Pin Party

Pinterest is a dangerous, dangerous thing. I can spend hours staring at all the beautiful pictures without even realizing that time has gone by.

In homage to the site that has inspired so many outfits, delicious meals and impulse buys, I decided that HBL and I would have a little Pin Party. We invited a good friend over and together the three of us looked through my Pinterest account, creating a “best of” list of all the food I’ve pinned in the past couple of years. Then, we went to the store, stocked up on food and came home to make it all!

It was an excellent opportunity to try out some of the food I’ve been lusting over for months- but also really interesting to see how differently ours turned out due to common mishaps (like not reading directions) or just in terms of how the end product looked.

The evening started with Chamomile Honey and Whiskey Cocktails from A Cozy Kitchen.

We followed the recipe to a T, and it was delicious. The cocktails were light and refreshing, the perfect treat for a mild June evening.

Next, we attempted Smothered Chicken from Bacon, Butter, Cheese and Garlic Blog for HBL, as he is the only meat eater amongst us.

I made him prepare the chicken since raw meat makes me a little sick, and he accidentally cut up the chicken breast rather than leaving it whole, so we modified the recipe quite a bit (didn’t bake it). Still, I had the smother sauce before we added in the chicken and it was SO creamy and tasted of garlic, my favorite thing in the world.

For the two ladies, as vegetarians, I made The Kale Salad that Will Right Your Weekend Wrongs from the LAist.

I don’t like sour cherries so instead I used fresh cherries in the salad. The dressing was a little too lemon-heavy, but besides that it is definitely a salad worth trying- just use half the lemon in the recipe.

The coup de grace for all of us to enjoy at the end of the night: Avocado Cupcakes with Key Lime Buttercream Frosting from the California Avocado Association.

These were delicious, truly amazing. However, I don’t think anyone at the Association has actually made them before! There are random ingredients on the list that you never end up using in the instructions. In addition, our frosting came out WAY too thin and kind of slid down the cupcake (we’d already cooled them thoroughly) even though we followed everything to a tee- twice! In addition, the pictures on the website look absolutely 100% different than the cupcakes we created. I had to use some food coloring to turn the frosting even the slightest green, and just didn’t even bother with the cakes themselves! Seriously, though, the cupcake itself tasted and had the consistency of a muffin more than a cake, and the buttercream was sweet and tangy but not cloying, so I can’t be too mad. I’ll just have to check my expectations of getting good pictures the next time I make these.

All in all, a very successful Pin Party. Every food was delicious, even if we did end up modifying several recipes slightly and certainly didn’t get the quality photos some of these other bloggers and companies managed to take. After all, we ended the evening stuffed and smiling, and that’s all that matters.

What recipes would you choose to cook at a Pin Party? Follow me on Pinterest to keep me updated on your favorites!