FamiLee Life

Desperation Breeds Innovation (of sorts)

A few weeks ago, I splurged and purchased a KitchenAid Artisan 5-quart Mixer in Cobalt Blue. It is beautiful as a piece of mechanical craftmanship. That said, I always admired it from afar when visiting Williams-Sonoma or even Costco, never thinking I would ever purchase one. First of all, they are expensive - averaging around $265 or more. Second, I don't really bake which seems to be the main reason to own one. Then one day, I was checking out recipes on CookingforEngineers and noticed on the DealsBlog page that Amazon.com was having a sale on the mixer. It was a super deal. With all the rebates, I was able to buy it for only $155 (with no tax and no shipping either). Despite the savings, I still can't explain why I bought it. I guess we can chalk it up to post-holiday shopping energy.

Well, since it arrived, I have taken up baking! Surprise, surprise! Mostly, I have made chocolate chip cookies and peanut butter cookies (from scratch). I also made some pumpkin muffins using a packaged mix. It has been a very pleasing experience.

Still being sick, I awoke this morning and wanted to just putz around the house. I noticed some cake flour sitting on the counter, which I had purchased shortly after getting the mixer to make sugar cookies. However, I never made the sugar cookies because I got so caught up in the peanut butter cookies which were very yummy. So, I decided, it is early in the morning (not yet 9:00), might as well do something. And then I proceeded to soften the butter, measure out the flour, and use the mixer!

After mixing everything together, I realized I acted too quickly! I did not own a rolling pin nor did I have any cookie cutters -- two important things when making these cookies (or so the recipe said). Desperation...what to do...what to do...

Over in the recycling pile, I noticed old issues of NYTimes newspapers. Ah ha! I arranged a bunch of newspapers together, alternating the direction of the fold to make an even curl, and rolled the papers up in a tight ball. Then, I used packaging tape to wrap it all together.

With the newspaper rolling pin complete, I went ahead and rolled the dough. First, I floured the pin to keep the dough from sticking on it and then I rolled gently. It took a few tries but it worked amazingly well. Not as good as a well worn wooden roller but good enough to do the job. In fact, having wrapped the tape up evenly and without too many wrinkles, I can reuse this make-shift rolling pin in the future.

As for the cookie cutter, I first tried to use a pizza cutter to cut out shapes but this didn't work out too well. Then, I grabbed a butter knife and tried to "sculpt" out shapes. Again, this was not terribly effective or efficient. Hm...stumped, I looked around my kitchen and rooted around my workbench in the basement. I thought briefly about using my measuring cups (which I know would have worked well) but decided (out of laziness, really) to go old-fashioned. I just rolled up the dough in the palm of my hand and flattened the dough into shape. In the end, this approach worked fine.

Twelve to fifteen minutes later, my first batch of sugar cookies were made. They tasted great too despite my minor moments of baking desperation. Yes, desperation (even minor ones) can breed innovation (of sorts).

Posted by richlee at January 28, 2006 10:26 AM