Stand up meringue snowmen

My piping disaster (keep on reading to see more!)

When I read Rising to the Berry’s post about making chocolate éclairs (recipe 123 as she bakes her way through the Mary Berry Bible – what a star!).  It made me smile when she spoke about piping of them. 

“I piped the rather runny mixture onto several baking trays. The éclair shapes were so thin, they reminded me of pencils! I was concerned about the size but hoped they would spread when cooking. I put them into the oven and willed them to grow. They did indeed grow but not very much!”

Please Shrink!
I could identify with Annalise’s post after this weekend I tried to get rid of some left over meringue mixture by piping festive snowmen  My snowmen had ended up with little tails from my rubbish piping skills in rather unusual places despite my pathetic attempts to flatten them.  So instead of willing my baking to grow in the oven like Annalise I was willing mine to shrink. I prayed for about 30 mins or so loitering with intent around the oven hoping the snowmens tails would deflate. Of course the tails did not shrink at all in fact if anything I am sure they grew (must have been the heat!).

Introducing Stand up Snowmen
When my son came in he asked excitedly if he could use the snowmen on his gingerbread house for a baking competition.  Normally I would be delighted but this time it was a little embarrassing to explain why this was not such a good idea!  I guess I could cut their tails off if needed (ouch!). For your eyes and amusement here is my sad piping disaster that created stand up snowmen.  I’ll leave you all to draw your own conclusions as to why they might be happy as my mind is as pure as white icing sugar…but I can see these appearing on dodgy Christmas cards next year!

Snow awful! Comedy stand up snowmen…

Which bit would you bite first?
I guess the thing that tickled me the most was placing one of these on my friends keyboard in the morning as I knew it would amuse her.  We drew sweepstakes in the office to see which bit she would bite off first.  As she left the office at break time when she thought nobody was looking she rather discretly gave the tail a little nip and the poor stand up snowmen was no more.  I won that bet!  Which bit would you bite first?

Snowmen showing offf (no business like snow business)

 

Sadly this clearly tells me I am not ready to enter the Great British Bake off.  Can you imagine Mary Berry’s face if I presented her with these! Allthough the lovely man at Love Productions thought it was the funniest disaster he had seen.  Ta ta for now x

How to deal with snowmen tails