I was looking forward to this weekend since the beginning of December when I marked it off on the calendar. Why? Because I planned to spend the entire weekend baking. One of my favorite weekends of the holiday season left me almost in tears and vowing to never bake another sugar cookie again.
I even bought a container to hold all my fun ingredients in an effort to stay organized throughout the process.
The baking schedule included:
3 sugar cookie orders:
22 Christmas Tree
50 Snowflakes
12 Hanukkah Cookies
Plus sugar cookies for trays
Chocolate-and-Almond Macaroons
Peanut Butter Blossoms
Chocolate Walnut Coconut Bars
Grammy's Chocolate Cookies (MS Cookies, Page 75)
It all started Friday night when I baked 180 sugar cookies....
Saturday morning after running a couple of errands and having breakfast, I set up camp and started decorating the sugar cookies.
I spent some time decorating the snowflakes and Christmas trees. After an hour or so, I noticed the icing was not setting up. I couldn't believe this was happening again. But I had no time to waste. The xmas trees had to be delivered Sunday afternoon and the Snowflakes were for a party on Monday. Of course, the weather was absolutely horrid on Saturday (as it literally rained 24 hours straight and was humid) which was not conducive for the icing to set up.
I blame the Florida weather.
I had no desire to salvage the perfectly good cookies, so this was the end result for the Christmas trees and several other designs I made for trays. Right in the garbage. Nothing like wasted money, ingredients and time!
The second time was a charm...for the most part. The trees still did not dry as quickly as they should.
Now, the snowflakes for the work party were my contribution and since I promised I would make them I was hesitant to throw them out just yet. Although after 12 hours....they were still not right. 
And waited and waited and waited for them to set up. The icing was still tacky and didn't look right when I went to bed Saturday night.
I can't even describe what happened to the icing, but it is not hard and sort of crumbles when you bite into the cookie. However, on this cookie is doesn't look all that bad. Kind of reminds me of ice or snow. Disclaimer: I am not at all excited about presenting this cookie to approximately 120 people tomorrow. It is not a positive reflection of my work....but I had no other choice...other than showing up empty handed.)
Then, a break. Emily came over to hang out and help bake....and brought the wine (which was very much needed!). Since a lot of the cookies were going in the trash, Emily tried her hand at decorating.
I managed to successfully decorate the Hanukkah cookies on the first try and I will post those pictures later this week.
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4 comments:
Well, crap!
That's all I've got, honey. Not very helpful or eloquent but sometimes that's the only way to describe good intentions gone very, very wrong.
Yes...I have had that happen a few times. The only think I can figure out it that I thinned the icing too much. I've been playing around with my royal icing recipe and am going to do another post on it in Jan. Pouring here and making cookies today...after reading your post, I'm a little nervous!
Love the post above! Your office muct be a fun place to work!
I have to say, I never have this problem anymore. All I can think is that it must be the humidity. Or what Bridget said, you thinned the icing too much???
Sorry for the disaster. I usually have cake disasters.
yes, I totally just had that happen with an order of l;onghorns that I just did. it took them like 3 days to dry completely and then when they were dried the texture looked like leather! I have NO IDEA what I did wrong, I have thought it over in my head a million times and have no idea...same recipe, same meringue powder. I ended up just using a sugar cookie glaze icing when I redid the order. I read bridget's and since she said she has had the same issue I don't feel too bad. I wonder why that happens though? Can you over whip it?
anyway, i feel your pain...big time!
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