Easter vs. Miss Put-Upon, Round 2

Oh Easter. It's full of such memories...hours of church, lilies causing allergies to explode, 80-degree days followed by unexpectedly frigid Easter egg hunts...but mostly what I associate Easter with is food. And family. Slash Jesus. But namely, food. Last year was the first Easter that I couldn't spend with my family and their smorgasbord, but I was excited to create my own Easter feast like a Real Adult. One ham, some kind of side dish that I can't remember, and a majorly failed dessert later, I had succeeded...in giving myself an epic bout of food poisoning. My enthusiasm for the leftover ham that I had been looking forward to thus voided completely, I don't think that I have been able to eat ham since.

This year I'm trying for an adult Easter again, only I'm not in charge of the ham, or of much else.  My friend and I decided to co-host (read: I buy into the idea, she hosts at her apartment, and I show up just like everyone else) a potluck Easter dinner.  The guests have been asked to bring a variety of items, and I'm a little bit afraid that we'll have a bunch of rolls and not enough beer (I should maybe try to have more faith in my friends, but it's a legitimate concern). The one thing that no one signed up for was dessert. Of course, any Easter dinner worth Jesus' time should have dessert, so I volunteered to bring one.  Which is not such a stellar plan, because I am notoriously bad at baking, primarily because I consistently fail to read the directions through fully. But! it's my Easter Duty so I press forward--and I hope that you can benefit from my step-by-step Easter potluck instructions.

Step 1: Remember that it's Easter. You've been planning on this dinner for weeks so of course that means you're forgotten that it's this weekend. Quick! Figure out what dessert you will bring...it can't be something you've never made before...but your baking repertoire only consists of 3-4 items that are tried-and-true edible.

Step 2: Consult your favorite Web site. So you spent the entire day walking around looking at cherry trees, talking to your friends, and pondering on the baked good you'll bring to the Easter potluck, which is now tomorrow. End up deciding to make something like a blondie crossed with a lemon bar even though that blatantly violates the Must Have Made It Before Rule. You like to live on the edge.

Step 3: Visit the grocery store. While you're there, wonder why in the world there are so many people there on a Saturday afternoon.  See the giant pile of hams and remember that it's Easter again. Smugly remembering past adventures with brown sugar, buy a new bag.  While standing in the baking isle, remember that you forgot to check on whether you had baking powder and baking soda before you left the house, because when you walked to the kitchen to look, you got distracted by jelly beans. It's cheap so buy some more, but gamble on whether you have eggs.

Step 4: Double check the recipe and your ingredients. Reading ahead is key in baking. Notice that the butter needs to be melted, and microwave the lemons for a few seconds to get more juice out (just like they showed you on Food Network!). Pat yourself on the back because things are going so unexpectedly well. Get excited about using the neglected microplane part of the grater for the lemon zest. Note that you did already have both baking powder and baking soda. Note also--with relief--that your roommate has eggs, which you will steal shamelessly.

Step 5: Begin screwing it up. Lemons are hard to zest when they have already been juiced. And zest is remarkably hard to get out of the microplane. There's lemon juice in all the paper cuts you accumulated at your desk job over the past week.  The brown sugar is lumpy anyway because you forgot step 2 of the recipe, even though you read the whole thing through three times. Throw the whole thing in the pan and walk away. Concoct a plan to buy cookies on the way to dinner and pretend you made them. Return to the kitchen 25 minutes later and notice that the cookies are actually much thicker than in the picture and not nearly done in the allotted time. Begin to fret about how much longer they need and when they will be overdone.

Step 6: Take your best guess. After about 25 toothpicks have donated their lives to the effort, conclude that you would prefer underdone brownie-like baked goods to overdone ones, and that they are probably fine anyway. Let cool, then notice that the middle is actually not quite done. Consider putting them back in the oven and then wonder at yourself for thinking that would be a good idea. Decide that overdone baked goods might in fact have been better after all because squishy ones don't look too delicious.

Step 7: Plan how to drop them on the table anonymously. And if they find out that you're the one who brought the mushy cookies, hope that some of the attendees will remain friends with you regardless.

Stupid Swap Cookies

One good way to get into the holiday spirit is to bake cookies. If you're like me, you want to try something different each and every year, and you seem to enjoy the feeling you get when your fun new ideas turn into a giant FAIL. And, naturally, if baking a few cookies makes you feel warm and fuzzy, than so will baking a whole freaking lot of cookies. To accomplish top levels of holiday spirit, get invited to a holiday cookie swap. That way, you will have an actual reason to bake upwards of 8 dozen cookies. In order to make the most out of your experience, just follow these 10 easy steps.

1. Wait until the day of the party to get started, so that you will have absolutely no room for error. Put off going to the grocery store or even looking at your chosen recipe for as long as possible. Plan to wake up early on Swap Day so that you can get it all done.

2. Wake up early, but put the process off for even longer by spending an hour in bed thinking about how this seemed like a really cool and fun idea a month ago when you agreed to participate. When you do get to the store, make sure to bring a big list so that you can maximize your own confusion and do as many laps around the Harris Teeter as you can possibly justify.

3. You might already have some of the ingredients, so be sure not to expend extra resources on buying fresh ones. Especially not brown sugar. Brown sugar lasts forever, and it only gets a little bit hard over time. When you combine rock-hard brown sugar with the butter, it will stay in little pebbles that launch themselves out of the bowl at ridiculously high speeds. This might not make for very uniform cookies, but it keeps you from getting too lazy.

4. Keep your phone on you so you can halfheartedly text people to ask for advice, but refuse to heed any of it. They're not there, and you have the situation under control.

5. Begin combining the dry ingredients. Remember that you only bought one mixing bowl at Ikea, so use a sauce pan that barely fits 6 cups of flour in it. As you estimate measurements (who has time to make sure it is a full, level cup every single time??), ponder on how the last time you baked something, it was Easter and you got food poisoning. Notice that you don't have multiple bowls because you moved since then and refused to take anything with you that wouldn't fit in one car. Resolve to never leave kitchen implements behind again, ever.

6. After blending in the flour and folding (whatever that means) in the chopped walnuts, taste the dough, even though you'll probably get salmonella from the raw eggs. Notice how, even though you are making "Maple Cookies," it tastes just like chocolate chip cookie dough, only not as good because there's no chocolate in them. This might be because you do not in fact know what a cup and a half of maple syrup looks like, and didn't have nearly enough to justify calling them "Maple Cookies." You don't have any extra left over for waffles, either.

7. Take frequent breaks. This is important. Don't make all the cookies at once, where is the fun in that? Prolong your cookie-making experience for as long as possible. Take a walk with a friend who already made her cookies, or go run some errands. This also maximizes the chances that someone you meet along the way will agree to come back to your house and help you. Work this into the conversation by asking people what they are doing with their day. Make sure you tell them that you have to make like 6 dozen more cookies before 7 PM.

8. While you are baking them, make sure they are not all the same size. Make some of them way too big so that you can run out of dough before you get to the necessary number of cookies, and then you have to split some of them up after they already started baking and it turns into a big mess. Claim you're not worried about the situation even though this is the most stressful cookie-making experience since last year.

9. Now you have to choose how to present your cookies. Sandwich-sized bags are too small because some of your cookies are abnormally large, and gallon-sized bags are too big and it looks funny. Decide to wad them up in Saran wrap because that looks very classy. Tie a piece of ribbon around each package. Leave out the three extra for party purposes and act like you will take them, but eat them right before leaving, because let's just face it--three extra cookies just looks like a pathetic offering.

10. When you get to the party, be sure to point out that you forgot to bring copies of your recipe like you were supposed to, but it's okay because "they're nothing to write home about." Mention that you only chose the recipe because it has very few ingredients. Don't forget to point out that they are just like chocolate chip cookies, only not as delicious.

Maple Cookies

3 sticks of unsalted butter, room temperature works better but requires extra planning
3 cups of dark brown sugar
3 teaspoons of vanilla extract
3 large eggs
1 and 1/2 cups of maple syrup
6 cups of all-purpose flour
1 and 1/2 teaspoons of baking soda
1 and 1/2 teaspoon of salt
as many chopped walnuts as your money will buy

Ponderous Steps:
1 Cream the butter and sugar together at medium speed for three minutes or until light and fluffy.
2 Add the vanilla extract and egg and mix until well incorporated. Add the maple syrup and mix until well incorporated.
3 In a separate bowl saucepan, sift mix together the flour, baking soda and salt. Slowly add the flour mixture to the butter mixture and mix until just incorporated. Fold in the walnuts. Cover with plastic wrap and chill for thirty minutes or a few hours, while you do other, more important stuff.
4 Preheat the oven to 350F. Drop spoonfuls of the cookie, about 1 inch balls, onto cookies sheets lined with parchment paper. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until lightly browned around the edges. Allow to cool on the cookie sheet for a minute or two then cram into bags last-minute.


Makes about 99 cookies when you really need more like 108.