Pinterest Fail

You guys know about the Pinterest Fail site? If you haven't visited it and need a good laugh for your day, check it out. {Disclaimer: not responsible for the content of all the pins, but there are plenty of good decent laughs!!}

I have to say that overall, Pinterest has been pretty good to me. I've found a bunch of great recipes there, quite a few fun decorating ideas, and even a hairstyle or two.

And then there was this week.

We planned to have company last night, so I was carefully plodding my way through a food prep schedule to make sure everything was ready on time! The day before the dinner, I made cookies, and I planned to frost them yesterday morning before I left for an appointment.

I got up early, opened the cabinet for the powdered sugar, and...we had about a cup.

HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?? I have a firm rule about not running out of baking staples, because you just never know when you  might, in the last moment, need to bake for something. I was just certain we'd purchased powdered sugar recently, but it was absolutely nowhere to be found.

But then I remembered!!! I had seen something on Pinterest, once upon a time, about making powdered sugar at home. I fired up the computer, looked up the directions, and felt certain that this happy little Pinterest DIY save would indeed save me a trip to the grocery store in a morning when I didn't have much time to spare.

The directions said to measure out granulated sugar and cornstarch and pulse in the blender until it became powdered. The directions noted that if you have a powerful blender, this can be accomplished in as little as 30 seconds. Well. My blender may have been a prototype of blenders, so I dumped everything in and set that thing in motion for the long haul.

I cautiously lifted the lid and dumped the sugar into a bowl. It felt powdery to me, and I thought, well whaddya know! Pinterest for the win!

I combined the frosting ingredients in the mixer and watched them blend together so beautifully. I could already taste the goodness.

Except when I did taste the goodness, it gritted between my teeth in 100% granulated sugar fashion.

WHAT?!?!?!!??!?!!?

I stared at the lump of frosting in the bowl and thought maybe it wouldn't be so bad when actually applied to the cookie. So I grabbed the smallest cookie and frosted it. Took one hesitant bite and just knew.

My Pinterest fail moment had arrived.

It was a flashback to my first ever solo cooking memory. I was in upper elementary school and my parents had gone to some dinner at the school where they both worked, leaving me in the care of my grandmother for the evening.

First, you should know that my parents hardly ever left me. I literally remember one hired babysitter coming on one night - ever - in my entire life. So it was something of an adventure to get to be under Grandma's care for the night. 

You should also know that while my one Grandma used to run a bakery, this Grandma didn't really know how to cook anything. At all. And yet somehow, that night, I thought it would be a good idea to surprise Mom and Dad with a treat. So I pulled out the kid-friendly cookbook someone had given me as a gift and found a fudge recipe. It called for confectioners sugar, and I had no idea what that was, so I asked Grandma. She had no idea. {Should have sprung for the long distance phone call to ask the other grandma.}

Using context clues, I determined confectioners sugar must be a brand name of sugar, and I made that whole stinkin' batch of fudge using regular old white sugar.

I proudly presented my gift to Mom and Dad when they came home, and Mom bit into that gritty mess and tried so hard to love it.

That was the moment I relived in full, living color in my kitchen yesterday morning with my DIY powdered sugar.

I glared at the blender and put it out of sight in the dishwasher. I scraped the awful, gritty frosting into the trash and did what I should have done from the start: drove to the grocery store and bought a bag of powdered sugar.

And I must say...the end results were wildly impressive. Proper sugar makes all the difference.

I may DIY a lot of my food, but from now on, powdered sugar won't be on that list.