The cookie baker

I will eventually get to a post about the Christmas party, but I need to make the dough for the remainder of the spicy molasses cookies I need for the exchange tomorrow. When I wasn't looking, the number of participants went up by three, so I need another four and a half dozen, which means I need to double the recipe. The dough has to chill for several hours, necessitating an early start. We'll see how the live blogging goes.

7:59 a.m. Pulled up cookbook software, scaled cookie recipe to double size, printed out.

8:01 a.m. Start live cookie making post.

8:03 a.m. Go put contact lenses in to enable accurate reading of cookie recipe. Those 1/2 and 1/4 cups look awfully similar. After contacts are in, locate reading glasses to enable accurate reading of cookie recipe.

8:05 a.m. Go put hair in a ponytail, as headband will not keep hair out of eyes (and cookies).

8:10 a.m. Gather all ingredients.

8:13 a.m. Dig in kitchen-implement-drawer-that-bites (TM) for 1/4 tsp measure. Resolve to clean KIDTB out at earliest convenience.

8:15 a.m. Begin measuring dry ingredients into monster bowl #1. Realize I pulled two containers of ground cloves from the spice cabinet instead of one of cloves, one of cinnamon. Find cinnamon, return cloves, resolve to clean out spice cabinet at earliest convenience.

8:15:30 a.m. Open cinnamon container, to discover it holds a scant teaspoon of spice; I need two. Go through spice cabinet to see if extra is on hand. Find very expensive tiny envelope of saffron thought lost, four little containers of ground mustard (!?), lots of garlic powder but no more cinnamon. Briefly consider using apple pie spice. Briefly consider asking landlady, but they appear not to be awake yet. Shrug. Resolve to inventory spice cabinet at earliest convenience.

8:17 a.m. Mix dry ingredients well.

8:18 a.m. Wipe up flour spilled on counter.

8:20 a.m. Find monster bowl # 2 and hand mixer to begin combining wet ingredients.

8:23 a.m. Pause in measuring to put Christmas CDs on player. Discover that the batteries in the remote control for the stereo are dead. Search several minutes to find the manual start button. Start music, find last pair of AA batteries in stash, place in remote.

8:28 a.m. After making a mess measuring and packing brown sugar, realize container is empty and I am 1/4 cup short. Shrug and throw in white sugar. Really, I did survey all ingredients last week and thought I had enough.

8:30 a.m. Crank up volume on selections from Handel on CD player. Briefly consider possibly sleeping landlords. Shrug.

8:42 - 8:55 a.m. Add dry ingredients to wet, mixing with hand mixer. Wonder if I mistakenly measured out 5 1/2 cups of flour instead of 4 1/2. Shrug and keep adding. Mixer whines in protest. Remove mixer, stir in last addition of dry ingredients by hand, with strongest spoon in house. Resolve to add KitchenAid mixer to Amazon wishlist.

8:56 a.m. Put cover on completed dough and put it in the refrigerator to chill for at least two hours. Taste dough remaining on beaters - not bad - you don't even miss the other teaspoon of cinnamon.

8:57 - 9:02 a.m. Wipe baby-poop color and texture dough from all surfaces within a three foot radius of assembly area. Wonder if baby-poop colored stains will come out of dishcloth. Shrug.

9:03 a.m. Realize I have had no coffee yet today. Manage to start pot brewing without spilling anything or running out of any ingredients.

9:07 a.m. Use "sneak a cup" feature of coffee maker to get a cup of coffee. Take several cookies from the batches baked last week to have as breakfast. At this point, I think I deserve it.

9:09 a.m. Sit down with coffee and cookies and start grocery list. Cinnamon, brown sugar, dry mustard...

Back later.

10:30 a.m. In the interim, I've picked up the house, had another cup of coffee and gotten blazing angry with my landlord. At this point, I'm in no mood to wait another half hour for the cookie dough to chill.

10:31 a.m. Cover kitchen island and counter tops with special high-grade, biodegradable cookie cooling racks (those newspaper like things that come as junk mail). Pull out good air-bake cookie sheets; spray with Pam. I've decided to do the tedious rolling and dipping in sugar at the worktable in the office, so I can watch the rest of An Affair to Remember. Get new roll of paper towel to clean up drops and other messes in that room.

10:35 a.m. As expected, cookie dough has reached consistency of concrete. Scrape off small pieces with spoon, roll in palms to form ball, dip top in white sugar, place on cookie sheet.

Lather, rinse, repeat ad nauseum.

10:47 a.m. After rolling one tray of cookies (6 x 6 = 36 cookies so far), realize dough is rapidly turning back to baby poop consistency. Put dough back in refrigerator, put tray of cookies in preheated oven and set timer. Go back to movie.

11 a.m. The first tray of cookies comes out of the oven - I wish you could smell them. Set on stove top to cool several minutes before taking them off the tray.

11:07 a.m. The cookies were successfully transferred to the cooling racks. Other than a picture when they are all done, I'm signing off for now (don't want to get dough in the keyboard as I roll the rest out). The swap is only 1/2 dozen per participant, so I'm assuming there will be 15 people. I plan to stack the cookies up, seal them in saran wrap, then put wrapping paper around the rolls, Christmas-cracker style.

One can only hope I have enough wrapping paper on hand.