Cookie Day (WARNING: The following account is long but true)

For the first time in my life I find myself approaching the holidays with a solid job, long-held friends in the same state and nearly the same zip code, and a boyfriend who makes me giddy with happiness. So of course I am diving into Christmas with unusual verve, since it's my favorite holiday and I love all the silly things you can do for other people with the excuse that "It's Christmas!". Last year, in the midst of recovering from my break-up induced depression, I attacked the after Christmas sales determined to buy little knicknacks for next year, hoping that I would have people (preferably office folk or good friends) to give them to. Well, it worked. So I decided to fill the pretty little bowls I found with home-baked goodies.


Okay, if you don't know me well, then I have to warn you. I'm

1. not a baker (I tend to be improvisational in my cooking, and baking isn't really responsive to "just another dash of" whatever)


2. extremely clutzy


3. not much of a cleaner-upper (I swear there is a fairy dishmother who comes in the night and washes all those dirty dishes)


4. more enthusiastic at the idea of baking a ton of stuff and less inclined to actually plan out the baking itself.

And to top it off, Blake thought it would be fun to take a day off work and join me in the massive baking adventure. He thought, wow, a chance to spend a whole day with Nikki. I thought, wow, I wonder if he knows what he's gotten into.

8 A.M

Blake rings my doorbell and I hand him my list of, oh, about 8 recipes I want to make. He doesn't cringe. That's a good sign. We sit down and make out a list of ingredients we need to buy. So far, so good. Off we go.

9 A.M.

We begin our raid of the Wal-Mart baking aisle where all goes well until we look at our list and see meringue powder. Meringue powder? Can't find it anywhere...but hmmm, you know, we are at Wal-Mart. Maybe Target has more specialized baking stuff. It's right across the street, so we'll just stop there. Peppermints...sold out. Okay, we're going to Target anyway. 4 nutty s'mores trail mix bars.

Nutty s'mores trail mix bars.

I head for the candy aisle. Blake heads for...the granola aisle??? He assures me that they mean the s'mores granola bars. Okay, this is for a recipe called "Almost A Candy Bar". Surely they mean the candy bar S'mores? Blake insists no, they mean the granola bars that are s'more flavored. So we debate. For almost 15 minutes. Then decide to settle the debate at Target since we can't find s'mores candy bars at Wal-Mart anyway.

10:30 A.M.

Target doesn't have meringue powder. Or peppermints. Or s'mores candy bars. Or the paste food coloring that we forgot to look for at Wal-Mart. I sigh and cross one of the cookies off my list (the recipe that sparked my cookie adventure in the first place, I might add), and leave it for a day that I can go to a specialty store and get the very complicated ingredients that are disguised as innocuous everyday items in a cookie magazine that is very clearly trying my patience by not marking said items as *not found at Wal-Mart. I also give in (after a spirited, stare-drawing debate in the middle of Target) to the s'mores granola bar theory.

So far Blake seems more tickled than annoyed. Which slightly annoys me. Mostly because he's turning out to be right more than me.

11:50

Okay, finally time to start making the cookies! I send Blake to the stove to start homemade gumdrops while I begin the chocolate cookie dough that needs to refrigerate for an hour. Mom drops in and I recruit her (okay, force her) to participate by starting the Almost Candy Bar recipe (in which she thoroughly annoys me by agreeing with Blake that the recipe did, indeed, mean GRANOLA bars).

OOPS. I dump in 3/4 cup of cocoa powder instead of 1/3. And since I'm really not that smart, I say it out loud. Blake looks at me like I'm the cutest thing he's ever seen. Mom laughs and says, "Well, that's just the first oops of the day." I cringe and start scooping out as much of the cocoa as I can.

1:00 P.M.

OOPS. The peanut butter sauce for the candy bar needs 1/2 stick, not 1/2 cup, of butter. Oh well, it's already melted in there.

OOPS. Did you know that just about every cookie dough known to man needs to refrigerate before you bake it? Also, that's how gumdrops set, and the Almost Candy Bar. Hmmm, I should have cleaned the fridge out...they're all in big long pans...

1:25 P.M.

Stuff is starting to smell good and Mom has decided that her talents would be better put to use as a taster rather than sous chef. Blake has started in on the fifth load of dishes while I am trying desperately to make sure that the oven (which is set on 350 degrees but whose internal thermometer reads 375) doesn't burn my pretty peppermint biscotti, which is the only thing I haven't "OOPS-ed" on yet.

1:45 P.M.

OOPS. I'm trying to "drizzle" melted milk chocolate over my layered Almost Candy Bar and my ziploc baggie that's supposed to do all the drizzling without all the mess goes pop. You know, like when you blow air into it, shut it tight, then hit it and the zip either breaks or the seams burst. Only when mine popped, it popped milk chocolate instead of air.

OOPS. My mini loaf pans of cherry-pistachio bread are overflowing and creating lovely little green volcanoes. The pretty pistachio lava is burning to the bottom of the oven. Luckily, a cookie sheet placed underneath my mini-Mt. St. Helens stems the flow.

Blake is still doing dishes. Mom has given up on the baking and has returned to decorating the house for Christmas, which has been her project for the LAST TWO WEEKS.

4:00 P.M.

Okay, Almost Candy Bar-check. Gumdrops-setting. Biscotti-double baked and ready for drizzle. Chocolate pretzel cookies-baked, iced, and hershey-kissed. Cherry-pistachio bread-dormant and ready for wrapping.

OOPS. Remember my drizzle oops a few hours ago? Yeah, apparently I didn't either. So a few pieces of biscotti are a little more drizzly than others. Oh, well, they're supposed to look homemade anyway.

5:00 P.M.

Gumdrop time! In theory, the gumdrops (which are currently in a thin sheet in a pyrex dish) are supposed to just plop out of the pan onto wax paper after you loosen the sides. But if you've made it this far in the day with me then you know that nothing is going to work like the recipe says, so of course Blake ends up prying the ooey gooey mess out of the pan with his very patient fingers. He plops it on the wax paper and we get out our very sharp, very small, very cute cookie cutters, dunk them in hot water, and start cutting gumdrops. Easy enough.

Until we try to pry them off the wax paper.

6:00 P.M.

Still prying.

6:30 P.M.

I have a headache. The first batch of gumdrops have finally been peeled not-so-gently from the wax paper (I thought NOTHING stuck to wax paper) and placed on another sheet of-you guessed it-wax paper to "dry". Blake heads to church choir promising to return after for round two of gumdrop-mania. I wouldn't blame him if he never got in the same zipcode as me ever again.

9:00 P.M.

Ahhhhh. After dinner, sitting by the fire, and watching "White Christmas" with my Mom, I feel much better. After all, most of my desserts are sitting on the dining room table, cut up all pretty and decorated, and my boyfriend is ringing my doorbell. Apparently being an absolute mess in the kitchen is not a deal-breaker. Whew.

9:15 P.M.

We have the bright idea of spraying EVERYTHING associated to the gumdropping with PAM. And PRESTO! It works! After prying the second sheet of gumdrops out of the pan onto PAM covered wax paper, it takes us a mere half hour to cut and sugar the ruby-colored gems. I will include this helpful tip later down the road when I post the recipe and accompanying photos. But not today, because yesterday, I was too busy being covered in chocolate, sugar, peppermint, and super sticky Jell-O to grab my camera.

10:30 P.M

Blake helps me finish washing the rest of the dishes (which is basically every pot, pan, cookie sheet, and utensil in the kitchen, plus a few I didn't know we had). Then-and this is the part where I have to go, "huh?"-he hugs me, kisses me, looks me in the eye and says,

"I love you so much. Today was so much fun."

Huh? A full day of washing my dishes, dodging exploding chocolate baggies, hearing "OOOPS" every few minutes, and generally surviving the mayhem that-let's face it-is life with me, and he still loves me?

He still loves me. He loves covered-in-chocolate-dripping-with-gumdrops-stubborn-oopsing me. So yes, he's nuts, I'm lucky...

And I can't wait to do it again next year.