It’s a two part entry

Today:

Well that didn’t turn out as I’d planned. I had high hopes that a misadventure would not happen for another few months. But alas, today it was. I had started this entry yesterday with happiness and excitement because, really, who doesn’t love lofthouse cookies? They’re sweet and frosting-y and delicious. Okay, so they’re not as good as other cookies, but they are pretty freaking good. So when I came across the recipe, I jumped at the chance. 

Yesterday 20 January 2013 (some copy and pasting will occur):

In the beginning weeks of my cooking journey, all I was making was my loaded mashed potatoes, which I topped with sour cream. It’s absolutely delicious, but I ate it so often, I think I’m sick of it now. I’m currently left with a tub half-full tub of sour cream that I don’t know what to do with. I’ve been surfing on foodgawker for all my recipes (haven’t posted yet). Hopefully this will be my first one! I found a recipe for sugar cookies which requires sour cream!

I told myself I wasn’t going to bake today. I said to myself, “Self, you’ve been baking too much! I’m sure YOU’RE the reason the gas bill is so high!” I also wanted to take a break because A) my mother’s home and that means I don’t actually have to do any cooking today because my dad totally prefers mom’s cuisine to mine. And B) I rolled my ankle last night… I’m in quite a bit of pain and I’m walking about the house pretending I’m that Igor from Frankenstein. To be honest, I haven’t read Frankenstein nor do I remember watching the movies, but I always imagined that Igor walked around dragging his leg saying, “yessss, master” in a creepy voice. I did that to my dad this morning but I don’t think he got the reference.

Anyways, back to cookies! I found this pretty simple recipe from Blog is the New Black and I’ve got everything to make it, except maybe the food coloring, but that isn’t all that important. I’m currently just waiting for my butter to soften so I can get this thing started!

I got all the way to the climax of the movie “What a Girl Wants” before I realized I didn’t take any pictures of the prep work! I know that movie isn’t all that great, but I love me some Colin Firth and it was pretty high up on the Amazon Instant Videos list. 

I have no saran wrap.

Now we wait….

……….

Back to today:

I woke up in a great mood, which was cause enough for celebration. It seems like it has been months since I’ve woken up happy and chipper and feeling really positive. I took my mom to work this morning, planning on what to write in this entry. I made a quick pit stop at Wal-Mart (ugh, I wish I didn’t have to shop there, but really, a broke girl’s gotta do what a broke girl’s gotta do. Besides, it was 7AM) to pick up so more butter and some other random supplies for cookie dough truffles!!! I feel like Paula Deen with the amount of butter I’ve been using lately.

When I got home, I figured the best thing to do was to start on the truffles before baking the cookies. I started with what any person would do, I put a bunch of stuff in a bowl.

I followed the directions as best as possible, though I think that I ended up adding more!!! butter and a little bit more milk because it looked kinda freaky and un-cookie dough-y. Also, I added white chocolate chips, because I love me some white chocolate chips and I had some lying around. Then I balled that sucker up and popped it into the fridge to cheeeeeeeeeel.

I wanted to put this into the oven too. It looked too good to wait!

Into the fridge it went and out of the fridge came my sugar cookie dough. I floured the crap out of my kitchen prep area, plopped it down, and pulled out my handy Voss rolling pin.

Sugar cookies, you and I will be good friends soon… mwahahahaha

I was planning on buying a cookie cutter today, but then I didn’t really like any of the ones I found. I should look online for a nice one. I saw a sunglasses one that I really want, but I couldn’t bring myself to buy it. Go figure. I ended up just cutting it into squares.

Circles are too mainstream.

Hey look! I figured out how caption! Yay!

While I was rolling out the dough and cutting the cookies, I preheated the oven to 425F and … well… that’s when the chaos happened. MY OVEN STARTED TO SMOKE. No, it didn’t pull out a marlboro and light up, but it may as well have, it was starting to fill the room and I panicked. But I couldn’t just give up on the cookies, I had gone that far already! I figured it was only eight minutes of bake time, I could handle the smoke. I opened up all the windows and turned on the vent and shoved my cookie sheets into the oven, with a prayer to the baking gods that the house wouldn’t blow up.

After about 5 minutes I began to panic and at 7 minutes, I turned off the oven and pulled them out. Maybe I could have left them in there while it was still warm, but I dunno, I was just freaked out. While they cooled, I set out to make the frosting.

Pretty pretty purple

Once I was done with the frosting, I gave the cookies an obligatory taste test. There was something amok with them. They were undercooked, the reason being quite obvious. I was very dejected, but what else could I do but frost them and wonder what else to do with them.

Half assed frosting skills and blue sparkly sugar you can’t really see. Oh.. wait… you can kinda see it.

At this point I was so upset I decided to take a nap.

Later that day:

I woke up and realized I couldn’t keep moping. I had cookie dough truffles to make! I put on The Rocky and Bullwinkle Movie (which was pretty blah, but I was feeling nostalgic for my youth) and got my brand new melon baller out from the drawer. It was then that I remembered that I had bought some nifty Martha Stewart candy cup thingies.

Dear Domestic Goddess, let my truffles turn out edible….

I used the melon baller to make…. balls (duh.) and they definitely turned out better than my original truffles in terms of uniformity and size.

Then I melted the candy melts. I actually thought they’d have a darker flavor to them as the label said “dark cocoa,” but I was pleasantly surprised when I took a taste.

Mickey, please take care of my chocos….

I don’t have those fancy dipping forks, so I used the not fancy eating forks that I just happened to have lying around (and if you don’t have any lying around, I’ll just assume you use chopsticks for everything). I dipped and dipped, which was super fun but it was frustrating when I had to go back and microwave more melts. I didn’t think I needed the entire bag just for the truffles, but I used just about all of it.

NOM NOM NOM.

I wanted to add some of those blue sugar sparkles to my truffles, but by the time that I realized I wanted to do that, they had set. Boo.

I tasted a few and I do like the taste, but I’m hoping that a few hours in the fridge will give it the hardness I want. And I wish I could adjust the texture, but that will have to wait until the next batch.

Pretty candies!

Now that the day is over, I’m contemplating what to do. My baking will have to come to a halt, at least for the time being, which really bums me out. I had things to bake… what in the world am I going to do with that big ol’ thing of shortening? Deep fried pies? I’ve never used shortening before (not surprising since I didn’t cook before December) and my mom doesn’t use it either. Does that stuff go bad? I guess I’ll focus on dinners and candies for now. Wish me luck on those endeavors and should you try the sugar cookie recipe which is linked somewhere in here, I hope you have better luck than I did. At least I didn’t blow up the house, right?

Update: My dad asked to try it and I said to him, “DON’T DO IT!!! YOU’LL DIE!!!!!!!” and he kept being persistent (a skill my dad has down to an art) and so he tried it and says it tastes good…. so now I’m confused. I don’t know if they’re actually done or not. SMH.