Pinterest FAIL

This was my "pin" on Pinterest

For those of you who do not “do” Pinterest, a Pinterest Fail is when you see some lovely recipe or easy-looking craft on Pinterest, but your finished product does not even remotely resemble what you pinned on your Pinterest board.

This morning I experienced an epic Pinterest Fail.  Mike and Amy are leaving this morning to drive to the U.S. after two years of living in Oaxaca.  At 6:30 I intend to go help them with the last minute loading of the car.  Simple enough.  Then I thought I really should wake up early to make them a special breakfast – something easy to eat as they travel.

I knew just the thing – cinnamon rolls!  That used to be our travel day tradition.  Fresh cinnamon rolls always put everyone in a great mood before a long drive, except the last time when they were not quite cooked long enough, and someone got sick after eating a doughy bite along a curvy stretch of Mexican highway. 

No, maybe not cinnamon rolls, especially with Amy being pregnant and all.  I know!  That Snickerdoodle Muffin recipe I have pinned on Facebook.  That would be perfect! (Or not.)

First of all, I came to the part in the recipe about adding cream of tartar.  Oops.  I already packed my kitchen for our departure in two weeks.  So I went back in the living room where the wireless internet connection is better, and I looked up “cream of tartar substitute.”  The conversion was a little sketchy, but I did the best mathematical estimation I could.

Then I came to the nutmeg.  Oh, dear.  Would it be worth going out to the cargo trailer with a flashlight, digging out the box with my spices, and finding it?  Instead I had a vague recollection of a baggy with fresh nutmeg a team had brought me last fall.  Thank you!  With a bit more searching, I came up with the little grater that came with it.

Cinnamon?  Oh, man!  This is getting ridiculous.  I think I sent the rest of the cinnamon over to the recording studio so our technicians could add it to their coffee.  No, I found one container I had kept in the cabinet.  But finally when the mixture was done, I remembered that I had given away my muffin tins to a neighbor who had completed a cooking class.  Shouldn’t have been a problem, since I always keep a large stash of those aluminum baking cups that you put on a cookie sheet… if only I hadn’t given the rest of mine away just two days ago.

Bah.  The whole project was looking hopeless, but then I found one tiny muffin tin in the cabinet.  Six muffins were not going to cut it, though, so I came up with another brilliant idea – make them into cookies!  Why, oh why, did I not just make snickerdoodle cookies to begin with?  Instead I took cookies, attempted to turn them into muffins, and then ended up with one ginormous cookie mess that is even as I type, spilling off the cookie sheet onto the bottom of my oven.

Being a good mother-in-law is really a tremendous effort.  I sure hope they like the six muffins that hopefully are turning out.  As for me, I’m ready to go back to bed.