Wrangler Dani

I love to cook. I really, truly do. Our cousins, knowing this fascinating tidbit about me, gave me this piece of wonderment:

Trouble is, the cute little cutters don’t actually come laid out adorably with a ready-made cookie tree standing delightedly over them. No, you have to make the batter, cut it into various sizes of star shapes, bake said stars, put it together into tree formation, frost it green and infuse Christmas joy into it, all while not letting the dough stick to every piece of your clothing or using every dish ever invented. Well. I had this handled, I was sure. I love Christmas projects! I love baking! I love sugar! I love trees!

(pause for ominous foreshadowing)

I’ll tell you now – my tree did not look like the picture. Actually, my tree never wound up existing, which should give you a clue as to how poorly this project went. Let me help you with any future baking projects you might be attempting with these humble life lessons learned yesterday:

• If you have a small kitchen, perhaps you should rethink baking projects that require large amounts of dough to be rolled out. Especially if said dough is very sticky and your only available rolling surface is a small cutting board.
• Speaking of small kitchens, if the top of your microwave is the only space available for a cooling rack, your kitchen is too small for this project. Put the cookie cutters away and do something apartment-dwellers do, like BUY OREOS.
• If you have a lot going on in your life at any given time, do not try to “squeeze in” large, difficult culinary projects. Set aside an afternoon, or better yet, 48 hours in which to get messy to your hearts’ content. Do not try to answer emails, phone calls or sound halfway professional when you have flour on your nose and cookies burning in a forgotten pan of your tiny oven.
• Speaking of tiny ovens, when you can only cook five cookies at a time and foolishly made a double-batch of batter in your pre-baking fervor, do not simply continue forging ahead. Giving up is an option and preferable to spending the rest of your life baking the same batch of cookies.
• However, there is redemption – for when your batter is sticking and your stars are lumpy and you’re starting to feel a bit teary-eyed and desperate and you can’t find a spare bit of counter to rest your cookie sheet on and you can’t imagine washing all of these dishes… give the cookies to a boy. He will eat them and think they’re fantastic and won’t even care that they look rather like the clay stars you made in 1st grade.

I’m so glad I’m married to a boy.