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I still remember standing in my kitchen at 11 o’clock on a Thursday night, surrounded by lopsided cookies, a puddle of runny royal icing, and actual tears rolling down my face. My daughter’s class party was the next morning, and I had promised — promised — to bring those adorable little flower-shaped cookies I’d seen … Read more
I still cringe — and laugh — when I think about the afternoon I tried to hand-paint a delicate geometric pattern onto two dozen Valentine’s Day cookies using nothing but a toothpick, a prayer, and what I now realize was an absolutely unhinged level of confidence. The result looked less like romantic lattice hearts and … Read more
I once showed up to my daughter’s school Valentine’s Day party with 30 cookies that looked like they’d survived a natural disaster. I had confidently chosen royal icing for the first time, watched approximately zero tutorial videos, and discovered — mid-party, in front of 25 seven-year-olds and their very polite parents — that my “flooding” … Read more
I still cringe — and also laugh until I cry — when I think about the holiday cookie party I hosted three years ago. I had grand visions of perfectly flooded royal icing cookies shaped like snowflakes, each one a little edible masterpiece. What I actually produced looked like a crime scene involving blue food … Read more
The first batch of royal icing cookies I ever made looked like something a toddler had decorated during an earthquake. I had spent three hours cutting out perfect little snowflake shapes, only to watch my icing slide right off the edges, pool into sad little puddles, and dry with giant air bubbles cracking across the … Read more
I almost ruined Christmas with a funnel and a bag of brown sugar. That’s the short version. The long version involves my kitchen floor, a very judgmental cat, and the moment I accidentally invented what is now my most-requested holiday gift: a cookie mix in a jar gift that costs about five dollars to make … Read more
I still remember standing in my kitchen at 11 p.m. on a Thursday, covered in powdered sugar, with a sink full of dirty bowls and approximately zero functioning brain cells left — all because I had promised my mother-in-law, Diane, that I would bring “something homemade” to Easter dinner. Diane, bless her heart, is the … Read more
I want to tell you about the year I confidently committed to making thirty — yes, thirty — cookie gift baskets homemade from scratch, announced it to my entire extended family in a group chat, and then completely forgot that December also contains things like school concerts, work deadlines, and the basic human need for … Read more
Let me tell you about the Great Cookie Catastrophe of last December, which is what my sister now refers to as “the incident.” I had spent an entire weekend baking what I believed were gorgeous, perfectly iced sugar cookies — little snowflakes, mittens, the whole festive lineup — and shipped them off to my college … Read more
I almost didn’t give them away. It was the night before my mother-in-law’s retirement party, and I had spent an entire Saturday baking four dozen brown butter chocolate chip cookies — the kind with sea salt flakes on top and crispy edges and a center that stays soft for days. I had flour in my … Read more
