Look! The Angel Is Flying!

After devoting last Sunday to baking cookies, I feel like I have definitely filled my quota of "beat butter and sugar until creamy" and "cut butter into flour until it resembles fine crumbs." Honestly, why don't recipes just say "beat the shit out of it" and "mash it until it looks like dirt," because those would be terms I would be able to decipher.

You'd think that after hanging out with my stand mixer for seven hours, I'd be done baking, but unfortunately I still hadn't made any cut-out sugar cookies or gingerbread hoodlums. I tried to convince the kids that maybe we could skip the frosting and sprinkling mayhem this year, but they were excited about spending an evening together spreading royal icing on snowmen and stars. Damn traditions.

I figured I'd just pick up a couple tubs of pre-made sugar cookie dough and be able to put the mixer away for another year, but apparently everyone else had the same idea, because it was out of stock everywhere. What the hell kind of grocery store buyer can't figure out that maybe he should order extra cookie dough during the holidays? A dumb shit buyer, that's who.

I managed to find a decent recipe, cream more butter and sugar, and also made the gingerbread dough on Monday night, mentally preparing myself for a fun morning of rolling out dough, having the dough stick to the table, arranging decapitated snowmen on the cookie sheet, swearing a few times, sweeping up flour from the floor, and making memories. No better way to start out the day than spending a few hours coated in flour.

Imagine my surprise when the dough rolled out just like Martha's, nothing stuck to the rolling pin, and the snowflake actually looked like a snowflake instead of a snowball! Was I actually enjoying making cut-out cookies? Hell has frozen over!

According to the recipe, the trick to making sure that the snowman still looks like a snowman after you bake it (instead of a morbidly obese snowman that looks like he ate six other snowmen) is to chill the cookies on the cookie sheet before it goes into the oven. Since my refrigerator had limited space, I thought: "Hey! It's cold outside! I'll just set the cookie sheet on the deck railing to chill for a few minutes. I'm a genius! Cookie baking is a piece of cake!"

I preheated the oven, and after about ten minutes, I opened the door to discover this sight:

What the hell? Where did my cookies go? Did some asshole walk up on the deck to steal my cookies? I know they looked pretty, and making them can be a real pain in the ass, but is anyone really that desperate? Suddenly, a cold wind hit me in the face and that's when I looked down on the patio:

There, in a crumpled heap, was a sad snowman, an angel, a couple stars, and a few little Christmas trees. The wind had lifted the parchment paper like a kite and sent it flying through the air. I knew things had been going too well.

By the end of the evening, the remainder of the dough had been baked, the frosting was tinted, and since we couldn't find any Christmas music that didn't make us physically ill, 93X was cranked in the background. While we all sang along to Guns N' Roses, the cookies were finally decorated. Doug even participated, and I'll give you one guess to figure out which cookie is his:

The gingerbread man would say "Merry Christmas" if it weren't for the fact that his mouth is full. Of angel head.