strawberries

You know there's a problem with a pin when you have enough submissions to make not one, not two, but 3 posts about it. This one is just problematic. Today we have two more submission to add to the pile of pin disappointment.

The Original Pin

http://www.theworldwidegourmet.com/recipes/dried-strawberries-ruscalleda/

You know what's coming, don't you.

The Pinstrosities

http://momminitup.com/culinary-fun/pinterest-lies/

These are just about the closest I've seen to actually getting this pin down. But they still aren't the twizzler-esque bites of heaven they appear to be in the original pin. 

Emily, the submitter of the 1st photo said, "So after having intended to make these for a year or two, I finally got around to trying them last night. After more than two hours of baking, I opened my oven to find this. They taste worse than they look. I don’t know why I was surprised – the description should have tipped me off. Better than Twizzlers? There is no such thing."

Melissa, submitter of the 2nd photo, said, "I wanted to try a post that would help me with my sweet cravings, so I found these directions for how to dry strawberries.I followed the directions, slicing the strawberries into two or three slices.  I preheated the oven and threw the pan in when it hit 210 degrees.  To save on cleaning, I put a piece of parchment paper on the baking sheet. At two hours, I noticed the one side was getting dark, so I flipped the over.  At three hours, they were still pretty moist!  The really thin ones were almost dry, but the edges were getting black.  I decided to keep them in for longer so I checked them every 15 minutes. After 4 hours, I threw in the towel and took them out.  They are really dark, the really thin ones are almost completely shriveled, and the fatter ones are still somewhat moist. The good news is that, although they look pretty awful, and I wouldn't exactly call them 'dry', they do taste really good!  I just don't think they're going to keep as long as if they were really dried all the way. Oh well!"

It has been suggested to use lemon juice on the strawberries to help them keep their color and not turn into a nasty brown mess.

Some of our commenters on our previous posts said that theirs looked horrendous, but if you could just get past that and try them, that they were pretty good.

And then there was this comment from Britters on our most recent dehydrated strawberry post that just made me smile: "This might mean a whole new level of Pinterest fails, but has anyone tried dehydrating in your car? Or if you live on a Red Neck estate, one of the abandoned cars? There will be smells, but on a hot day cars can be great for low temperature baking/dehydrating projects."  I have a friend in the Phoenix valley who has actually baked cookies in her car while she was in the store shopping. She just put them in the back window and went inside and came out when she was done to hot fresh cookies. I thought it was a genius way to turn awful weather into a win!