For Thanksgiving this year I planned on making 2 cheesecakes and a batch of my usual sugar cookies.
I have a turkey shaped cookie cutter, along with a few autumn leaf shaped cookie cutters that I thought would be really cute to decorate with royal icing.
But nothing went right.
I forgot both cheesecakes in the fridge, which meant I brought absolutely nothing besides my lack of enthusiasm and guilt to Thanksgiving dinner at my boyfriend’s parents’ house.
The cheesecakes tasted great though.
One I brought to work, where my coworkers shoveled piece after piece into their faces. The other is in my fridge, Charlie and I are slowly eating it.
These cookies however, were absolutely horrible, I didn’t even decorate them.
I just threw them away out of the oven.
The recipe went to crap, I think when I added buttermilk to the recipe instead of regular milk.
I am notorious for substituting ingredients for what I have in the house and it’s never come back to bite me in the ass as much as in this situation.
Anyway, the dough was very crumbly when I wrapped it in plastic wrap which is my typical strategy with sugar cookies (Make the dough, ball it up in plastic, fridge it for a day, then take it out and roll/cut/cook it the next day). When I took it from the fridge… it was, well, felt freezer burnt, maybe my fridge is set way too cold.
I struggled to rehydrate it and defrost it enough to build up my arm muscles and roll it out, the cookie cutters nearly broke each time I tried to cut the dough. It was dumb, I don’t know why I just didn’t through away the dough. But I guess I thought as long as I got it rolled out and cut, the dough would still taste good, so I kept at it until all the dough was on my cookie sheets and in the oven.
When I took them out, they looked like the above awful crackly cookie picture, but I still thought maybe the royal icing on top would make them prettier and well smooth. Until I broke the ugliest one apart and tasted it. TALK ABOUT BLAND! and soo dry, not even a whole glass of water made it better. Stick to your teeth like you were eating flour by the handful.
I haven’t screwed up a recipe this bad since high school when I made my cheesecake recipe without sugar. At least that turned out to be just like vanilla cream cheese, that my father used on bagels for days after I ruined it.
2012 Thanksgiving Failure.