Many months have passed since the Halloween Sugar Cookie Debacle. Since then, I have mastered several batches of Buttermilk Cookies and Chocolate Chip Cookies and I figured it was time to try something new. I jumped on the Internet and found a recipe for Coffee Shortbread, a coffee-flavored rolled cookie. The recipe looked easy and my ego was just inflated enough to think I just might make a successful batch of rolled cookies this time.
I skipped to the kitchen to retrieve my cookie cutters. I picked through the shapes and selected the cat. I decided to call my creations, "Coffee Cats". The recipe called for melted chocolate to be drizzled over the finished product and I thought the cats would look cute striped with a chocolate chip for an eye. Oh, the cleverness of me! I should have known that being obsessed with the finishing touches of cookies before one dozen even came out of the oven was a bad sign.
Like my failed sugar cookie dough this coffee dough was crumbly so I shoved it in the refrigerator or maybe it was the freezer, whatever. Anyway, for some odd reason, whenever I make crumbly dough I think that putting it in a cold place will make the dough get together and throw a party. Of course, that is not what happened so I had to knead the stuff...with my hands, that had long, glorious, painted nails. Nails that took me months to grow because I am a nail-biter. Nails painted with OPI's "Lincoln Park After Dark" a purple-black color that is easier on the eyes than plain ol' black. Obviously, dough got all up and underneath my nails and I had to cut them off rather than pick at them.
Then the dough must have been too dry because no matter how much flour I coated every surface with the cat's heads and tails kept breaking off. I rolled out two complete cats before saying, "To hell with you cookie cutters! You can just shut up and get out of my life!" Then, I decided to roll the cookies into balls. Unsatisfied and frustrated, I slammed each ball against the cutting board with the heel of my hand flattening them into something resembling a circle. They looked boring, just a flat, putty-colored disc of dry dough, so I dragged a fork across the tops making them look like sand-dollars. "There, you little @!$#%&*s get in the oven and STAY THERE! Don't come out until you are edible and delicious! DO YOU HEAR ME?", I said to the sand dollars.
David isn't a fan of chocolate and he is the primary consumer of baked goods in the house so I debated adding the chocolate topping. However, I AM NOT A QUITTER and these cookies aren't a finished product without the chocolate. The decision was made to decorate only half of the cookies with chocolate. I dumped some chocolate chips in a bowl, shoved them in the microwave and got distracted chatting online to one of my brothers-in-law. Suddenly, I smelled something burning. The microwave had smoke pouring out of it (at least it wasn't the cookies in the oven, right?) and pulled out the bowl of half-melted, half-burned chocolate chips and threw it in the sink. DAMN! I guess that's not the preferred method of melting chocolate chips. But I wouldn't know what is because the recipe doesn't say how to melt chips and I wasn't born with a set of measuring spoons in my mouth. Now the house smelled of burnt disgusting-ness. Normally, when you burn food, you open a window to let in fresh air. What happens when the air outside is 15° and dropping? Do you still open a window? Despite the freezing Lake Erie air I opened a window. Awesome, I found another drawback of living in cold weather.
The cookies came out edible and David said he liked them. But I don't care what he likes because I am through with rolled cookies. From now on all cookies that I make are going to be drop cookies. Drop cookies don't require coating utensils with flour so they are cleaner. They are easier to make and I am all for easy cooking, baking, living, whatever is easier that's what I want. Do you know what that means? MORE STORE-BOUGHT COOKIES! Well, I'm off to throw my cookie sheets into the lake! Oh, wait, it's frozen...damn.
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