Is there a subtle way to tell people that you are overly obsessed with making cookies and spend all hours of the day and night baking and decorating and dreaming of cookies? I kind of feel like maybe I need to come with a warning label. You know, like, "Warning -- will speak in cookie." or "Don't talk to me while I am telling you how adorable your baby is because secretly I'm trying to memorize that FANTASTIC pattern on their tiny little shirt so I can recreate it in sugar form later this week."
Let's be honest. Cookies are a big part of my life. I buy the "big sugar" and enough flour to bake a two-story play fort for my children out of gingerbread....on a weekly basis. I panic when I have less than 2 bags of powdered sugar. We got a package in the mail today. My son asked if it was cookie cutters. (It was.) He said he knew that it was because *I* was holding it. Apparently, the only packages I get are cookie cutters. My son has a cookie design request list. In pen. He knows which tips are "the good tips" and he knows where to find all the "boy" cutters. My daughter has developed an unbelievable ability to detect the sound of cutters slicing through chocolate cookie dough. She comes running and waits with one hand out for her portion of the scrap dough.
My husband has become a black market cookie dealer. He knows the cookies that are up for grabs and wields his power accordingly. We had some friends over for dinner a few weeks ago, and I found them in a back room crowded around the cookie box.
I don't really have normal conversations anymore. My husband asks about my day and I tell him a super funny story....that I read on a cookie blog, before launching into an hourly analysis of the humidity level in our home. I don't even do it on purpose. I'll be in the middle of a conversation with a complete stranger and realize I am talking about the relative merits or deficiencies in two different brands of powdered sugar. I am super weird. (If all that cookie mess up there wasn't enough, I also like tofu.) At least I am not alone. I know of at least 2 other people that like tofu and at least 22 other people wielding pumpkin cutters for no other reason than pure joy and excitement and the challenge...
Callye asked me if I wanted to make something fun with a pumpkin cutter. And since "making something fun with a pumpkin cutter" is practically my middle name, I said yes. And then I made a pumpkin cookie. And then I couldn't stop thinking about that pumpkin cutter and how it also looked like an elephant. And cherries. And a weird looking guy with an odd shaped nose. And I had absolutely no desire to make a weird looking guy with an odd shaped nose, so I made cherry cookies instead.
1. Outline and flood the cookie. Let it dry overnight.
2. Take a square cutter, drag it through some stiff icing and press it randomly all over the base layer of icing.
3. Like this.
4. Use a #3 tip and some bright red icing, draw a cherry and fill it in real quick.
A tip for drawing cherries -- think of it like a letter "b" and a letter "d" put together, but without the vertical line in the middle.
5. While the icing is still wet, drag a toothpick through some white icing and then draw a little "shine line" in the red icing. Let it dry for an hour or so.
6. Outline and fill another cherry. Give it another hour or so.
7. Using thick green icing, pipe on a swoopy cherry leaf. If you make it thick enough, you can draw a line through it with a toothpick and it will stay. It's okay if you don't want a line in the middle of your leaf. You can just make a regular cherry leaf. That's cool with me.
8. Give it a couple of minutes and then add the stems.
9. Then go visit any and all of these fun and NON-WEIRD friends to see what they did with *their* pumpkin cutter!
