I ruined Christmas.

In the last two years, my cooking skillz have gone from beginner to solidly intermediate. I can make caramel without hovering over the sauce pan, I've come to terms with raw meat, and I'm not scared off of a dish because it has an ingredient I've never used or it has a brillion steps or it will dirty all the dishes I own. And baking is the same - I mean, I own a damn candy thermometer. And use it to make candy.

So, when I try a new recipe, I usually do pretty well. And when it works out, the results can be spectacular. Case in point, Peppermint Chocolate Pinwheel Cookies:

See? Spectacular.

That being said... when I fuck up in the kitchen, it is also pretty spectacular.

I found a recipe on Pinterest for Crock Pot Cinnamon Almonds (this links to the actual post at detrimentalbeauty.com). Great! I love crock potting! And it'll be easy to have those going while I work on a million other things!! ...she said with great confidence.

But then...

I was overzealous, tried to do too many things at once... I had cookies going in the oven, peanut butter balls being dipped in chocolate, and white chocolate peppermint bark chilling in the fridge AT THE SAME TIME as I had laundry going followed by a quick shower and a couple errands to run - all the while, the almonds were happily cooking on low in the crock pot. 

Confession: I totally forgot about them. For the almonds, it was probably along the lines of some kind of medieval torture: slowly roasting to cinnamony goodness in a ceramic pot.

I came back from my errands to this:

Clearly, this is after they came out of the crock pot. When I still had hope. I was going to "let them cool and see what happens." Right.

I had to dash off to meet some friends for dinner, hoping against hope the clearly molasses drenched and slightly burned almonds would work out after they cooled. I came back to an unyielding brick of nuts and sugar.

Of course, I had to destroy the most expensive of the goodies I'm making for Christmas this year. Of course. The manfriend was good enough to recognize that his lady friend was in distress and offered to buy new, fresh almonds. And so, after I finish this post and this gin and tonic, I will give the almonds another go.

We leave for Christmas adventuring in two days. I have 36 hours to get it right.