Back to the Craft: Sugar Cookie No-No

Ever since Halloween I have been on a real sugar binge. I ate most of my son's candy and then subsequently decided to bake Congo Bars, Sugar Cookies, and Butterscotch Brownies. Generally I love baking (even more than "cooking") and I often try to make things that are healthy and relatively gluten-free. I try and limit gluten intake but I also enjoy baking with it because of its springiness. I am notorious for making "almost" gluten-free goodies, that is, mostly rice flour, chickpea flour, or gluten-free mixes, but with an additional cup or half a cup of white, whole wheat, or rye flour, all of which contain gluten and therefore contaminate the dish for all of the many people who are truly gluten free or have allergies.

However, this last week I haven't even tried to be good. I have been using white flour and even white sugar and greatly enjoying eating the results. Most of all I enjoyed snacking on one of my favorite goodies, sugar cookies.

Every Christmas when I was a kid, we would decorate sugar cookies with different colors of frosting and in lots of Christmas-y shapes. We used sugar sprinkles and those little silver ball sprinkles and had piping bags for the icing and everything.

Well, it is not Christmas. I had no excuse. I found a recipe online linked to a picture of pink, sprinkled, heart-shaped cookies by 'Average Betty'. I made the cookies, and then made pink frosting with icing sugar, butter, and a bit of milk. It was decadent. I somehow thought it was acceptable to feed these to my child. I ate so many myself that I felt sick. Then I waited a little bit and ate some more.

They were so good, they were bad. Very, very bad. It reminded me of a book I read once where an obese woman made a double batch of shortbread cookies, ate several with great enjoyment, and then continued eating them until they were all gone and she couldn't even really taste them anymore. Yeah. It was bad. Its over now. I gave some away and finished them off to save everyone else from their sugary badness. And through the process I got my mother's recipe, which I will make sure to share as we get closer to Christmas.

I had fun trying to cut out some letters and I exhausted our supply of crappy cookie cutters. (Some of them were actually intended for playdough). The tiny little men turned out brown but David loved eating off the arms and legs.

Another wonderful perk to all this baking was that I got to use my new measuring spoons! My friend Ingo is a carver and we have done several trades. I have put together a few videos of him demonstrating his carving techniques on Wooden Spoons, Bowls, and Ladles, and most recently we made a Tribute to Don Dillon, the blacksmith who made many of Ingo's hand carving tools. The tribute video is my favorite because Ingo let me interview him personally. And, because I film and edit videos, I get gifted with beautiful carvings!