failure, with a dash of cinnamon and plastic

I need to take a break from attempting new recipes, particularly it would seem those of the baking-breakfasty-sweetness variety.

Its my Achilles heel, my kryptonite, my bucket of water on the Witch of the West.

This week anyway, next week is totally up for grabs.

So I saw these on the website that provides an endless source of failure possibilities for me (Pintercrack, of course) and I thought to myself "Self, I can do that!"  Yes, these are dangerous words.

Cinnamon roll pancakes.

Yeah, that sounds like heaven on a plate, and so the fail began ...

I followed her recipe, all of her instructions right up to the part where I was supposed to put the gooey cinnamon stuff in a baggie and clip a corner.  I thought hey, why would I do that when I can just use one of these spiffy ketchup bottle thingies I got for a buck.  I actually thought to myself that diverging from the instructions would be a good thing this time.  I was making it easier on myself with this change.  I am so clever, I thought, as I patted my back and poured the delicious concoction into the bottle.

Um, not so much.

the cinnamon goo, pre-Bottle of Doom

The neck of the bottle got clogged, and only the buttery stuff poured out making a huge mess, so I had to squeeze the bottle harder figuring it would let the one stuck piece come out.

But then it exploded out, with lots of the cinnamon goo, and that pancake was a mess.  So I figured, hey, I only lost one, no biggie ... then it happened again, but this time I squeezed the bottle so hard that the goo oozed out from under the cap.  Everywhere.

This made the bottle slippery.  Slippery bottles are hard to hold.  Slippery bottles that are hard to hold should not be held by frazzled women standing over a skillet of pancakes that are cooked on one side, but not the other.  If they are held by such a domestic goddess she might *ahem* drop the slippery bottle onto the half cooked pancakes, smearing them, melting part of her cheap ketchup bottle, burning her fingers while she tries to pick up the bottle and ultimately destroying all eight of the pancakes on the skillet aesthetically.

I know you are hoping for a huge picture bomb of this fail, but alas, I have none.  I was too covered in cinnamon, butter and pancake batter with three fingers on fire and a stunned family near by wondering what the hell we were having for dinner.

I do have a picture of one pancake, and it is seriously deceptive.

It was the only one that looked like it had swirled, but I would like you to take note that the the cinnamon swirl did not stay ON the pancake.  No, you can see it just above the pancake on the skillet, burning.  

I made the icing, and just poured a ton of it onto the pancakes to hide the mess they were.

Then we accidentally left the icing (the only part I did not screw up) out on the counter overnight, so it was ruined.

So there were three major components to this meal ...

1.) The pancakes -- which I dropped a bottle onto and smeared everywhere

2.) The swirl -- which exploded onto the pancakes and made a mess, never actually sticking to any of them

3.) The icing -- which was delicious, but left out over night so it was ruined

Three strikes ... and I am out.

No one complained about dinner, even if it wasn't pretty or anything like it was supposed to be.  In fact, the husband and the Meatball said it was yummy.

But that may have been because I was still mumbling under my breath and nursing three burned fingers while the smell of burnt cinnamon and plastic hung heavily in the air.