I’m starting work at a new place on Monday. The plan was to take it a little easy for a couple of days before that, i.e. no baking, no running errands, no anything. BUT it figures that things rarely ever go as planned when it comes to rest.
A week ago, my cousin SL texts me with a request for 20 custom cookies for her marketing course project to be collected on her 21st birthday.
I’d stopped taking orders for a long time now, but I couldn’t, in all good conscience, disappoint her, especially when I knew her to be all stressed out about her coursework and that she probably didn’t have much time to search for other alternatives.
How much work could 20 cookies be? I factored in about 8 hours of baking and icing, taking into account the various designs and colours.
20 disposable piping bags and 5 hours into cookie decorating, all the while dealing with rapidly softening cookies and icing that refused to dry completely even in an air-conditioned room (oh, how I loathe this humid weather!), I remembered why I’d always limited cookie orders to a maximum of 3 designs with a choice of 4 different colours. Note to self: bake cookies longer and limit choice of designs and colour.
Happily, I was done right on schedule and stored the completed cookies in an airtight container, together with 2 small packets of desiccant.
The next morning, I was dismayed to find that some of the darker icing had bled into the lighter backgrounds. This was most apparent with the dark brown and red icing on white. My guess for the unslightly bleeds is that the darker icing had absorbed moisture overnight and proceeded to stain the lighter icing below, despite the airtight container and desiccant.
I was equally annoyed to find that the cookies had turned even softer, after just 1 day. There was nothing I could do to stop both the staining and softening process. I only hope the cookies survive till the time of SL’s presentation!
On the upside, SL has given me new cookie decorating ideas and a lesson in cookie decorating. I even managed to make her a celebratory cookie (and try out a couple of new designs for myself) for the all-important 21st!
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