This contest theme was "stuffed", which immediately gave me what I thought was a clever and fun idea....the Cheesy Blaster.
Oh, how I plotted! I would make cheesy blasters, AND I would make vegetarian cheesy blasters with tofu pups! There would be no excuse not to try them! If I could not win the contest, I could at least make everyone suffer.
But no. Mr. Pete Brassett, also known as History's Greatest Monster, had to bring up his supposedly English delicacy of a "hot dog wrapped in a pizza". This led to a grand discussion of the cheesy blaster, thus completely ruining the surprise. Getting a cheesy blaster when you expect a cheesy blaster is not the same as having a cheesy blaster force itself upon you, unawares.
Conclusion : No Cheesy Blaster for you!
This naturally left me scrambling to come up with an alternative entry, but alas, my heart was no longer in it. I settled for my typical standard - something with very few ingredients and virtually no prep time. And, as is standard, I still managed to screw it up. So let us now enjoy the saga of the Pillsbury Chocolate Roll.
First, behold what the finished product is supposed to look like.
I went to Wegman's and faithfully bought the rather scant ingredient list. Following a "tip" from one of the many sad, lonely souls who regularly posts advice on Pillsbury.com (read by equally sad souls who appear to spend their days dreaming of winning the "Pillsbury Bake Off"), I decided to "punch up" this recipe and use Rolos in addition to chocolate chips. This is my desperate attempt to get possibly one vote from either Sandee or Patty.
I only bought 8 Rolos, because according to "PillsburyMama12", I only needed one Rolo per roll. This will henceforth be known as a lesson in "considering the source".
Trusting that "PillsburyMama12" and her internet pals would never steer me wrong, I began the process of compiling the rollups. First, I want to say that apparently you need to be some sort of wizard to get the dough out of the exploding canister. Not only are the canisters strangely hard to open, the resulting dough mess is stuck together, requiring far more dexterity to separate than I possess. The wedges were not uniformly sized, and I swear the dough reacted with the air over time and continuously expanded.
In short, I was already in over my head, and all I had done was open the package. Not good.
I began to put together the "rolo" version of the roll ups. Trusting the sage guidance of strangers on the internet, I staged the first Rolo Rollup to see how the ingredients fit.
It quickly became obvious that "PillsburyMama12" did not know her Rolos from her rollups, because putting just one Rolo in these (ever expanding) dough wedges would result in The Lamest Non-Treat Ever. Thus, I quickly converted to a two-Rolo scheme, and began creating the crescents.
As it turns out, this is harder than it looks.
Fine. I'm stuck with four mutated Rolo Blobs. But surely, with all that practice, I will do a much better job with the chocolate chips!
And finally, they're ready to go in the oven, in all their mutated goodness.
And voila, the finished product -
Returning to the picture of what they were supposed to be...
...Some ever-so-slight incongruities may be detected. Still - and this is rare for one of my entries - I'm fairly confident they taste good. Even *I* cannot screw up "stuff some chocolate chips in a pillsbury roll".
