It has been a bad year (that's an understatement), but there have been some bright spots and happy moments. I was planning to write an upbeat letter to include with Christmas cookies as gifts for favorite friends and neighbors. I even found a cookie recipe that seemed perfect: spiced rosemary citrus cookies, decorated as Saguaro cactus with Christmas lights. Fawkinnae perfect!
I have a history of disappointments and disasters making cookies, so I carefully followed the recipe. I was the guy who used rancid Crisco in his peanut butter blossoms. The grandkids said, “Something died!” when I opened the oven. I now like to call those my stank blossom cookies. I was concerned when there was 4 eggs and 3 sticks of butter in the mix; wouldn’t that make sticky dough? I noted that the instructions said to roll out the dough so that it was 3/4” thick. That seemed wrong but the photos with the recipe were beautiful. During baking the cookies flowed into each other, ruining the cactus shape. I call these Version-1 melted cactus cookies (also FUBAR-1).
I still had half the dough, and more ideas. I could make one giant blob cookie and brew a gallon of coffee for dunking (V-2A). That seemed excessive, but I did dunk some of the melted cacti. With all the eggs and butter they had the texture of cornbread, so you have to dunk fast or you end up with cookie mush (which is delicious!).
Version-2B was to try to cut cacti out of the cookie blob. So I baked half the dough as one unit. I then refrigerated the finished giant blob and cut out cookies from the cold mass. (In retrospect, I should have thought of Version-3, which calls for baking the dough for an hour and then whittling the shapes out of the petrified blob with a dremel.) In my wisdom, I also chose decorating icing that was the type that made thin lines for writing on cakes and cookies. How long does it take that stuff to dry? Fawkin' forever, it turned out.
Anyway, the finished cookies look a little like I had intended, and only took a week altogether. Using tweezers to put those little dots on to simulate lights was fun, (the vodka certainly helped... well, and so did the tequila...).
Will I make them again? No Fawkin' Way... well maybe.
Merry Christmas!
Terry C.