Learning to bake cookies

I am not a baker. Until a month ago, I had only ever baked cookies that come in pre-cut blocks. I can bake a cake with the mix that comes in a box, but it will be lopsided- and I have never, EVER, had the patience to wait until it cools to frost it, so they are always kind of melty. I admit that I was known for making excellent challah bread a couple decades ago, but it was my one claim to fame. I’ve never been good at it. Any cookie you see from here on out I only made successfully because my sister held my hand throughout the entire process.

My family is filled with incredibly artistic people- most of them bakers. However, my interests always lay more in the technological realm. I am also creative, but I enjoy using Photoshop, Procreate, and Illustrator to make digital creations. I love technology- new tablets, phones, programs, apps, machines- that’s what’s on my wish list. Along with Cricuts, laser cutters, and countless other gadgets, I just recently acquired a 3D printer.

I started 3D printing cookie cutters for my family and friends because it was a way to be involved in the baking without actually having to DO any baking. I could take their ideas, turn them into drawings, turn those into 3D images, and then into cutters. Tons of technology- totally my thing. Everyone encouraged me to open a shop to sell the cutters and digital bakery organizers I had made. I had been trying for years to find a way to be at home during the day with my son, who has ASD.

I realized I would need pictures of completed cookies for my shop listings, not to mention testing the cutters. I was going to have to bake.

First attempt: I tried to go cheap and easy. I bought 2 rolls of Pillsbury sugar cookie dough. I rolled it out on the counter, cut my cookies, and was positive I could fake my way to “professional” looking cookies.

Yeah, that didn’t work.

I texted my sister and complained that my pathetic effort had produced pathetic cookies. She guessed that they had spread and offered her recipe. Not as many ingredients as I had thought there would be. Not too complicated. I could do this.

My next challenge was rolling it out. It stuck to everything. Rolling it was impossible. I poured flour over everything and tried again. I am sure I used way too m

uch flour in this step, but it was sticky! Texted sister again- How thick should the dough be? 1/4 inch thick. I had no way of judging that. I tried getting a ruler and putting it next to the dough. It was still uneven. I put the dough in the fridge and did what I do best- I applied technology to the problem. I 3D printed 2 sticks, 1/4 inch on each side. As soon as they were done, I went back and tried again. Success.

So now I was successfully rolling out dough and cutting out cookies. But I couldn’t get them to the cookie sheet without completely ruining their shape. Texted sister again. Chill the dough. OK. I put the rolled dough in the fridge for 10 minutes and tried again. Perfect! I was finally, finally ready to put my first batch of homemade cookies into the oven.

While they were baking, I cleaned up and started on the frosting. I was going to go with a very simple, 2 ingredient recipe I had found online, but I decided to just save myself the trouble and use my sister’s recipe. Unfortunately, I had no meringue powder, so I had to use egg whites. But I was halving the recipe, so I needed 1 1/2 egg whites. How do you do that? I put in one egg, got the postal scale, weighed the other egg white, and then put in half by weight. A little more complicated than I expected, but still not bad.

So now I had a huge bowl of white frosting. Time to mix my colors and put them in the piping bags. I discovered that I only have the 4 basic food coloring pastes- red, yellow, blue & green. So I called my husband and asked him to go to the store on the way home to get more. But the only other food coloring pack they had was pastels- red, yellow, blue & green. That’s no help. But that’s fine! I can mix colors. I needed purple for the “Boo” Halloween cookie, so I mixed red and blue. It came out grey. I added more red and blue. Slightly darker grey. By the end, I had pastel purple and frosting with so much food coloring in it that it tasted bitter. I also tried to make black for a Halloween cat and had the same problem. If you want black frosting, you need to buy black food coloring. So now I have grey cats and violet-grey “Boo” cookies.

I was so excited by how the cookies came out of the oven! They actually looked like they were supposed to! They had reasonably crisp sides, even though they spread a little bit. My sister said I probably handled the dough too much, which I definitely did.

Regardless of the difficulties, I was pretty proud of myself but also exhausted, and my feet HURT. I put the frosting in their piping bags into the freezer and the cookies in a ziplock bag to wait til tomorrow to attempt the real challenge- DECORATING.