The Awful Truths

Here are some of the awful truths that I learned while baking this past  weekend:

• Dough is still my nemesis no matter how many biscuits I will bake
• It takes longer to clean up the mess from baking than it is to bake the damn thing
• The inventors of cling wrap were sick, sadistic fu*ks
• Martha Stewart needs to be more specific about her directions ie. does "cover with plastic" mean, cover wth cling wrap right there on the cooling racks or put in a plastic container overnight which then makes the cookies kind of soggy?  Please Martha, are we peons expected to read your mind? When you write a handbook do you really expect that the purchasers of said handbook are experienced bakers?  We need visual aids!
• Flour and especially icing sugar have an unnatural attraction to all surfaces in your home.
• It is difficult to read a handbook if your eye glasses are covered in flour and/or icing sugar
• It is helpful to have some (any) artistic ability when decorating sugar cookies
• If sugar cookies are baked too long, they could break a tooth
• Sprinkles and coloured sugars will not go where you want them to on the cookie plus you are lucky if they land on any part of the cookie
• I have no interest in baking sugar cookies again.

I think you could guess what I made this past weekend.  Besides the sugar cookies - I made what Martha calls black and white cookies; which she claims are a NYC specialty. If it good enough for the big apple, then its good enough for me!  They are a basic cookie (more on that part later) that once cooled are flipped over to the flat bottom and iced with half vanilla icing and half chocolate.  They have to set and then you get this lovely looking glossy finished cookie.  Mine came out quite good both in look (you will have to take my word for it), but especially in taste.  Lilyan claims that they are the best cookies she has ever eaten! 

I thought they were a little sweet, but that is because I tasted one before they were iced.  To my delight, when I bit into it, it took me back to my childhood when my mother used to make "Ma's Cookies".  This was a recipe passed down from my grandmother (who my mother used to call Ma).They are a simple but delicious cookie that is sprinked with a sugar/cinnamon mixture and pressed flat with a fork before baking.  The one thing I could remember that is different from Martha's recipe, was that Ma's cookies uses vegetable oil rather than a pound of butter!  I was telling Lily all about them and have promised to make them for her.

I looks like my photographer was on vacation this weekend or taking pics of the sugar cookies broke his iphone....either way this is all I got.  Coming up this weekend, it looks like some savory cookies....Lily probably won't be so excited, so maybe I will bake her (and teach her) to make a batch of Ma's cookies.....the tradition continues.