I can't even...

...bake ornaments!!!!  I have made some serious baking errors over the years and had vowed never to bake again (hey, I can buy baked goods cheaper) LOL!  However, when I was talking to Patti the other day she said that she'd made these great white ornaments for the girls to paint!  She encouraged me to try it saying, "there's only 3 ingredients, you can do it!" (Translation: "even you can't mess these up")

So, I put the three ingredients in the pot (2 cups baking soda, 1 cup cornstarch, 1 1/4 cup of water), stir till they become mashed potatoe-like consistency and put it outside to cool.  This is what it looked like after:

What the fudge?  That is NOT dough!!! That is a crumbly mess that I tried to smoosh and knead into a mountain!!! ARGH!!............and I haven't even gotten to the BAKING part yet!!! YIKES!!!

Emergency call to Patti -

"What did I do wrong?"

"Sounds like not enough water."

"But I measured the water"

"Let me google it"

{{long pause}}

"I have no idea what you've done"

"Fantastic, I'm trying again, I'll call when I've made another mess of it"

{{{laughing at me}}} "Bye"

Second Batch:  Woo Hoo, I make dough!  Even more impressive, I figured out what I did wrong the first time!  I trusted the baking soda box when it said 250 grams (which is a cup)!  This time I measured everything like I was a scientist on the verge of a breakthrough!  Those darn boxes had at least 1/3 of a cup more!!!

Here I am mid cutting:

And here they are about to go in the oven! (*note: they are so white and perfect and FLAT at the moment - more on that later)

So I blithely put them in the oven and go to cut some more when Snuffy says, "I smell smoke!"

What the HECK???

I say, "NO WAY, they've only been in the oven 4 minutes, they can't be burning!!!"

Snuffy opens the oven and a HUGE BILLOW OF SMOKE COMES OUT!!!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!

BUT, it's not the ornaments burning, it's the wax paper!  Who knew you weren't supposed to put it in the oven?  {ok, so maybe YOU knew, but I didn't!!! why didn't you tell me???)

Then when they are done I take them out of the oven and let them cool, but they look weird, rather pregnant actually!  What the heck happened in there???

 

They are all blown up in the middle and I just KNOW that my aggressive mini-beasts are going to attack them with paint brushes and burst right through the middle and then that paint is going to rot inside and we are going to have toxic funk ornaments ................ Sigh.................What the heck made me think I could bake ANYTHING?  Even if it was just an ornament and not food (where what I do wrong can actually kill someone)???  I vow, NEVER to bake again {{{again}}}!!!