Start Time: 2 pm
Stop Time: 5:30 am
Complete: Snickerdoodles (3x), Extreme Brownie (4x), Earl Grey Shortbread (4x), Gingersnaps (4x), Pecan Sandie’s (4x), Chocolate covered Oreos (121- all painted), Peacocks!
Mixed: Cranberry Shortbread (4x)
I have a new favorite cookie! Earl Grey Shortbread. Technically, the kind I made was with Mariage Freres “Paris Breakfast” black tea, but I’m hooked. Butter, sugar, and quality black tea with a fruity finish. Yum. I guess sometimes quality & simplicity is king. Man, I could nom nom on those all day.
In making up for lost time, I baked the rest of the chilled cookie dough– Extreme brownie & the Pecan Sandies– then it was on to drop cookies. I always forget hoe much Christmas smells like ginger and molasses until I make my first batch of Gingersnaps. A few years ago, I sadly eliminated Gingerbread men from my arsenal of cookies. They get too hard, and the royal icing breaks off them too easily, so I changed them out for chocolate sugar cookies, which even taste better. Still, there’s always been something about gingerbread that puts me in the holiday spirit.
I found a really yummy recipe on Pinterest for real, soft gingerbread. It’s more of a ginger cake. I plan on making this again this year, for myself. Let me take a moment and fess up– I don’t know about you, but Pinterest has been both TERRIBLE and AWESOME for me. It’s a virtual hoarder’s dream, mixed with a little OCD. Everything in it’s place…on my boards where I can look at them whenever I want.
Back to cookies. I finished the embellishments of the peacocks tonight–glittered em up good–almost too much glitter. But then I remind myself it’s Christmas and there’s never too much glitter… Like every other cake project I’ve ever done, I wish I had more time to just devote to decorating these. They were fun and I could have done so much more with them if I didn’t have to mass-produce them.
I also burned my finger something fierce today. I was pulling one of my trusty jelly roll cookie pans out of the oven, doing a swap, when I started to feel heat through the hot pad. It was either burn myself or drop a pan of cookies. I took it like a man. Actually, in re-telling this story to The Husband, he said he would have screamed and dropped the cookies. “eff the cookies” was his response. So, in reality, I took it like a woman, not a man. I did whine about it hurting for about an hour after the incident though. So I guess, I took it like a “Jenn”.
I guess I should be glad that my injury count is usually down. The worst thing is the burns. I probably burn myself about 10x a year because I’m a klutz. About 6 of those 10x are at Christmas. You have to think about those odds. 30 recipes, about 4-5 pan swaps per recipe–150 swaps–what’s that, like 9%? 6 burns is nothing.
I hand-painted 121 Oreos at around 4 in the morning and surprised myself at how fast it went. Having done it a few years ago did the trick I guess. It was all muscle memory. I actually finished painting them in about 30 mins. I’m not saying it was easy, but it definitely wasn’t the hardest thing I’ve had to do these past 4 days.
There is something about that 5 am shower though, after a long day on your feet–I don’t care what it is you were doing– that long, hot shower to get the grime of the day out of your hair is heavenly. I must have stood there for about as long as it took me to paint those feathers on the Oreos. I can’t express how much satisfaction that shower gives me– it’s on my top 5 blissful moments, somewhere after a massage, but above soft lighting. If you can combine 2 or more things on my bliss list, it’s considered a good day. I got the soft lighting and hot shower tonight (or this morning?) and when I got out, my love bug Azuki was still waiting for me. After all that time, my dog was still waiting for me to complete my day before going to bed herself. So all in all it was a good day.
I find it really funny– Azuki, our brown lab (my daemon, if you’ve watched the Golden Compass) stays with me while I work, no matter how late it gets. She has been a little pissy with me on those 6 and 7 am mornings, but she stays with me until I’m done downstairs. Peanut on the other hand (our black lab, and The Husband’s true soul mate), follows him up to sleep when he goes and crashes out by his side of the bed. I usually have to yell at her to get her to go to her own bed.
Anyway, that’s day 4. For once, a whole paragraph on burns and a shower… maybe a little more baking talk tomorrow.
Now it’s time to go kick Peanut out of the bedroom and try to get 5-6 hours of shut eye.
G’night!
