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Step 1: Assemble the ingredients. Cookies
1/2 c. shortening
1/2 c. butter, softened
1-1/2 c. sugar
3 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
2-1/2 c. flour
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
Icing
1 c. confectioner's sugar
3-1/2 tsp. milk
1/4 tsp. vanilla
2 tsp. light corn syrup
food coloring
The cookie recipe is my mother's. I'm sure she's horribly scarred by such a
nefarious bastardization of her beloved baking lessons. I pulled the icing recipe
off the Internet.
I also made a double batch because I like bigger cookies, so all of my pictures reflect
a more . . . ample . . . amount of ingredients.
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Step 2: Combine the butter and
shortening.
Despite their similarities, these two components are rarely encountered
together in the wild. Butter, of course, is uptight and square. Shortening is
very malleable and messy.
They'd make good political parties. |
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Step 3: Add the eggs . . . |
| . . . but be careful. Those eggs can be crafty.
You know they're just sitting in that carton in the refrigerator plotting a kitchen
takeover, whispering quietly so as not to tip off the grapes, the only other food with
sufficient numbers to pose a threat. Why else do you think they all make a run for
it when you put them on the counter? They're hoping one will get lucky and roll off,
causing you to hit your head on the edge as you frantically dive to catch it, allowing
them to take a quick victory photo of your vanquished remains before vanishing into the
night to carry on the revolution . . ..
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Step 4: Add the sugar. |
Step 5: Take all of the cereal out
of your cupboard so you can get to your mixer.
The purple box, of course, is Count Chocula, the best cereal on the
planet. Chocolate Lucky Charms are but a pale reflection of such marshmallow
splendor. Word. |
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Step 6: "Ladies and gentlemen, we may be
experiencing some turbulence. Please stay in your seats and ignore the stainless
steel blades whirling at 10,000 RPM all around you. Once again, thank you for flying
Homogenizing Airlines." |
| Step 7: Combine the dry ingredients. |
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Step 8: Combine the wet and dry ingredients and
knead into a dough. It's a little sticky. |
| But don't worry, I washed my hands. Several times,
in fact. See?
You'll also note that I was *not* wearing lingerie while making these. At least,
not when I took this picture (which, by the way, makes me look like a bowling pin . . .). |
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Step 9: Let the dough chill. My mother's recipe says
to wait one hour (gee, where have we heard *that* from our mothers before?). I
actually let it sit overnight. Step 10: Roll the dough out on a floured surface. |
| Step 11: Use a heart-shaped cookie cutter to cut out
shapes. Before lifting them off the counter, use a spatula to cut the lower third of
the heart off (after this you are permitted to brag, quietly and in small group settings,
that you've performed heart surgery). You may have to experiment to find the optimal
cutting point. I had a few cookies with larger, um, surface areas than others
("I have a marked preferences for extravagant posteriors and I am incapable of
prevaricating . . ."). |
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It helps to edge the spatula under a corner before trying
to pick up the cookie. Otherwise the cookies tend to compress at odd angles, leaving
one with oddly misshapen "cheeks." |
| Here we have an assortment of shapely figures, ready for
tanning, er, baking. The odd-shaped ones on the right were experiments in other lingerie
shapes. See below. |
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Step 12: Bake at 350 degrees. My mother's
recipe says to bake 8-10 minutes. I had to bake one batch almost 16 minutes before
they started to brown. Your results may vary. Allow cookies to cool completely. |
Step 13: While waiting for the
cookies to cool, do some research.
Be tactful when asking the saleswomen to give a short history on lingerie.
Leave out the fact that you're not there to buy anything. You can try
offering them cookies in exchange for modeling, but there's about a 97.4% chance you'll
end up talking to a security guard. |
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Step 14: Mix up the icing. I'd never decorated cookies
by hand before. I had a somewhat naive picture of an hour of decorating, an imagined
path ignorant of the learning curve involved. Six hours to decorate these.
Part of it was the trial and error of learning how it's done. Part of it was the
incompatibility of two vinyl decorating bags with seven colors of icing (I had to wash and
dry the bags each time I switched colors). Next time, provided such an event occurs,
should proceed with much more alacrity.
I did find the process strangely soothing, much like knitting, I suppose. That
means either I should take up cookie decorating or lingerie designing as a hobby.
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| I mixed one large bowl of white icing at a shot (I had to
mix four bowls total to finish all of the cookies), then transferred portions to smaller
bowls before adding food coloring. I learned early on that what I thought was too thick
for the icing was, in fact, the proper consistency. The icing I "adjusted"
with more milk ended up flattening out on the cookies. |
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Step 15: Begin decorating. I learned there are several
methods of decorating cookies by hands. The easiest seems to be to make an outline
using the decorating bags (and a number 4 tip in this case) and allow that icing to set
(it only takes a few minutes) before filling it in (either with the same or another
color).
That's a small paintbrush in the bowl. It's handy for pushing and nudging the
icing into all the corners of the design.
Allow the icing to "set" before stacking cookies (and it helps to wrap them
individually in plastic wrap). |
| Valiant attempts at "lace" were made by
carefully "dotting" the outside of the outline with the tip of the decorating
bag. |
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Some turned out better than others. |
| Some also "covered" more than others. |
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And some were more creative than others. Don't say
baking can't be
educational, by the way. |
| Some of the simpler designs ended up being the best.
I think this was one of my favorites. |
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This was one of my attempts at being creative. I
hand-cut and decorated a couple of "corsets" for Jamie. The first one
didn't turn out very well (I lacked a certain familiarity with the concept of the corset's
design), but this one was decent. For a cookie. |
| Distribute to friends and family with a sense of humor.
Not recommended for coworkers or bosses. Enjoy. :) Click
here for a full-sized image of the collection. |
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