Cookie Cutter Post

It all started, as many stories do, with a mitten.

My friend Liz and I were grocery shopping at the pricey Co-op in Hanover when we came across the cutest decorated Christmas cookies. They looked beautiful and we were both especially drawn to the one of the mitten. It was a light blue color and had a little decorating going on, but not much. The cookies were like $6.95 a piece, and well. Who is going to pay that?

BUT! How hard would it be to make them ourselves?

All in a day's work.

Hence began the adventure. First we had to find the mitten cookie cutter. Where does one go for cookie cutters? We found nothing in the big box stores but scored in a small kitchen store in downtown Hanover. There was a mitten -- but not a big one. Hmmmm. But we each picked up a handful of other shapes and sizes (they were a buck each, we couldn't resist!) We also inquired of the saleslady if they had any decorating gels. She said no, but we should check out King Arthur Flour in Norwich. Oh cool! I've always meant to go there, but never have.

Not the perfect blue mitten I envisioned. NOT EVEN CLOSE!

So over the bridge to Norwich we went, and entered the world of UH OH. When two people who love to cook walk into such a store, all bets are off. I refused to get a basket because I know myself. I said we should just get the gels and leave. But I was gone at the first shelf ... full of all sorts of cool things to make bread. I decided I would make rye bread, and looked at the ingredients I would need. By the time I reached $20, I started putting things back. I don't need to make rye bread that badly, seriously, the store-bought stuff is just fine!

Then we saw the cookie cutters. OH NO! They were beautiful. Why does it matter? I have no idea, but there it was, the copper plated mitten. I scanned around for a price and on the wall it said that cookie cutters were $4.95. Being me, I quickly figured that I'd purchased four cutters at the other store for a buck each, which was ridiculously cheap, so if I picked up the mitten and the moose for an additional $10, that was about $15 for six cutters. Not the end of the world, right? (Now remember, this was to avoid shelling out the exorbitant price of $6.95 for a store-bought cookie!)

I admit I went back to the front for a basket, and proceeded to fill it with various and sundry items, including a boxed mix for vanilla sugar cookies. (I am telling you, I should not be allowed to go into such stores. I need a bib for all the salivating.) There were these cool boxes that you could bake in that were attractive, perfect for those baked gifts. There was a pina colada scone mix I had to have after sampling it. Yummy. I don't know what else I got. Crazy.

Every batch of traditional Christmas cookies always includes a moose, a camel and a high heel shoe, right? That red mitten makes me wince.

So baking day was yesterday. I mixed up the contents of my box and put the dough into the fridge where it needed to chill for at least an hour. I then did a few errands and arrived at Liz's with my little dough discs around 2:00. We began to roll them out. She had made a batch the day before, because while I was out driving around in a blizzard, she was safely tucked inside behind closed doors baking. I examined her results and was impressed. But she didn't have the big mitten -- I did -- so our big goal had yet to be met. That of course being re-creating the mitten cookie we so coveted.

It's one of those things -- you see the high heel cookie cutter and you think PERFECT! You see the high heel shoe and you think .... WHAT was I thinking???

With Christmas music playing in the background, we cut out our cookies. It was fun and in no time we both had the cookies ready to frost. While Liz mixed up a batch of frosting matter, I played around with the color gels. My red looked considerably like blood. I couldn't get the blue to match the blue that darned mitten that started this all was, but whatever. First we put a base coat on all of the cookies. It takes a ridiculous amount of time, and I was NOT happy to get a phone call from Charlie at 4:00 asking to be picked up. But I was making cookies! So, I took a nearly two-hour break to get him, pick up pizza, drop pizza off at home and then return to Liz's to finish the project we'd begun oh so many hours earlier!

Black frosting should never be introduced to any cookie baking project. Ever.

For some unbeknownst reason I had envisioned a mitten with a white base with black piping. Liz made the black frosting and was immediately repulsed! She also made a lot of it, so we found ourselves putting black frosting where black frosting shouldn't have gone! Then she got a little crazy and mixed up orange. And all the blobs of orange didn't look good with any color. But we were a little deranged at this point (and we'd had a few glasses of wine). Then she mixed up some brown so I could paint my camels -- I said that if it looked like chocolate, it shouldn't be too gross! HAHAHA. They look fine, but it is still a sugar cookie drenched in confectionery sugar icing! Ick.

Not even close, this blue mitten is proof that you can't always do it yourself!

When all was said and done, I was just depressed. I am a decent cook but I am no baker. I mean, I can bake, but I can't decorate! There, that's the problem. I believe that I am a creative person, and therefore able to recreate anything I see. This isn't really the case. My cookies looked as though kindergarteners had done them in ten minutes. As opposed to something we'd spent fricking HOURS on!

And there weren't even THAT many. Oh, we will never begrudge the person who made that cookie the measly $6.95 they charged for it. What a bargain! And the karma in all of this is that the mitten cookie cutter had cost ... $6.95. I hadn't noticed the teeny tiny writing on the back of the package.

When making Christmas cookies, it is wise to stick with traditional shapes and colors. These I dare say, aren't even hideous!

Between the cookie cutter purchases, the gels, the kit that Liz bought so that we would have decorating tips and bags, the decorations for the cookies, the mixes, and the little spatula Liz insisted would be perfect for the cookies, I am sure we easily spent $50 if not more. All to save $6.95.