Not a good night

So I hope that last night was the nadir of cookie baking. I tried out a new Martha recipe for little ginger cookies, rolled in coarse sugar - and the vital step that Martha left out was you have to chill the dough - it's like soup at first mix. Even after chilling overnight, the dough was sticky.

My plan was to mix up the dough for slice & bakes: the candied fruit cookies (although I used all dried, no glowing red cherries); the windmill cookies; and the pistachio-dried-cranberry that everyone raved about last year. The candied fruit cookie logs are fine, I think - we'll know after I bake them tonight. The windmill dough was much stickier than I remember it, but tasty - and I think it'll bake OK too. The real tragedy was the pistachio-dried-cranberry. The recipe list of ingredients includes egg - 4 of them since I quadrupled the batch - remember I said everyone loved them last year - but it is for brushing on the dough logs so you can roll them in sugar and it will stick. I put the eggs into the batter - so it was sticky, too. I made a test pan this morning and they are softer blander cookies, but essentially the same - I'll try to not to tell, and maybe no one will notice.

And I hurt my right thumb - caught it on a bannister and gave it a nasty wrench. I have to pull the cookie sheets out of the oven lefty, because righty hurts too much.

Sigh. Well, things'll have to get better from now. And, after all, it's only cookies....

Good thumb left, bad thumb right