Ding dong, let the holidays begin.
Happy Friday and indeed happy I am that Friday is here- I got over stimulated last night and between that and having my husband come home late from a boys night out, this morning was a wreck. My only solace is knowing that tomorrow I can sleep in AND take a nap if my little heart desires (and it already does).
Readers, I am having a problem with domestication. I like it and I want to do it, but I suck so incredibly bad at it- a dichotomy that I cannot seem to negotiate properly in my head.
For example, in preparation for having our parents over tonight, I wanted to clean up the main floor. How it is possible that I sweep, dust, vacuum mop and the floor is still dirty, is just beyond me. It often feels like I am that Peanuts character, the one with the cloud of shit circling him and he is perpetually dirty...
Anyways, aside form my terrible cleaning skills I am also, as I have noted before, a horrible baker. Give me 5 minutes of baking and you will find flour everywhere and crappy batter in the works. Despite this, I feel like if I work at it long enough I can become a master baker (words can be funny- master baking in the privacy of my own home....haha).
With that in mind, I have been tackling cookies, one recipe at a time. I made those actually very good bacon cookies, those were followed by lemon line sugar cookies with a lemon sugar icing. The lemon cookies, as I realized last night were missing half a cup of butter which is probably why I needed to add all that water to the batter to get it to stop crumbling while I rolled it up to be refrigerated. Um, did you know that 2 sticks of butter is 1 cup- 2 effing sticks of butter- you could just puke. Some recipes call for 2 cups of butter- that is the whole box of butter in a batch of cookies- that is so butter cray.
Anywho, again, in prep for our families coming over, I thought this might be another occasion where cookies would be good but without sugar in the house I was a bit stuck on what to make- I pulled out the trusty cookbook that I usually use for anything I try and there, glaring out from the back of the book reserved for delicious desserts, I found a recipe for French style meringues (macaroons?) with a butter cream filling- no white sugar, only icing sugar required AND they were gluten free for my mother in law- b.i.n.g.o.!
For the first time since we got it for our wedding, I whipped out my mixmaster which weighs about 4 million pounds and make me instantly regret storing it in the highest shelf in my kitchen. But people, how amazing is the mixmaster? It frothed the shit out of my eggs and was a breeze to clean- I think I am in love.
Unlike the sugar cookies which turned out pretty good even when I completely effed up the recipe and omitted half the butter, meringues/macaroons are not so forgiving and far more specific in instruction which inevitably brings me to my complaint today. Recipes- what the hell? How on earth am I supposed to understand these things when they are so damn complicated (and this particular one only had 4 steps). It is like they are intended for a sweet genius but you cant become said genius without mastering these recipes which you cant read because you are not a master. Head.spinning.
Like for example, the recipe begins with beating the eggs until they are frothy. What the fuck does that mean? The eggs froth after 5 seconds- is that frothy enough? How does one understand the level of frothiness required by this stupid recipe without it being explicitly laid out? Define frothy.
And they do stuff like say “the eggs should be at room temperature”- what room? What if my room is 18 degrees? What if it is 27? Do they mean lukewarm? Should the eggs be left out to acclimate for an hour? 2? Is it ok to begin if the eggs are sort of room temp?
So as the recipe comes along the book calls for you to beat the at medium high speed eggs until you can see peaks (oh really?) which I only understand because my mom once showed me what an egg peak would look like- it says approx. 1 minute of mixing on medium high. 2 problems: the first is that there is no “medium high” setting- there are numbers and I have not a clue which one would correspond to medium high. The second is that after approx a minute, there were no peaks. It in fact took over 5 but then I got worried that I was overdoing it so I stopped before I reach satisfactory peaks! By this point I was covered in flour and stressed out.
Of the possible 36 cookies that the recipe would yield- I successfully made 8 (well, about 12 if you don’t count the ones eaten). And you know what else?
I tasted 2 cookies last night and both times the consensus was that they were terrible. I almost threw them all out- but they look so pretty.
This morning my husband, much to my surprise, ate one and loved it- so not sure if maybe he has terrible taste buds or if, after settling, the cookies actually turned out well and didn’t taste like sweet puke after all.
I am serving them tonight to find out.
Xo
Jane
No comments:
Post a Comment