This is Why I Don't Make Sugar Cookies

Because I'm really bad at it. And it's so much work to...
- make the dough (even with Trader Joe's handy sugar cookie "kit")
- chill it
- roll it out without it crumbling
- lift the cut-out dough without it sticking and tearing
- re-roll out the bits of leftover dough (over and over again)
- bake them
- ice them
- and decorate them.

I much prefer making the peanut blossoms you can see in the edge of the picture. No chilling, no rolling - okay, they do have to be rolled into individual balls and coated in sugar but that's a lot easier than rolling out a sheet of dough, and the only "decorating" is just a Kiss pressed into the top of the hot cookie just out of the oven. And they have chocolate.




The other problem with sugar cookies is I suck at decorating them. The icing hardened before it could be spread over the cookies evenly. The colored sugars were moist and didn't shake out of the bag easily. I don't know how anyone can possibly make fancy designs with these supplies!

Since I broke these snowmen when lifting the raw dough off the counter, I hoped to make them look like they had big gashes in them with the red sugar. Yeah, I know it's the Christmas season, not Halloween, but we've been watching vampire movies lately...

Sadly, you can see how unsuccessful my gory decorating efforts were. By the way, the blue one in the middle has hypothermia - that's why he's blue.

If you don't like my pathetic attempts at humor, why are you still here reading?




My sweetie did better with the decorating than I did. Perhaps because he used a little more restraint with the sugars. Not much restraint in the eating department, though.


I am not doing sugar cookies next year. I'm happy with one batch of peanut blossoms a year. I'll leave the fancy cookie making to the over-achieving holiday crowd from now on.

Editor's note: Some people have taken offense at the claim that only over-achievers can produce nicely iced holiday cookies. I did not intend to irritate readers. Readers should keep in mind that I am often fascetious, I've frequently written about how I don't care that much how things look as opposed to how they function (or taste), and I don't have kids so I've never bothered to spend the time or effort to learn how to do some things family commonly find joy in doing together ... such as making beautiful sugar cookies.