Friday, December 22, 2006

Sliced Lime Cookie Disaster

  1. Every year I make a particular type of lime cookie that my sister-in-law, of whom I am very fond, happens to love. And every year they get harder and harder to make. They are a recipe from Martha Stewart (back when The Big House just meant her place in Connecticut).
  2. Last year I attributed the cookies falling apart to my sloppy measurement of flour, and I wrote myself a stern note, "Measure flour with care!"
  3. This year I was dreading making these cookies, but I don't really do much baking, and I have very few "special" recipes, so I hated to give up. My Mother-in-law once called them, "Little slices of Heaven." And the woman can cook, so she would know.
  4. I measured with care. And I am sure I furrowed my eyebrows too.
  5. The damn things fell apart again.
  6. But at one point in time my sister-in-law had said something like, "These are so good, I wish I could eat them as breakfast cereal." I told her I was not mass producing them for a.m. consumption. Even when they turned out I still hand dipped each one in powdered sugar.
  7. But this year when I lost an entire tray to mysterious crumbling, I thought, why not sprinkle some powdered sugar on them, give her a bag full and call it breakfast.
  8. Of course this is a joke, but I think two years of miserable failure is enough and I am retiring the recipe.

2 comments:

Lumpyheadsmom said...

Is the cookie some kind of metaphor or something? Like Martha's crumbling empire?

Anonymous said...

Leave it to Martha to create a recipe that changes itself over time so you'll give up on the old favorites and buy new ones.