Have you ever been involved in something that you knew would prove to be disastrous in multiple facets of your life, yet you continued to do it anyway?
That's what I've been going through for a couple years now -- with Pinterest. I'm sorry to say I've become a clinical "pinner." A large majority of my free time is spent browsing the smorgasborg of recipes, crafts, and-let's not forget my favorite part- the humor section, riddled with eCards and truly inspirational pictures of Ryan Gosling telling me that the way I study all the time and don't go out is really sexy (thanks for the support Ryan, I'm glad at least YOU understand me). Luckily, I'm not a PP (a Passive Pinner aka a weenie). Many of the things that I pin, I actually do.
Most of the time, these various crafts and recipes I try turn out phenomenal (I am, after all, a wonderful cook/baker/DIYer). Once in a while though, as I'm not entirely infallible (yet), my attempts at following through fail. Epically. I'll begin with a story of a night that I like to call the "Why did I listen to my friends in the first place, baked s'mores sound worse than Hitler" night.
It was a dark and stormy summer evening when I decided to invite my friends over for a night of fun, friendship and Pinterest inspired food. As we are women, this obviously meant we would be making desserts. With chocolate. Lots and lots of glorious chocolate. I, being the oh-so-generous person that I am, allowed them to pick from Pinterest one of the desserts that we made. That was my first mistake, which I would come to regret very quickly. The first recipe (coincidentally, the one I chose) was great. It was an Oreo refrigerator cake with layers of crushed Oreos, Cool Whip and pudding. And it was marvelous.
The second recipe though…well, we try not to talk about that anymore. It's a sensitive subject. And by sensitive I mean repulsing and vomit-inducing. This turned out so disgusting that I almost wanted to regress back into the womb so I only had to ingest the things my mother, who had years of experience with food and would never make the same mistakes I did, ate.
I now understand why mama birds chew up the food before their babies have it. It's not to make it easier to swallow. It's to protect them from food like this. Now that I think about it, I'm probably exaggerating. There were parts of it that I ate. But only parts. And seeing as usually I have no inhibitions about eating anything with chocolate (or really sugar in general), that's saying something pretty significant.
Anyway, the idea of it was that it would be a s'more with cookie dough baked in the oven. The graham crackers were on the bottom, then cookie dough, chocolate and marshmallows. To begin, we lined a pan with graham crackers and baked the cookie dough on top of it. This didn't work out. This should have been the second sign. I am a fool and should clearly begin listening to what the universe is trying to tell me.
The cookie dough did not turn into a large, gooey, scrumptious mass of deliciousness atop a graham cracker crust. It became a brick. I am not kidding. Oddly enough, the only parts that didn't burn to a dark, dreary crisp were the edges, which, if you have any experience in burning things, you know is very rare. The edges should be the first to burn. Well, obviously we're miracle workers with the ability to defy the laws of baking, because that night, the edges were perfect. (Enjoy our only picture of this disaster)
As we're the type of people who do the same thing over and over again expecting different results, we decided to try again. We reloaded the pan with graham crackers, then baked the cookie part in it for about a third of the recommended time. It did not burn, but it also did not cook.
However, there is nothing wrong with mostly raw cookie dough, so this was good enough for us. We put on the marshmallows and chocolate and within 15 minutes the contraption had hardened once again. Luckily, this was enough time for us to taste it. While my friends said they didn't think it was all that terrible (they're clearly compulsive liars), I could not eat it.
Imagine your mouth suddenly being taken over by a small militia dead set on killing you then multiply it by four, and that's how I felt about this dessert. The mixture of raw cookie dough and melted marshmallows is not a good one. It may sound good- it even may look good. But looks can be (and are) deceiving. Seeing as I don't agree with torture, there is no picture of this. You're welcome.
I suppose the moral of this story is that baking is serious and you shouldn't trust your so called "friends" with the task. They will never understand Pinterest desserts like you do. And if you only take one thing from my tale of horror, it's this: never forgive, never forget.
