And The Winner......

I planned to write this post last night but unfortunately, sleep came over me and forced a short cancellation until now -almost 24 hours later!

I had planned originally to write a little post in which I was going to do a little bragging about how many things I had completed in the past week -embroidered things of course, that is.

And, I had been pretty busy for sure as I completed seven (7) hand towels -not sets of hand towels (although they were sets) but 3 sets consisting of seven towels total.

All in all, for me, that is a pretty impressive production record for sure and yes, I was going to get photos taken of them to post here too and beyond that, I was even going to through a whole lot of ego into the mix as I was going to suggest that I really deserved a plaque announcing that I have to be the most prolific hand towel embroiderer person ever -or some such crazy thing along those lines.

However, last night changed all that as I decided that I deserved an award alright but not one for doing something pretty nice, neat, pretty and such.

Nope! I decided based on a colossal mistake I made while baking a pan of brownies -from scratch -from a recipe I gleaned from one of my blogger friends's post the other day called Bourbon Brownies with Praline Icing that I deserve the "Dumbest Cook Ever" award!

So now, I need two plaques -one touting my speed with the embroidery and the other -well, to show off how well I DON'T know what containers I am getting into in my kitchen!

Here's what happened to make me see the light.

I found this recipe for these brownies and the icing on Cajun Delights -a blog I've followed for several years now. The lady who writes that blog is always posting some really scrumpdelicious-looking foods -most with a Cajun flavor and I've considered trying several of her recipes before but this was the first time I actually got around to doing that.

The recipe for these brownies only makes a pan about 8x8 inches so I decided, what the heck, I want a big, big pan of these brownies because I just knew, felt it in my bones, ya know, that they would be awesome. So I doubled the brownie recipe and baked up a pan measuring 13x9 inches of this chocolate delight.

No problems there as I took the sweet smelling confection out of the oven and was tempted to hack a big hunk out of 'em right then and there.

But no, I controlled my self, letting the brownies cool a bit and I set out then to make the Praline icing that Marguerite had posted along with the brownie recipe.

Since I had doubled the brownie recipe, I figured I had to also then, of course, double the icing recipe and so I gathered up all the ingredients I needed -butter, milk, brown sugar, confectioners sugar, almond extract, chopped pecans and such and began the task of combining the brown sugar, butter and milk in a pan to melt together and bring to a boil.

No problems there either as the stuff melted, blended together ever so nicely and I was drooling like crazy of the thought of some really, really yummy brown sugar flavored icing on thoses brownies.

I took the pan off the stove, ready now to add the confectioner's sugar I'd so thoughtfully measured out and as I poured that into the melted brown sugar mixture, and began to blend that together the thought suddenly came to me that gee, that confectioner's sugar I'd just put in there didn't look to be quite as white as confectioner's sugar always looks and it was then that I realized, you dummy! You just totally mucked this luscious icing up!

Only I didn't say to myself that I had "mucked" it up. I won't quote myself here now but what I actually did tell myself -well, it does rhyme with "mucked" up!

Seems in my zeal to get everything all organized I had managed to measure out two cups of whole wheat flour instead of the required two cups of confectioner's sugar and yes, my lovely luscious sounding praline type topping for those brownies just went down the proverbial tubes of the garbage!

So there you have it!

The story behind why I am giving myself an award for being the dumbest cook in these hills -at least yesterday anyway!

I am however planning to make at least one, perhaps two more pans of these brownies though on Friday to take as a donation to a bake sale that Kayla -one of the part-time cashiers at our grocery store near here is having this Saturday as her Senior Class Project. All the proceeds from this bake sale will be given to the Autism School over in Clearfield where Kayla's younger sister is a student!

And I'm figuring on making the second pan of these brownies to take to the little stand our Women's Group at church will be running at the Lanse Community Yard Sale on Saturday too to be sold to visitors there wanting a quick beverage and some bodacious goodie to munch on while traipsing all over the village in search of some great yard sale bargains then too.

Yes, I will be doing that because, you see, those brownies, iced or not, are really that special, that darned good!

And if you're interested in the recipe, either contact me or look up Marguerite's blog on the sidebar of my blog and you can go hunt this recipe down there on your own that way. (Cajun Delights is the name of her blog and if you e-mail me, I'll gladly give you the url for it! Save you a bit of time that way.)