So, if you're on Facebook with me, you have read about my new love Pinterest.com (My Pinterest Boards ). Pinterest is a website that gives you tons of examples of fun recipes, projects, clothes, inspiration ideas, etc. and a place to keep track of them all. I heart Pinterest, Mike on the other hand does not share my love as it creates more projects that I always seem to "need" his help on. In fact, I don't think I have done one project without summoning or 'frantically yelling' for him.
My first project was those apple slices with cinnamon....
an easy two ingredient recipe: apples and cinnamon
Here's how it went:
Baked Apples
First I cut up the apples.... kids loved this..every time I cut up a 'disk' a little blond haired blue eyed little girl would swoop in and steal one! I ended up cutting up four apples to get enough for the two the recipe called for as a result of apple theives I live with.
Thought I would be 'creative' and cut a heart in the middle when coring them...This didn't really take that long to do...but the heart got kind of 'wonky' when it was cooked.
Place them on Parchment paper / pan ...sprinkle cinnamon (next time I would use cinnamon sugar or brown sugar to sweeten them up.)
Pinterest instructions said to place in the over for TWO hours at 200 degrees (I also saw 275 degrees in a different description of the same recipe) and to flip them after one hour (It also said some kind of mumbo jumbo about watching them closely). All in all ours cooked for an hour and fifteen minutes. Use 200...not 275...I had some burn...and by burn I mean totally black apples on one pan when I checked them for the first time (Okay, actually I was changing Scarlett's diaper and I thought I smelled something burning so I yelled to Mike to check them....this was quickly followed by utterances of 'they are burnt to a crisp', Julia then chimed in..."That one looks like a hotdog" and my favorite "Mom, you burn a lot of stuff" Mike saved the day and we were able to salvage about half of each pan..
This is my ("our") finished project...the house smelled fantastic, but all in all I'd rank this as 5/10.
Changes I would make next time: cook at 200 degrees, not 275, check frequently, peel apples first. The skins made them a little chewy/weird tasting and lastly, use brown sugar for more flavor.
The next Pinterest project we did was the two ingredient fudge, I could certainly handle this one alone right? Wrong :)
Valentine's Day Fudge
Two ingredients, white chocolate chips (12oz bag) and one can of strawberry frosting
This went smoother than the apples, since the only baking involved was a microwave.
I melt a lot of chocolate around here without incident, for some reason, the white chocolate chips I bought would not melt...they just kept smelling like they were burning and just got weird even though I was heating them at 50% power. Again, I called Mike and he tried to re-microwave them...the bowl was super hot, but still not getting really wet/melted.
Mike thought that maybe we should try and change the consistency and add the frosting...Viola, it was just what the chips needs to fully melt and reach the right consistency.
I poured them into a little pan (on parchment paper)...not wax paper because that's what the recipe said. I honestly have no idea what the difference between the two is.
Sprinkled on some little hearts and let it set...
It cut so easily! And tasted great :)
I'd give this a 10/10, super easy and super yummy
We even wrapped a couple up and brought them to our next door neighbors.
The last Pinterest project was tonight...Recycling old crayons into new shapes/crayons.
First we had a whole family 'crayon peeling party.' Ava loves this and does it all the time, usually to my annoyance.
After the crayons were peeled, they had to be cut/broken into pieces...guess what? This is tiring and some of those huge crayons are hard to cut. Enter Mike (again), he cut and broke up the crayons for us, he had deep lines on his hands from using a huge knife to cut through them for me, he kept saying, "Why are we doing this again?"
Next we cooked them in a silicon pan at 230 degrees for 15 plus minutes. The Pinterest instructions said 15, I think we cooked ours for more like 25. They weren't melting as quick as the Pinterest peeps said.
I went to take the pan out of the oven...holy hot molten crayons! They were all bubbly and messy. I could not lift up the pan (silicon pan bends when you touch it and try to move it) "Mike!!" We held a cookie sheet next to the rack and slowly slid them onto it...yes...some of them spilled and OMG melted crayons are hot to touch.
I let them set for a while (lost track of time...we ate dinner, did homework, etc) then went to look at them...Eww...they looked like grey, orange and black goop. It looked like all the colors just turned to one brownish horrible color. I thought it was a complete failure.
To my surprise when I pushed them out of the pan, they had actually turned out really cute!
Two out of the sixteen broke when I extracted them; so naturally we had to test them out....they are super cool, you just keep turning the crayon to different sides and edges to change colors.
Things I would change next time: I wouldn't use as many blacks and browns as the kind of 'took over' some of the molds and I would try and put the silicon pan onto another pan so it can easily be removed from the oven. The Pinterest example of this shows these homemade crayons glue dotted onto Valentines that say something like: "Be my Valentine for "crayon" out loud!"
Super cute and definitely going to do that..I just wish there weren't so many kids each classroom.
I'd give this finished project a 8/10. It is very cute, but lots of work...
Well that's my Pinterest Project update. All three would have been disastrous if Mike didn't go along with my shenanigans and swoop into to help.
So thankful to him and his domestic abilities!
