Somehow around the office I’ve become known for my baked goods. Pre-culinary school, I was hard pressed to even get a boxed cake right. I hated measuring, which is why I always liked to cook, it’s very forgiving when measurements are off. Baking, not so much.
So being known as a baking guru, I was asked by a coworker/friend if I could make cupcakes for his band’s CD release party. Talking it through with him, we came up with the plan of doing cookies instead. This posed two challenges for me.
1) I had the genius idea that the cookies I made should be very specific to his band, i.e. I wanted to custom make a cookie cutter.
2) I had to make sugar cookies. I’m not a fan of making sugar cookies, or any rolled cookies for that matter, I blame this on the one square foot of usable counter space I have in my kitchen.
Challenge 1: The design of the cutter wasn’t the challenge. Easy, an N and an E connecting (Band name: North Elementary) with half a person popping out of the top of the cookie with arms in the air (see below for the CD cover, you’ll get the reference). I googled up homemade cookie cutters, and it looked easy enough, get some metal flashing, get some double sided tape, bend, stick and cut your cookies! Yeah, it wasn’t at all that easy. What I ended up doing was taking some pre bought cookie cutters and rebending them. In fact I only rebent the cutters for the letters, I cheated and used a gingerbread shape for the person. I suppose I should also mention that the adhesive I used, didn’t work very well, so I ended up cutting the cookies in two parts.
Challenge 2: I got what I thought was a great cookie recipe from Martha Stewart’s website (I mean, Martha’s minions are usually SO good). Unfortunately, it wasn’t so great. I had a lot of trouble with the dough, it was VERY sticky and hard to roll out.. I found that if I kept the dough cold it was a little easier to roll, but I still had to use a lot of flour to keep it from sticking. It also had a tendency to tear really easily. The end product wasn’t too bad, although because of all the extra flour the cookies tasted a little dry to me.
But, after all was said and done, the cookies ended up looking great, and even better they were a hit at the CD release party!!!
The cookies were so well received that I was asked by the same friend, to do another batch for the Minus Sound Research 5 fundraiser (check out minus sound, it’s such a great project, and I was thrilled to be asked to be even just a small part of it!). This time I bypassed the idea of a custom cutter. Instead I shaped my dough into a log and sliced it into cookies. Once the cookies were sliced I took some small letter cutters and cut out the letters MSR. Negative space cookies, I had a good time with those!!
I’m sure in the future I will have to attempt to make sugar cookies again. I can pretty much guarantee that I will not be using the above recipe, it just didn’t have what I wanted in a cookie. Time to research some recipes!!
So being known as a baking guru, I was asked by a coworker/friend if I could make cupcakes for his band’s CD release party. Talking it through with him, we came up with the plan of doing cookies instead. This posed two challenges for me.
1) I had the genius idea that the cookies I made should be very specific to his band, i.e. I wanted to custom make a cookie cutter.
2) I had to make sugar cookies. I’m not a fan of making sugar cookies, or any rolled cookies for that matter, I blame this on the one square foot of usable counter space I have in my kitchen.
Challenge 1: The design of the cutter wasn’t the challenge. Easy, an N and an E connecting (Band name: North Elementary) with half a person popping out of the top of the cookie with arms in the air (see below for the CD cover, you’ll get the reference). I googled up homemade cookie cutters, and it looked easy enough, get some metal flashing, get some double sided tape, bend, stick and cut your cookies! Yeah, it wasn’t at all that easy. What I ended up doing was taking some pre bought cookie cutters and rebending them. In fact I only rebent the cutters for the letters, I cheated and used a gingerbread shape for the person. I suppose I should also mention that the adhesive I used, didn’t work very well, so I ended up cutting the cookies in two parts.
Challenge 2: I got what I thought was a great cookie recipe from Martha Stewart’s website (I mean, Martha’s minions are usually SO good). Unfortunately, it wasn’t so great. I had a lot of trouble with the dough, it was VERY sticky and hard to roll out.. I found that if I kept the dough cold it was a little easier to roll, but I still had to use a lot of flour to keep it from sticking. It also had a tendency to tear really easily. The end product wasn’t too bad, although because of all the extra flour the cookies tasted a little dry to me.
But, after all was said and done, the cookies ended up looking great, and even better they were a hit at the CD release party!!!
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| CD cover |
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| Cookie! |
I’m sure in the future I will have to attempt to make sugar cookies again. I can pretty much guarantee that I will not be using the above recipe, it just didn’t have what I wanted in a cookie. Time to research some recipes!!
I think it's a horrible tease to discuss a sub-par sugar cookie recipe without giving me a successful cookie recipe!!!!
ReplyDeleteI like the post, though. Like the title a lot.
I think you should go ahead and stick your neck out and write about doing John's wedding. Before entry/entries (the planning, the trepidation, the hopes and fears!) and after: The bride, the groom, the cupcake comments.