I Am Not A Baker.

Today I thought I'd bake some cookies. Seemed like a domestic-y, Christmas-y thing to do. I found a recipe, put the baby down for a nap, and got started.

Disaster.

I don't even know why I tried. I have never had a 100% successful baking experience. I don't particularly like to bake. I don't even particularly like to eat baked goods.

The first thing I did was soften the butter. Because I didn't pre-soften it. Because why would I think ahead? So I stuck it in the microwave for 20 seconds. Except part of the wrapper was still on the butter and started smoking in the microwave. No big deal, I just picked out the charred paper from the softened butter and moved on. Next I had to pulverize some almonds in the food processer. Actually, it called for pulverized blanched almonds but I don't know what blanched is so I just skipped that part. Doesn't that have something to do with cold water? Why would you do that?? So anyway, I just pulverized regular old un-blanched almonds. That went well except for the cover of the food processor flew off because it's broken and I wasn't holding it down correctly, so a good portion of the pulverized un-blanched almonds are on my kitchen ceiling. As the almond particles rained down on me, I mixed the ingredients.  The next instructions were "beat on high." Um, high what? High energy? I don't have a standing mixer. I don't have an electric hand mixer. I don't even have one of those old-fashioned manual beaters that the cavemen used. So, I did the next best thing. Which is just stir as fast as I possibly could. Which was great until I misjudged my impressive beating speed and the bowl flew out of my hand and skidded across the kitchen floor in slow motion. I only lost a few splatter's worth of dough, miraculously. Then I added the vanilla extract that we've owned since like 1967, and......oops, didn't preheat the oven. While I was waiting for the oven to heat up, I cleaned up the kitchen floor....not only was it spattered with cookie dough, but it was covered in flour, and dog footprints in the flour. (turns out dogs come running when you slide a bowl of cookie dough across the floor.) I put the cookies in the oven and combed cookie dough out of my hair. It was about then that I realized I had no idea what time the cookies went into the oven. So I guessed. I took them out when they looked done-ish. Then it was time to prepare the "Browned Butter Glaze." To make a long story short, I burned the butter, twice, spilled the powdered sugar all over the kitchen sink, and dumped in too much vanilla. (the measuring spoons had since fallen victim to the dog-skating-across-the-floured-kitchen-floor-fiasco.) On the third try, the glaze looked OK, so I carefully drizzled it on the cooled cookies. Except I forgot they were at an angle, so the glaze just fell off into a giant puddle on the plate.

At that point I sat down on the kitchen floor, ate the glaze-pile with a spoon, and washed it down with a few shots of vodka.

Never again.