Peppermint Trays

Today's post comes from an old friend who said she had a Pinfail after trying these... well, I love tackling difficult Pinterest posts so I was happy to give this one a try! Here's what you'll need:

* Mints
* Parchment paper
* Cake pan
* An oven

The first time I tried this, I used 30 mints and made sure the parchment paper went up on the sides of the cake pan, just like the original post by MrsHappyHomemaker. You can do this while your oven is preheating and if your oven is as slow as mine, you'll finish cutting the paper and arranging the mints just as the oven is ready!

The post says a vague "7-10 minutes" in the oven, I suppose because every oven is different. My oven's magic number was 8 minutes. Here's how it went down (sorry for my dirty oven window):

As soon as I put them in - 8 minutes left

4 minutes left - they started to melt

2 minutes left - holes are becoming smaller!

After 8 minutes, I took them out of the oven

I waited 4 minutes before grabbing the paper and taking it out of the cake pan. I waited 3 more minutes and removed the parchment paper but be warned - it's HOT!

I thought it was kinda oddly shaped... more of a hexagon than a circle because the parchment paper wasn't flush with the edges, so I tried again.

This time, I used 35 mints and I didn't have parchment touching the sides of the cake pan:

I kept a watchful eye on the pan again and this time, found it took 8 minutes, 36 seconds to be completely done.

Be careful you don't leave the mints in the oven for too long or they'll start to bubble like this. I suppose you can always flip it over and no one will be the wiser!

Here's how they turned out: the tray on the tray on the top was the first time (with 30 mints and parchment paper on sides of pan) and the bottom was the second time (with 35 mints and parchment paper just covering bottom of pan):

You know I had to make a mistake so here it is - wait until the trays are completely cooled down before putting anything on them! Otherwise, your goodies may melt...

TOTAL COSTS: About $6 to make multiple trays
$3 for 2 packs of peppermints from Vons
$2.99 for parchment paper from Target

TOTAL AMOUNT OF TIME: About 35 minutes
7 minutes to preheat oven and arrange mints
8 minutes in oven
20 minutes to cool

EASY-PEASY SCALE (1 super easy - 5 very difficult): 2 out of 5
If you like to multitask, this may be problematic because you really need to keep an eye on those mints in the final 2-3 minutes, just to make sure they don't burn or bubble up. Otherwise, if you don't mind waiting, it's a piece 'o cake!