One week to Christmas. I don't have a single gift yet and the Christmas cards are still on the dining room table. The only thing that has changed is that Fred and I are now at each other's throats. He wants to mail the cards, and of course, with my writer's block, I don't.
I have baked 15 pounds of sugar cookies; that's 15 pounds on my hips, not on the tray. My sugar cookies, a recipe from America's Test Kitchen, are good enough for the dog and me to eat but not good enough to give away. Although I have read everything I could find about making them, every batch comes out dense, flat, and much too sweet. Every single time. This is despite the fact that my butter is precisely 65 degrees when I start and the room is 64; I cool my cookie sheets between batches; I have opened two new tins of baking powder; I have beaten the butter and sugar for 3 minutes, 5 minutes, and finally 10 minutes. What I do doesn't make a lick of difference -- the cookies are embarrassing. So I am giving up. I can't bake cookies forever. Fred's officemates are not going to eat them forever. Not the way they are. This will not be the year when I give away tins of pretty cookies.
Today I worked on Fred's decal instead. He wants to give sweatshirts to his surfer friends with a decal that says, surf for life. He doesn't realize how much time that can take, especially me, who is slow at everything. I have looked at fonts and found some graphics on the web. Maybe when he gets home we can put them together and get this thing on the road.
Christmas is just a week away.
I have baked 15 pounds of sugar cookies; that's 15 pounds on my hips, not on the tray. My sugar cookies, a recipe from America's Test Kitchen, are good enough for the dog and me to eat but not good enough to give away. Although I have read everything I could find about making them, every batch comes out dense, flat, and much too sweet. Every single time. This is despite the fact that my butter is precisely 65 degrees when I start and the room is 64; I cool my cookie sheets between batches; I have opened two new tins of baking powder; I have beaten the butter and sugar for 3 minutes, 5 minutes, and finally 10 minutes. What I do doesn't make a lick of difference -- the cookies are embarrassing. So I am giving up. I can't bake cookies forever. Fred's officemates are not going to eat them forever. Not the way they are. This will not be the year when I give away tins of pretty cookies.
Today I worked on Fred's decal instead. He wants to give sweatshirts to his surfer friends with a decal that says, surf for life. He doesn't realize how much time that can take, especially me, who is slow at everything. I have looked at fonts and found some graphics on the web. Maybe when he gets home we can put them together and get this thing on the road.
Christmas is just a week away.
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