Thanksgiving Disasters and Black Friday Deals

How did everyone's Thanksgiving go?!? Any baking disasters? I'd love to hear about them!

Mine started off so good. I was positive this year everything was going to go smoothly and everything was going to turn out perfectly! Who am I kidding? I always think that. I think you have to start out optimistically otherwise you'd probably never even begin.

My first downfall was that I started my baking too late in the day. Like 8pm too late. I always do. Hopefully now that I have it written in stone I can look at this next year and remember to start earlier! (haha, yeah right!)  All I had to make was a classic pumpkin pie and some super delish cranberry fluff. Piece of cake! I wanted to make a pumpkin pie simply because I found some really cute tiny leaf cookie cutters last year and I wanted to try and replicate all those beautiful pies I see on Pinterest with all the fancy leaf work on them. It almost worked.

Libby's Pumpkin Pie (my family's go to) is super easy to make so that part was no hassle. Even doing the leaf-trimmed crust was pretty smooth sailing, especially since I didn't follow anyone's directions, I just made up my own way to attach the leaves and prayed it worked out (It did, for the most part.)

The trouble started when I sliced my finger open trying to make an aluminum pie crust protector since I couldn't find the ones I know I had somewhere. Then, as I was trying to attach it to my fragile pie crust, some of the leaves fell off into no-mans land at the bottom of the oven and immediately started burning-which I somehow promptly forgot to remove and my whole house smelled like it was on fire for two days. Then, I forgot to turn down the heat part way through the baking of the pie so the crust leaves drooped and got charred and the pie itself was looking pretty dry. At least the leaves in the middle of the pie turned out pretty good! Thank goodness I also had a Patti LaBelle Sweet Potato Pie from Walmart to soften the blow. Those things are AMAZING!

I bet even Martha Stewart has had a few baking/cooking disasters in her day. They say practice makes perfect so maybe when I'm 80 I'll have this all down pat!

I removed some of the more burnt leaves on the crust and added my pre-baked leaves for the middle. Those turned out really well! I tried to strategically place them to cover all the cracks! It didn't really work but it actually tasted really good!

Speaking of Martha! I got some awesome Martha Stewart fall appetizer plates at Macy's! They were a steal! At $15 and $17 a piece normally, I only paid about $12 for them both! They had some other really cute items in the collection (like a white and gold pumpkin covered soup bowl!) but I had to limit myself to just these two. I love them and they made up for the fact that nothing else I set out for on Black Friday worked out! The silver (or gold in this case) lining of my Black Friday shopping excursion. Best purchase of the 2016 fall season for sure! Thanks Martha!