Fuckin cookies

Everyone has their cooking phobias and nightmare recipes. Well, this is mine.

Every year at Christmas time I make my Dad these cookies. They are my grandmother's recipe and I am the only one in the family who can "make them right" now that my grandmother has passed on. Man do I hate these fucking cookies. I wouldn't make these things for my husband if they were they only sweets he would ever eat. But I make them every year because they are my father's favorite thing in the world. Only for him do I endure the torture and annoyance of making these fucking cookies.

Only for my father, and then only once a year. This year I was laid up post surgery at christmas, so I would have made them for his Valentines birthday but, I was at a wedding for Valentines day so I just managed to make them this weekend. They are still his Valentine/birthday present, hence the heart shapes. It took me and a friend an entire day to get these things made. And this is not a job you can do by yourself or you will go mad. As it was we needed a stiff drink by the time we were finished.

First the dough, a simple enough recipe (they are a family secret so forgive me if I don't give the exact recipe here) flour, butter, eggs, sugar, salt. There is a cuisinart involved. Then you have to pat the dough down into discs and refrigerate it. The recipe says refrigerate for an hour, but if you don't leave it in the fridge at least overnight you're in trouble.

Then there is the rolling. Now most cookie recipes call for rolling out to a 1/4 of an inch or 1/2 an inch thickness. No no, this stuff has to be rolled out almost paper thin, and it is sticky as all hell. I have to use a silpat covered in flour with flour sprinkled over the dough and flour on the rolling pin in order to keep them from sticking to the silpat or the rolling pin, this flouring process needs to be repeated constantly. Then you need to cut them out and very carefully, as you can image being paper thin they are very fragile, transfer them to cookie sheets. Then, because they aren't enough of a pain in the ass already, you need to decorate them with loose cookie sugar before they go in the oven.

The cookies are shipping out to Atlanta on Monday and my cookie cutters and colored sugars will head into storage for another year. Banished to the recesses of my house not to be thought of again until next years dreaded Christmas cookie marathon looms.

I think I'll go make something easier, like coq au vin or chocolate mousse now.