Martha Stewart I am Not

Awhile back Anissa got very excited because I gave her a post that required a “Martha Steward would have an orgasm” tag.

I was so NOT fired that day.

This is NOT going to be one of those posts.

Last year a friend and I decided to get together one day in December and bake up some Christmas goodies to give out as presents. We stuck to easy things like cookies with pre-bought dough, pretzels dipped in chocolate and a few other ridiculously easy things.

This year, while stuck in the longest line ever at the grocery store, I picked up a little magazine of Christmas cookie recipes. I got sucked in by the beautiful pictures and easy tear out recipe cards. I should have known better.

Let’s just say we might have been over confident in our abilities. Come to think of it, I made most of the mistakes. Clearly there are reasons that I avoid the kitchen.

I did as much prep work as possible the day before, including crushing the peppermint candies. FIRST QUESTION! Why the fuck doesn’t the store sell pre-crushed peppermint candy during the holidays. Seriously, it was a disaster. I started with the old “throw it in a bag and beat it with a hammer” (heh beat it, am 12). That method was quickly tossed aside when I started missing the candy and hitting the counter. I finally made some progress with my Pampered Chef chopper thing but not without making a huge mess. Several of the pieces ended up on the floor and let me just state that pieces of peppermint stuck to the bottom of your socked feet is not really pleasant.

I did what any normal person would do.

I put on shoes of course.

It’s one two several days later and I still have yet to sweep the damn floor.

On an unrelated note, my nearly 7 month old son heard the vacuum for the first time the other day. It scared the shit out of him. I am SO going to miss my cleaning lady. Moving on…

With the peppermint all chopped it was ready to go in the chocolate swirl peppermint bark. We carefully melted the chocolate and dropped it onto the waxed paper, swirling it as instructed. It looked gorgeous decent. I was only trying to put some press and seal over the top of it. I have no idea how the pan slipped off the counter. Luckily it only mangled it, none hit the floor, although it didn’t really look so decent anymore.

I should have known that screwing up the easiest recipe was not a good sign. I moved on to cookies.

I don’t want to talk about the caramel swirls and how hard is it to roll layered cookies. Jelly roll my ass, that will never happen in my house again. It was probably also a bad sign that I had to have my cheater cookbook out to define cooking terms like “cream”. (omg I really am 12) I’ve also never made anything that required me to separate an egg. Bless you Betty Crocker for making your box brownies easy. I very carefully separated the egg and then proceeded to put the wrong part in the batter. I did not start over I just quickly turned the bowl over and dumped out the egg.

Needless to say the cookie batters were sketchy at best. They would NOT roll out. I ended up having to add flour to one to make it work. The other one I had to first chill a baking stone, roll out the dough on it using a combination of cooking spray, flour and parchment paper. It will be a christmas miracle if they actually get frosting on them. I’m looking at just using the nasty tasting bottle frosting (that you write with). What do I care, I’m not eating them. I’ve already eaten more than my share in raw dough. I mean this is sitting in my fridge right now. Well not really because I’ve been eating it all day.

OMFG did I forget to mention the part where I tried to traumatize my child. I thought it would be cute to take a picture of him with a beater. I have pictures of me as a kid eating off of a beater (heh) so I wanted one of him. I handed him the batter-y goodness, he really loved it, I snapped a couple of pics and took it away. In the short time it took me to set it down and grab the rag he managed to poke a batter covered finger in his eye. Not 30 seconds later he started to break out. I didn’t really panic because he has uber sensitive skin on his face but it got really red and he started getting welts. So I threw him in the tub and washed him up. I ended up putting him on Skype video with Meghan, thank god for Skype. Turns out he has an egg (or buttermilk) sensitivity, at least according to Dr. Meghan. He was fine thirty minutes later. Personally I think he did it on purpose to get out of helping. Typical male. I mean he looks ill doesn’t he.

Anyway here is the lovely collection of my baked goods, well most of them anyway. I’m actually kind of proud of how all of it turned out. However, rest assured, I will not be baking again until next Christmas. No, not even for my son’s first birthday, store bought cake for him!