Weekend Treat-Making

Pinterest has such delightful looking recipes, doesn't it?  I've made quite a few of them myself, and they have all turned out just fine.  This weekend, however, I experienced my first "Pin-saster."  Here is the story: I went to Aldi and found strawberries for a really good price, so I bought a lot.  Then I needed to figure out what to do with them, besides make jam that my kids won't eat, so I turned to Pinterest.  Up popped a number of recipes for "Oven-Dried Strawberries" with lovely pictures that looked like candy/fruit snacks:

Image found here

The recipes were all pretty similar: Bake for three hours at 210 degrees.  Friends, the smell was delightful!!!!  I was very nearly drooling by the time the dried berries came out of the oven.  Sadly, they looked nothing like the pictures - they looked like this:

And they weren't dry either - they were just softer and maybe a bit jelly-ish.  They did taste good to me, although opinions among the rest of the clan were mixed, so it is unlikely I will ever waste three hours on that one again.

To comfort ourselves after that botched treat, we made something else yummy over the weekend.  The girls had great fun making their first batch of Monkey Bread.  It turned out just as sticky and tasty as you could hope for.

Cam like his with his first very own mug of coffee.....

which two minutes after this picture was taken ended up dumped into his breakfast cereal.

You win some, you lose some.

Happy baking and treat-making, everyone!