They might be ugly, but they taste great!

As I wrote about in Something's baking...and Happy Thanksgiving!, sometimes I get an inkling to do some baking.

For the past several years, my mom and I've been getting together during the winter holidays to bake cookies. With the weather so cold and dreary, it's a perfect time to bake! We pretty much spend half or the whole day cranking out cookies like elves.

Last year, we baked spritz cookies (my personal favorite!), thumbprint cookies, and coconut macaroon cookies. This year, we tried to keep it simple: chocolate chip cookies and spritz cookies. In an effort to speed things up this year, I mixed up double batches of dough for both recipes the night before (which helped since then we were able to start putting the chocolate chip cookies in the oven right away).

Unfortunately, as soon as the first batch of chocolate chip cookies came out, I saw a problem right away: They were FLAT (as you can see from the picture above [excuse the Quizno's napkins, this is NOT an advertisement for them]). I can boil water as well as the next person, but I have to admit that I'm no Betty Crocker (sigh). It was disappointing to see them coming out so...well, ugly, but the taste was spot on (despite their ugliness). So we forged on (after all, we had a double batch to bake!).

Once the (flat!) chocolate chip cookies were done, we moved on to the spritz cookies. We've had problems with them in the past: the spritz cookie press acts a lot like a teenager -- temperamental! Sometimes the dough is too soft; sometimes it's too hard. Both are problems for the spritz cookie press. (My mom has TWO broken spritz cookie presses and is planning to write complaint letters...but that's a story for another day.) I started trying to use the press and right away, I saw more problems: the dough was not breaking off after coming out of the press AND the pressure in the press was causing the dough to keep coming out even after lifting the press. My mom is more patient than I: she stayed vigilant with the cookie press. I, however, switched to a new tactic: spritz cookies rolled in sugar and then pressed down with a cup! (Not exactly the spritz cookies I imagined, but at least they taste the same.)

After all this bad baking luck, I've given this year's cookie baking experience a name:

Holiday Cookie Disaster 2009

and a slogan:

"They might be ugly, but they taste great!"

(At least I kept my sense of humor about the whole thing.)

Anyway, I've used the same spritz cookie recipe both this year and last year, so I know there's nothing wrong with the recipe. If you're still interested (after hearing this story) in making the spritz cookies, you'll need a spritz cookie press (this is the one I have...which has already outlasted 2 of my mom's and has made it through at least 2 years of cookie baking days) and the spritz cookie recipe (this is the recipe that comes inside the Wilton spritz cookie press). GOOD LUCK!