the hot mess holiday cookie making party.

In my head, I had a holiday cookie making party. It was amazing. We had all the right ingredients and all the right recipes and nothing burned or tasted bad and we all were in the. best. most. happiest. mood. ever.

In my life (my real one), I actually did have a holiday cookie making party.

It was a hot mess.

I should admit that by "party," I mean two people. Joined by a third later who made it clear that she was simply there to taste test and a fourth who we lost to a tummy ache (too much holiday cheer?).

But hey, you get the right two people -- and it's a party. Small informal gathering? Am I right? No? Maybe just a little sad? Lonely? Touche.

Anyway.



Ingredients of a hot mess holiday cookie making party:

1. Not enough flour.
2. Too many eggs.
3. Bad recipes.
4. Burnt coconut flakes.
5. One miserable moody lady.
6. A lady's miserable moody friend.
7. Tons of dirty dishes.
8. A loving girlfriend that marches around and makes a horrid face after tasting your first batch saying things like, "That tastes like I'm eating a spoonful of flour."
9. Pressure (as in, I'm giving away these cookies to the neighbors and this is the ONLY chance I have to bake until January 18th.)


Directions for a hot mess holiday cookie making party:

1. Start really late. No, I mean really late. In fact, arrange for a work meeting to go incredibly long (just because) so that by the time you arrive home, you're grumpy. Really grumpy.

2. Avoid your long standing traditional family recipes. Just google that shit and start following the first recipe you land on. Do not read "reviews" or pay attention to how many "forks" it rated. Just start mixing.

3. Do things that you have never done. Or even thought possible. Using a melon baller to scoop out the truffles? Great! Buy a $14 melon baller! Thank you, Martha! Great idea*!

4. Make a LOT of cookies. One giant batch. This is helpful because when your taste tester tests the first ones out of the oven and informs you that they suck, you're stuck with bowls and bowls of dough that you keep pressing into adorable laaiiittllee christmas trees because you don't know what to do with that information.

5. Sample the cookies yourself. And by sample, I really mean shove as many as you can in your mouth, convinced that at least one is going to taste halfway decent. Do this until you start to feel naseaus. It won't take long.

6. Cry.

7. Make a sugary, delicious glaze with milk and sugar and drench. every. single. cookie. in. it. Then, add heaping spoonfuls of colored sugar (organic sugar cane with some red dye #9 - yum!) onto the cookies to make them look good (it's like under eye concealer for cookies!).

8. In the meantime, burn something in the oven. Make sure the smoke fills the kitchen, your eyes, your lungs and the fire alarm.

9. Do this until approximately 2am, in which you begin to clean the kitchen because you know if your partner/roommate/cat wakes up the next morning and actually sees the places you managed to sprinkle generously with powered sugar, it won't be pretty.

Ok! Now, if done properly - at this point you should have lots of tupperware containers filled with mediocre cookies and a stomach ache from the poor decision to make a pot of coffee at midnight. You should also be feeling angry. For no apparent reason.

*turns out, melon baller - not such a great idea. what did work well? a spoon. a freaking spoon.

In case you were wondering, the glaze saved the day. And, I panicked at about 1am and made a random cookie I found on epicurious that everyone ended up loving (orange coconut snowballs).

I would recommend following that recipe more so than the one for the hot mess party.

With that said, I still liked it.

I guess I'm just a party-type of gal. With absolutely no party standards.