I can hear you, cookies.

So, like a good 80 year old lady, this weekend, when under stress, I baked.

As I have mentioned, I am not the worlds best kitchen person and baking has always been an especially sore spot for my inability to make anything good.

But being that baking is ultra time consuming, and then you get cookies, I felt it the best remedy to my overabundance of adrenaline and uber anxiety. I was right.

Now the problem with baking is that my mom is a killer baker so I always aspire high with her in mind but without her patience and accuracy, don't quite meet the mark.

Growing up as a close relative to the cookie monster and having this full blown baker who lived with me I ate my fair share of sweets however always most memorable was gingerbread cookies with made-from-scratch icing.

yeeeeah buddy.

So with molasses on the brain, I sought out the ingredients to make the beloved cookies avec icing.

Dear grocery stores,
why must you be so hard to navigate sometimes? All I wanted was ground ginger...

Anyways since Saturday I have made 8 batches of cookies and eaten about 1 batch worth of cookie dough (thank you Toronto Life article for letting me know how detrimental to health dough can be- dear tapeworms to be...).

First of all, how on earth does one master the cookie- like an entity unto itself. I bake the first batch for 12 minutes as my mom's handwritten recipe suggests- too crispy, I bake the next round for 10 minutes- not crispy enough, 11 minutes- burnt, back to 10- raw in the middle. They are all cut in the same shape at around the same thickness- what. gives.

It's as if they get lined up on the baking sheet, get into the oven and then conspire with one another about how to fuck around. And yes, I realize that cookies don't talk- or do they? I mean, who is to say what goes on behind closed oven doors?
Perhaps the cookies think that if they work together to ruin the batch then they won't get eaten. Ha-ha my cookie friends- you are wrong.

Anyways, I have made about 6 successful cookies. total.

And then there is the delicate issue of the icing.

Dear icing,
you are not sweet- well, yes, you are sweet- you are made of 100% sugar for gosh sakes- but you are not nice- to me, when I frost, my shitty cookies.
Here is what I have learned.
Tye-Dye icing= bad/looks like someone barfed on your cookie
Icing faces= creepy, especially when the eyes drip
Purple Icing= as unappetizing as that purple ketchup that once came out which I thought was funny to buy and then made me ill every time I had to use it on my grilled cheeses.

It is all bad.

Fortunately, despite being under/over cooked and looking as though they were made by a 2 year old ADD child- nothing is quite as good as a homemade cookie and in between scraping icing off the ceiling and countertops, washing the cusinart over and again and dusting flour from every surface of the entire apartment I forgot to stress- so in the end..... winning.

Next up- I abandon gingerbread (for now) and move to savory shortbread for this weekends holiday fiesta- will it be melted cheese disaster or melt in your mouth goodness? Who can say folks. Who?