Fail!

Well I tried really hard to be a good, loving, supportive wife yesterday, but I failed!  Trevor took his last final of the semester from 7:15 to 9:15 last night.  So I thought I would try to feed him a good meal before hand so he could concentrate on the test.  I did succeed in that first task, and it turns out that instant mashed sweet potatoes are really surprisingly good!  However, I thought I would make him a little treat to come home to once he was finished for the semester.  Once he left I got started making a yummy treat that I found on picky-palate.com .  Festive candy cane kiss centered brownie bites...doesn't sound that hard...right?  The directions said to make them in a mini cheesecake pan, but if you don't have one of those a mini muffin pan will suffice.  Of course I don't have a mini cheesecake pan, so I used the mini muffin pan we got as a wedding gift.  Everything was going great until it was time to take them out of the muffin pan.  The directions said to make sure that the pan was very well greased, and I did!  But they still were not coming out without breaking in the middle near the kiss.  So I thought maybe I should bake them a little longer because it was a little gooey in the middle. So I put them in a little longer and came back to check on them and noticed that the oven has decided to shut itself down as it is sometimes known to do.  So....I reheat the oven and put them in a little longer, because I don't know how long they were baking before the oven shut off.  I finally take them out and let them cool for awhile.  Once they were cool they popped out really easily.  Success! Or so I thought...  I make the icing and sprinkle the crushed candy cane on top. So i put them on a festive red plate, and pour a glass of milk in a christmas mug and take them to my husband who has been home from the test for about an hour now!  He bites down and then I thought I might need to call the dentist for a chipped tooth!  They were like bricks!  Here is a little comparison of what the lady at picky palates look like and how mine turned out:

Hers

Mine

Not too bad, considering she got to use a mini cheesecake pan and I had to use a mini muffin pan.  But Now look at the insides:

Hers

Mine

Ha! My kiss center totally disintegrated!

As if that was not enough to lower my baking confidence.  I decided that it would be fun to make a gingerbread man with the leftover brownie batter.  Not having a pan small enough to put the remaining batter in to bake, I had the genius idea to put my gingerbread man cookie cutter on a baking sheet and fill it with the batter.  Well that was also I big FAIL:

Who knew a cookie cutter couldn't contain brownie batter? Now you know! Sorry Trevor, I really wanted to help celebrate the end of the semester!  Maybe I can come up with something really good by the end of next semester :)