Pinterest Half Fails

Let's talk about the half fails today, shall we? My kids love to dip green apples into caramel dip. So being inspired and all by Pinterest, I decided to make it myself.  I found a simple caramel sauce recipe on howdoesshe.com. The recipe was great, but the container I chose to place it in...not so much.

Recycling a creamer bottle seemed like a good idea. Getting the warm caramel sauce into the container was not the issue. Rather, it was getting the cold sauce out.

Epic fail! Guess what happens when the sauce cools in the refrigerator? You guessed it. It thickens...duh. The recipe even states that. Of course, being the genius that I am, I decided that squeezing the bottle would help. Yeah, all that got me was a misshaped and collapsed bottle. I ended up squeezing the life out of the poor bottle and had to use a butter knife to scoop the sauce out. Although, the sauce did come out if it reached room temperature. 

I hope everyone has learned a valuable lesson from this...lol. Make sure you put your caramel sauce into a container with a wide opening that you can easily scoop the sauce out of. 

Caramel Sauce from howdoesshe.com

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup corn syrup
• 1/3 cup butter
• 2/3 cup heavy cream

Instructions

1. In a medium saucepan combine sugars, syrup and butter.
2. Cook over medum heat, stirring occasionally, until mixture comes to a full boil, about 5 – 6 minutes.
3. Remove from heat and cool 5 minutes.
4. Stir in whipping cream.
5. Pour into a wide mouth jar and store in refrigerator. It will thicken when cold.

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My second half fail was the Halloween skeleton meatloaf that I saw on Pinterest. There were only pictures and no instructions on the link, so I made it up as I went. When I looked at the pictures in the link, it looked like the bacon was placed onto the meatloaf before cooking. 

I followed a basic meatloaf recipe and placed the bacon, sauce, and onions on the meatloaf. Looks good so far. 

Then about an hour later...

wait for it....

wait for it....

What the heck is this? 

My skeleton was cremated! My onions were black and the bacon had shrunk terribly.  Actually, this really was my fault. I followed the meatloaf recipe directions and only checked on it once. I think this would've came out great if I lowered the oven temperature,covered the meatloaf until the last 20 minutes, or even shortened the cook time. On the plus, even though this looked horrendous and scary, it tasted great.   

If anyone makes this meatloaf skeleton and it comes out, please post some instructions. 

Paula Deen's Old Fashion Meatloaf

Ingredients

1 pound ground beef
1 1/4 teaspoons salt
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/2 cup chopped onion
1/2 cup chopped bell pepper (I omitted due to picky eaters)
1 egg, lightly beaten
8 ounces canned diced tomatoes with juice
1/4 cup quick-cooking oats (you can substitute bread crumbs)

Topping:
1/3 cup ketchup
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 tablespoon prepared mustard
Directions
Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

Mix all meatloaf ingredients well and place in a baking dish. Shape into a loaf.

Topping:

Mix ingredients for topping and spread on loaf. Bake for 1 hour (For the skeleton meatloaf, I would cover the meatloaf until the last 20-30min of cook time).

Read more at: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/paula-deen/old-fashioned-meat-loaf-aka-basic-meatloaf-recipe/index.html?oc=linkback