Pin It to Win It: It's Fall Y'all

My mother is the only person that I know of that makes a whole-hearted effort to actively attempt recipes and design projects that she finds on Pinterest. She is so committed to her love of Pinterest (and wine) that she even earned herself a trip to the minor emergency clinic after slicing open her finger while constructing this lovely chopped up cork display: 

And let's all take a moment of silence for Christmas 2011's Leaning Tower of Chocolate and Salted Caramel Cake-sa. It was pure Christmas magic finding my parents struggling to reassemble a cake that had toppled in the refrigerator and all of us laughing/crying hysterically as Mother got more and more upset that her Christmas dessert was no longer Pinterest perfect (notice the icing-mass growing off the left side of the cake in a futile attempt to anchor it down).

I admire my mother's attempts at creativity and wish I could take risks like her. The riskiest Pinterest project that I have completed in recent memory was the extremely difficult "place a capful of vanilla extract in a ramekin and put it in the oven for 1 hour so that your house smells lovely" project. It worked (obviously, because it is idiot-proof), and I marked a tally in my Pinterest win column. 

Surprisingly, I found the vanilla extract project mentioned above on the Pinterest Fail website (Pinstrosity is funny too), which goes to show that you can screw up even the easiest of Pinterest projects if you put your mind to it. This particular person read the instructions as place a CUPFUL of vanilla extract in the oven, and subsequently wound up with a house that "smelled like the Pillsbury Dough Boy's butthole for the next two months." 

Side note - here are my two favorite Pinterest fails of all time: 

Now that Fall has arrived and every PSL drinking, chunky scarf wearing, boot trotting girl out there has an "I <3 FALL!" Pinterest page, I figured this would be the perfect time to kick off a recurring blog post called "Pin It to Win It." In this series, I will attempt one recipe and one craft found on Pinterest (the inaugural attempt being pumpkin themed, obvi) and post the results. 

Recipe: Honey Pumpkin Muffins with Cream Cheese Frosting 

Original Pin

Original Pin

I don't think I have ever made cupcakes/muffins/a cake from scratch (surprise surprise), and I have only made homemade icing once, so this recipe was definitely mine for the taking to screw up somehow. I bolstered my confidence by picking up some adorable black and white spiderweb cupcake liners from Michael's, which would be used to cutely mask any failed baking attempt. 

I started out by preparing two bowls of ingredients. 

Bowl 1: flour, cinnamon, ginger, baking soda, baking powder, and salt

Bowl 2: sugar, olive oil, honey, almond milk, pumpkin puree, egg, and vanilla extract

I whisked together the ingredients in each bowl and then added the pumpkin mixture to the flour mixture. Next I whisked together the combined bowls until smooth, then spooned the batter into the cupcake liners. The blog where I found this recipe said that it made about 12 cupcakes, but I definitely had enough batter to make at least six more. 

                  

Ready to bake!

While the muffins were baking, I enlisted my trusty sidekick to assist with making the homemade cream cheese frosting, as I did not trust myself to properly contain the icing ingredients within the confines of the mixing bowl while taking the electric mixer to them. Judge away, but that mixer is fast! We whipped together the cream cheese, butter, vanilla extract, and powdered sugar and set the bowl in the fridge to cool. 

      

The honey pumpkin muffins filled the house with such an intoxicating Fall smell that I was tempted to just eat them sans icing as soon as they came out of the oven. 

I would say that the only aspect of this project that did not work out as hoped for was the consistency of the icing. Though it tasted phenomenal, the icing itself resembled the ooey gooey drippy consistency of cinnamon roll icing rather than the stiffer consistency of store bought icing, thereby making the application process a bit more difficult. The recipe resulted in extra icing as well, so we drizzled some of the excess onto our muffins just like you would a cinnamon roll - I highly suggest doing this! To kick this Fall-themed Pinterest project up a notch, I topped off each muffin with some Fall sprinkles that I found at HomeGoods. 

Despite the icing consistency, I deem this recipe a Pinterest win. Next time I will definitely make a few extra muffins with the excess batter and icing. 

Craft: Faux Pumpkin Flower Pot

Original Pin

Original Pin

I picked this mumpkin craft because it added some lovely floral warmth to our condo and also allowed me to make something that I could reuse every year. To get this project going, I picked up 2 plastic pumpkins at Michael's and 2 potted mums at Home Depot. Side note - Michael's has a lot of great items (baking accessories, holiday decorations, you name it) and their iPhone app typically has some good coupons that knock the price down. 

Mumpkin supplies

I traced a circle around the top of the pumpkin, and using our handy dandy utility knife Matt cut the top off because I was scared that I was going to chop off a finger or three I slowly cut off the top of each pumpkin. I unfortunately could not find a pumpkin/mum combo whose sizes perfectly meshed, so instead of just dropping the mum pot into the pumpkin I had to repot the mum itself directly inside the pumpkin. 

Despite having to improvise a bit, I think the mumpkin planter turned out great and I am excited to have 2 more fall decorations that I can use year after year. Now I just have to concentrate on not killing the mums...