Cookie mutilation

I hate my hand mixer.

No, I LOATHE my hand mixer.

Every time I get that stupid thing out, my blood pressure immediately goes up. Take last night, for instance. I started testing recipes for the big party, so I was making my first-ever batch of sugar cookies. (For a long time now, my position has been that if a dessert isn't chocolate, there is no point in making it. However, for a party I need to cater to all tastes, even those folks who believe that baked disks of non-chocolate dough are actually a dessert. Lunatics.)

The problems started right away. I bought butter at Sam's Club yesterday, but instead of sticks, I got one-pound blocks of unsalted butter. It tastes great and was really cheap, but how on earth do you figure out what one stick of butter would be when confronted with a chunk of butter the size of a recreational vehicle? Well, I hacked it in to approximate quarters (four sticks in a pound, right?), tossed one of them in the bowl and added the sugar.

Then I brought out the hand mixer from hell. This stupid little machine ostensibly has three speeds, but I've found those speeds to be fast, faster and frickin' turbo. There is no such thing as a low speed for creaming butter and sugar. Instead, you end up flinging shards of butter and sugar all over your formerly clean kitchen. I actually hunch over the bowl with my arms wrapped around it to try to keep some portion of the ingredients where they belong. At one point last night, I looked down at Sarge and saw that he was covered in tiny pieces of sugary butter. It looked like I was making a puppy fritter. I was near homicidal when I finished, fantasizing about throwing this hand mixer in the lake and driving to Sam's, where I had been taunted by a fabulous Kitchen-Aid stand mixer earlier in the day. However, I didn't have the $289 to buy it. And throwing appliances in our lake is probably illegal or something.

(Side note. I once owned a stand mixer. It was a Sunbeam, but it worked really well. I lost it in the second divorce. Let's just say that my ex and his "roommate" Rich were probably more likely than I to whip up a batch of midnight cookies at that point. You learn to make concessions in divorce proceedings.)

Adding the wet ingredients seemed to help, but I have to admit my dough didn't look exactly like I'd intended it to. It was sort of...crumbly. I know there are some baking experts who read this, so if they have any tips, I'd appreciate it. Once I'd wrapped it up and put it in the freezer to chill, though, it seemed okay. I had 20 minutes to crank out some truffle filling while the dough chilled and then we could bake!

Except a friend stopped by (totally cool, don't think I'm complaining) and 20 minutes turned into nearly an hour. The dough in the freezer was frozen into a giant hockey puck. So I just threw it (gently) on the counter and moved on to the truffles, which are so easy Sarge could make them. As long as you don't eat all the dark chocolate chips before you've melted them into ganache. That is a serious risk around here, which is why I got nearly eight pounds of chocolate chips yesterday. The risk of eating so many I yarf is higher that way, but at least I won't run out. Once the ganache was in the fridge, I turned my attention back to the great cookie experiment of '09.

At this point, I should probably admit that I've only used a rolling pin a few times in my life and the last time was about 10 years ago. In fact, it was exactly 10 years ago, when I made gingerbread men for Christmas. I had to go out and purchase a rolling pin yesterday (Tip: Paula Deen has a nice one at Wal-mart for around $10.) So this whole endeavor was a little tricky. But, I floured and rolled and cut (don't ask why someone without a rolling pin has fistfuls of cookie cutters) until I had two gigantic sheets of cookies. Into the oven, out of the oven, and they aren't that bad, really. I think they need to be thicker, but beyond that, I think they taste vaguely like the sugar cookies I've eaten accidentally in the past. Add some lemon and powdered sugar frosting, and they are almost worth the calories. Tony liked them, too, so I figure they are fit for human consumption. One recipe tested, 32 to go.

However, since Christmas presents have already been purchased, I've started my wish list for our anniversary in February:

1. A Kitchen-Aid stand mixer. In red. With all the fixin's.
2. Take me someplace where I can use my hand mixer for target practice.