In my quest to become a good cook, I'm finding more and more that COOKING and BAKING are two incredibly separate worlds. I guess they are in the same ballpark as far as a culinary pursuit, but it's one messed up ballpark. Cooking is simmering, and slowly adding and tasting...like scoring a home run by first hitting a single, then your next at bat a double, etc., etc. It all adds up.
Baking....it's either a homerun or it's burnt to an effing crisp.
So far I burnt lasagna. Then I "underburnt" cinnamon rolls. Then with the help of my trusty crock pot I made kick ass Shepard's Pie and Chili. Last night was Stuffed Peppers. I'm feeling on a roll. However....that is "cooking".
Today in Chicago, from about 9AM on it has been snowing. Snowing well. It's 10PM now and Mr. Freezmeister is STILL committing to snowfall. I didn't work today, instead stayed in my red "Life is Good" snowman pajamas, wrote Christmas cards, wrapped Christmas presents and then dared the impossible yet what the day seemed to require.....I baked Christmas cookies.
I laid everything out like a surgeon about to operate....rolling pin, tub of sugar cookie dough, cookie cutouts of star, tree and stocking. I taped down wax paper over everything imaginable. And began rolling...
LESSON #1 - Use A LOT OF FLOUR FOR EVERYTHING.
LESSON #2 - If you roll the dough too thin you can't pick up the cookie dough cutout.
LESSON #3 - If you roll the dough thicker - you STILL CAN'T pick up the cookie dough cutout.
Eric says my stars look more like Patrick from the SpongeBob SquarePants cartoons.
LESSON #4 - The directions on the recipe for how long to bake the cookies is merely a GUIDE. DO NOT WALK AWAY FROM THE OVEN ON YOUR FIRST ATTEMPT.
So instead of the cookies taking 9-11 minutes on the recipe....in my oven they take 6 minutes. Smelly lesson to learn.
But you know, I began to get the hang of it....lots of flour, cutting them thicker. I was even getting a routine where one pan of cookies went out, the other pan went in. Patrick shaped cookies began looking like stars, and the trees looked like trees. The stockings tended to burn a little more on the edges, but I think that is the shape's flaw as opposed to my own.
And the house began to smell like Sugar Cookie. And I was (and of this writing still am) wearing red "Life is Good" snowman pajamas. And in the big window, behind my Christmas tree snow is falling.
A great frosting is simply small amounts of milk added to powdered sugar till you get the consistentcy you want. I made green and a reddish pink. I got one of those mini lazy susan of candy sprinkler containers sold specifically for Christmas. I began to groove.
And finally, I followed the best advice my mom ever gave me when it came to cooking: Clean as you go.
Afterwards....I ate just one cookie and it tasted good. In a freakish way, putting all that effort into creating and decorating them made want to eat them LESS. They are art....and if I'm going to eat them now....damn it I'm going to take the same amount of time and care.
I'm going to MAKE LOVE to this Christmas Cookie. I'm going to go Barry White on this Christmas Cookie. Cause when I bite into it and savor it's taste....it's snowing, my tree is lit up, and I have my pajamas on.
I ended the evening surprising myself by making the dough for Gingerbread Men. No pre-purchased tub of dough but my mom's own recipe. The challenge continues.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
My Christmas Cookies
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2 comments:
Good work! Baking is chemisty, so it is hard. As my chemistry teacher in high school said: Chem is Try.
You get better as you go. Supposedly.
Love it! I recently tried to get all fancy-pants with some cookies. Starting with pre-made dough, my goal was to cut out cookies with holes in them, then fill the holes with crushed candy like life savers and jolly ranchers. In the baking, the candy would melt into a window of color - in theory. What I forgot was that for this kind of thing, store-bought sugar cookie dough isn't going to do the trick. No, you need something stiffer, like gingerbread or shortbread cookie dough. I quickly realised my mistake after the first batch of sugar cookies came out of the oven and looked like The Blob ate a stained glass window. So I got some gingerbread dough going, and while that worked better, I must say that in the end, there is a significant texture issue, even if you can get the cookies to work. Biting into a crisp cookie that is supposed then to melt in your mouth into a chewy mess is wonderful. But if you suddenly bite down into a shard of hard candy, it's not really all that swell. "Stained-glass cookies" are best when relegated to fancy-schmancy Gingerbread Houses, and not to the cookie platter. Alas.
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