Two Strikes....A Pinterest Fail

Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, you strike out.

I am a big fan of Pinterest, I spend countless hours on there collecting images, recipes being one of the many categories I am always pinning from...no big surprise right? Well on one of my many visits to the site, I saw a retro recipe for a sweet confection made of potatoes, yes, you read that right potatoes! Intrigued, I read the recipe and it sounded beyond simple, and so while my oldest daughter was here for a visit, we decided it was the project for the day. We gathered the few ingredients that the recipe called for, and got to work.

Sounds simple right? I decided to make half a batch, as I did not want a huge batch.

What it is supposed to look like.

I boiled and cut up the potato and let it cool to room
temperature 

I gathered the other ingredients, including but
not pictured the butter and vanilla. 

I mashed the potatoes until smooth and creamy then
added in the rest of the ingredients...

first the butter and vanilla....and the first cup of powdered
sugar. it already looks wrong! 

So here we were following the recipe carefully, step by step, it looking nothing like we thought it would or should. I looked up more recipes on Pinterest for the same candy, and followed rabbit trails to other blogs and bloggers who had tried the same recipe and read them, all mention the dough in the beginning being wet, so we moved forward. We continued to addmore powder sugar, and more and more and yet the dough was not stiffening , before too long we were out of every last bit of powdered sugar....what to do??? 

Oh the horror of it ...it just kept growing like in THE BLOB! 

Undaunted our cooks forged forward....

With no powdered sugar left, we started adding
coco powder.....and more and more...the "dough"
growing, but not thickening.  Eventually....

...it was resembling a dough finally, so we moved onto the next step..so much for a small batch

Confession we put it down to roll out on some of the coco, and then tried rolling but it was so
sticky so we put some parchment paper on top to press flat, and forgot to dust it with more coco,
so this photo was take two. 

We added the peanut butter....I mean it is all good right? Who doesn't like chocolate and peanut butter? I know I do. 

Then came time to roll it into the log...um, way bigger than
anticipated... and as we stood there, it started to
expand!!!! What to do now ????

We then had the idea to press it into a baking dish
chilled it for awhile while we had a pot of tea....and
discussed what to do. Truffles!!!! We decided to
make truffles....a tasty solution??

we rolled them in more coco...truffle style.

My daughter posted it as such...so pretty, almost like
we meant to do this! Oh and by the way they were
actually tasty!!

Take Two!

How I imagine myself in the kitchen trying a recipe 

How it often turns out

So not one to give up or give in to a recipe, I decided I would once again try to make potato candy. I took care to pick the proper size potato. I boiled and then choose to chill in the fridge to make sure it was not too hot...I then went step by step, mashing, adding the powdered sugar, again a liquid state, but I continued on and added more and to my amazement it started to thicken, I thought " I got this..I figured it out..."

Boiled and chilled...

peeled....

ready to mash.....

Oh Oh ....looking liquidy again 

Another 2 lbs bites the dust

Ready to roll out...finally ...with just enough powdered sugar to dust it top and bottom

Looking good..this seemed positive 

I spread the peanut butter ...still looking positive..

The came time to roll it... and then it all went horribly
wrong! It became more and more sticky, started separating,
and just like before expanding.

The more I tried to work it and rework it, it got worse. I tried using new parchment paper...

Well, you can see it went down hill from there. 

Sometimes you just have to throw your hands up and give in. 

Challenge 

If you decide to take this task on and try this recipe out, 

and succeed, show me with a photo on my FB page or in an private message on Instagram of you and the candy and

you could win a special prize pack!!!