A Week of Baking

Most of the year, I am a cupcake girl. I’ll make an occasional cake or cookie (usually just to fill my cookie jar) but it’s cupcakes over everything. Once November hits, I pull out my cookie cutters and rolling pin and I am IN IT. This year, instead of taking a chance and trying a new cookie and hoping it works out when I give my friends some, I decided to do a week of baking. I have baked 7 cookies in 7 days and my mixer is wiped out. Now, none of these are my own recipes but I’ll link them down below and give you my review on each of them! (I also documented my journey on my instagram if you’re interested! dessiegirl) As some of you may know, I am a stay at home mom but my son is NOT one of those kids who will play nicely as I bake. He will try and crawl into the hot oven or, if I leave him in his playroom upstairs, he will throw EVERYTHING down the stairs (future baseball star?). All of these were made either after he went to bed for the night or during his naps. I did try and time some of them by mixing before his nap (15 minutes away from him) and baking while he’s sleeping or doing the easy stuff while he was eating his lunch.

Monday:

I am feeling ambitious! 7 cookies in 7 days? No problem. I have a go-to recipe when it comes to sugar cookie cutouts but it’s a family recipe so it’s not one that I share with other people. Solution? I’ll try out a bunch and share the best one I find! First on the agenda are sour cream cutout cookies. In theory, these will be great. Sour cream keeps the cookie moist and it has a buttery icing. What could go wrong? Oh, let me count the ways. This dough is BLAND. I ended up adding in around 1 tsp of each butter flavor extract and vanilla extract and it was still very meh. The cookie actually tastes a lot better a day or so later, I found myself eating 3 at a time because it wasn’t that bad. I’d skip the frosting, there’s something wrong with the recipe. It needed more liquid than the recipe called for in order to become a smooth texture but it broke when it got a little warm (I used a piping bag, so it warmed with my body temperature). Pass on this one, unless you make proper modifications.

Tuesday:

I was a little deflated after last night but found a recipe that only called for 4 ingredients! Chocolate Shortbread was next on my list. I wish that I would have found this recipe online instead of in a cookbook because all the reviews say the same thing I’m going to. BLAND. Crumbly, more so than a typical shortbread cookie and just tasteless. I didn’t know that something that had that much cocoa powder could be so flavorless. PASS.

Wednesday:

By this time, I was questioning why I was doing this if all it was going to do was waste my time and frustrate me. Nevertheless, I persisted. I was actually excited about making these holly wreaths because they were something I’ve never done before. First off, a cookie press is NOT the same as a piping bag fitted with a star tip. The internet lied to me this day. I could not get the dough out of the piping bag without busting the entire bag open. This was completely my fault since I had the cookie press in my hands at the store and then decided that I didn’t need a one use tool. The dough could have used a bit more vanilla but they were okay, considering I made them into actual cookies rolled in sanding sugar. I’d assume that these would be good if you could actually make them into wreaths. Make.

Thursday:

My sanity is in question. Why do I keep on making cookies that are terrible? Will I ever learn? Cream cheese cutouts were my saving grace. These are the closest thing to my sugar cookies I’ve ever found. They were delicious and I even liked the buttercream that the recipe called for (I’m a royal icing fan for sugar cookies), I just added 2-4 tbsp more milk than it called for because I wanted different colors to flood differently. I loved these so much, I actually took a picture of them and posted it on social media! MAKE, and try not to eat all at once.

Friday:

I was on a high from the success of Thursday night, but man, I was exhausted. Who knew making cookies could take such a toll on you? Next up were chewy ginger drop cookies. I love a good drop cookie recipe because they require little to no effort. No chilling the dough or cutting out cute shapes. You just drop, bake, and eat! Perfect. If you like molasses, you’ll like these. I felt like that was all I could taste, the ginger was completely overpowered by it. That being said, they were still good and I ate a handful! Make, if you are into molasses.

Saturday:

I decided I really wanted to challenge myself and make a sandwich cookie. The one I chose was the Christmas sandwich cremes recipe. When I baked the dough, I actually got really frustrated because it was just bland. Why was I getting the worst recipes known to man? I almost threw them all away because I got so angry. I decided to hold on and make the filling because sometimes a cookie just needs the frosting it was paired with in order to thrive. I AM SO GLAD I KEPT THEM. Alone, they were meh. Together, they were melt in your mouth and make you groan delicious. I swear I ate 10 that night because I thought maybe I was tricked into thinking they were good. MAKE. Make like 10 batches.

Sunday:

My final day, thank God. Honestly, I’m just tired of baking. Most of the doughs I chose required chilling time in the fridge (aka time for me to forget about it) so I had to set alarms. I had to remember to take butter out of the fridge to soften for the recipes. My arms are sore from rolling the dough. I decided to go out with a bang. These brown sugar cutouts have a minimal chance of being bland (helloooo, brown sugar) so I can end the week on a high note. These were delicious but there are a couple things I would do differently. 1. Chill the dough for AT LEAST 2.5 hours. I did it for 2 and it was still too soft. 2. Roll it out to about 1/8 inch thick. If not, it’ll spread like crazy. This isn’t a change but when they say roll it out onto a floured surface, they mean it. Don’t skimp on the flour, this dough is very sticky and it absolutely NEEDS it. I didn’t do the frosting because I have  SO MANY cookies that I just don’t need to worry about frosting these but they’re delicious plain, so you may not need to!

 

Final thoughts:

Would I do this again? Maybe, because I am crazy and I feel like I should have more cookie recipes in my recipe notebook. All in all, this was a fun experiment and I hope that some of these reviews help you out!

 

xoxo,

Dessie