I thought I was going to have at least a few minutes to sit down and relax yesterday evening. I thought wrong.
John was working CQ, and I got the urge to bake. The problem was that I didn’t have some of the ingredients I needed to make the cookies and icing I wanted to bake. I rationalized that if the grocery store had meringue powder and piping bags for icing, then I would go ahead with my project. If they didn’t have those two items, then I’d do it another day.
I made it out of the grocery store with a few baking items. By the time I got home, it was nearing 5:30, and the sky was getting dark (yet again…so much rain). I heard some thunder, so I grabbed Beni for a quick walk before the rain hit. When I got back upstairs, I needed to get dinner in the oven because the bake time was one hour. Once I got dinner in the oven, I realized that our clothes in the dryer had gotten all wrinkled, so I got a bath towel pretty moist and stuck it in with the wrinkled clothes while I marched to the bedroom to fold the rest of the laundry that was pulled from the dryer earlier (ahem, days ago).
After I put away the laundry, it was time to make the rice to go with dinner. Once that got going, I started to make the cookies. I got the sugar cookie recipe from Bake at 350. The recipe itself was pretty simple. It took about 25-35 minutes to throw it all together and have 18 cookies cut out and on cookie sheets with parchment paper. About this time, I realized the laundry needed to be removed from the dryer before it got wrinkled again. I didn’t have time to fold and hang everything right then, so I was doing my best to lay everything flat.
In the midst of all of that, I was trying to keep the chicken warm and the rice from getting too sticky. Then John walked in the door. He had from 7:45 until 2 AM off, and it was time to serve dinner. Phew! We ate dinner while watching a few minutes of TV, but I wasn’t going to sit for long; I wanted to get the cookies decorated. Bridget at Bake at 350 makes the cutest cookies, and I wanted to try her instructions for royal icing. That’s when I realized that I hadn’t bought the meringue powder as I had thought. I had been in such a hurry at the store that I grabbed marzipan. Don’t ask me how I mistook marzipan for meringue powder. I’m ashamed.
Regardless, I was sure the meringue powder was right next to where I picked up the package of marzipan, so I went back to the store. Nope. No meringue powder. They did have little meringue cookies (puffs?), though, and John and I rationalized that we could just smash them up and it would be close to the same thing. Umm…maybe, but I tried and it did not look right.
It was about 9:30 by then, and I was getting frustrated, so I whipped up a buttercream icing recipe I found awhile back but had never used. Boy howdy is it ever sweet. It’s also not nearly as cute as Bridget’s cookies, but I was fine with it seeing as how my entire evening ran away from me.
I had cut out sunshine and umbrella-shaped cookies, and my plan was for them to be anniversary cookies for John and me. (Cheese warning!) I was going to say that they symbolized for better or for worse. (I warned you!) I just wrote that in the past tense, but I actually did tell him that when he saw the cookies.
Although I was frustrated through parts of the cookie baking and decorating experience, there was at least one thing that made me smile — my yellow umbrella. Ted Mosby, this is for you:
It's an iPhone photo, so I apologize for the poor quality.
Squee! Love the yellow umbrella!
I like cooking, but I’ve never had any luck with pretty decorated baked goods. I need to try it sometime 🙂
Thanks! I’m glad someone knows the reference 🙂
On the cooking front, I’m somewhat your opposite. I don’t like cooking much, primarily because I hate handling raw meat. I do love to bake, though, which probably stems from growing up helping my mom bake bread and make other yummy treats.