Not for Me

I simply do not have the patience for cookie cutters.

I can't remember when my love affair with baking began. It's a bit of a hobby, and I much prefer homemade cakes and cookies and pies to anything you can purchase in a store (with the exception of the exceptional, of course). There's something about the love that goes into my goodies that makes them extra tasty, and I'm not the only one that thinks so. But, until today I have never owned a set of cookie cutters, and now I know why.

I decided to try a deceptive little recipe for Lemon Butter Cookies from a cookbook I received as a Christmas gift. The recipe looks extremely simple, with only a few ingredients to name: butter, lemon zest, powdered sugar, flour, salt, and parchment for lining the cookie sheet. The dough is to be shaped into a disc and rolled to 1/4" thick and then cut into cutsie little heart shapes and placed onto the baking sheet. The cookies bake at 325 degrees until lightly browned on the edges and cool for about 25 minutes. Sounds easy-peasy, so I buy some cookie cutters and attempt to use them. I opt for a square shape with scalloped edges, too intimidated by the heart-shape to use it first. I manage to get eleven cut cookies to the sheet and lose my cool as I am trying to reshape the leftover dough into a new disc to begin cutting again.

I'm a silly girl, and I worry about over-developed gluten from the flour being overworked. I worry about dried out cookies from the reshaping and re-rolling on a lightly floured surface with my lightly floured rolling pin. I believe I'm part Dutch, so I can't bring myself to just discard the leftover dough as waste. As I'm starting to roll out the disc of partially reused dough, I'm already cursing the cutter and wishing I would have gone for the more rustic, less sophisticated method I usually employ with recipes like this one: cutting random shapes into the dough with a paring knife. I am not Martha Stewart. I like my cookies and shortbread to look like pieces carved from a map of the United States. And I firmly believe that Delicious trumps Beautiful any day of the week.