Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Attempt at Boycotting Christmas

I tried to boycott Christmas this year, but my mother said I couldn't so that was the end of that. It's not that I am not feeling the Christmas spirit or that I do not want to partake in holiday activities. It's just that I got a little overwhelmed with the consumerism surrounding Christmas this year. I was annoyed to see Christmas decorations for sale in August (seriously? August!) and I got frustrated when I went into a craft store on October 9 looking for some spider stickers and cheesy Halloween jewelry to complete my costume and couldn't find anything because the entire store was already devoted to Christmas. It feels like Thanksgiving is skipped over too because as soon as November rolls around so does all of the Black Friday hysteria.

Despite all of this, there is one thing that always gets me in the Christmas spirit. Cookies!


Honestly, is there anything more tasty looking than butter and sugar? That picture makes me want to lick my computer screen and makes me long for the invention of smell-a-screen. 

This weekend my boyfriend and I busted out the cookie press. My only complaint about the cookie press is that it makes really tiny cookies, but other than that it is a really fun way to make some holiday goodies. One batch of dough yielded over 100 individual cookies. Jesse took on the roll of head cookie presser while I took on the roll of decorator and we went through the entire batch of dough in a little under 2 hours. 


Here is a picture of Jesse working the machine. He has very good spatial relations (unlike me) so with him running the press we were able to fit the maximum amount of cookies per sheet. Each sheet fit around 30 cookies depending on which shape we had inside the press. The press I use is an older version of this one from Crate and Barrel, but I am sure you can find ones in any home store. In my opinion, the important thing you need to look for when buying a cookie press are the designs that come with it. You do not want to have 12 designs on hand and then only use 4 of them because the other 8 are ugly.


See how perfectly uniform they are? No way a non-type A personality like myself could have achieved that. He and I make a good team. We used the Classic Spritz Recipe from Wilton that came with the instructions to the cookie press. The recipe claims to yield 7-8 dozen cookies, but like I said above the cookies are tiny so it really makes about 10 dozen. 


Ta da! Over 100 neatly packed cookies in my holiday cookie jar. It's beginning to smell a lot like Christmas.