A Little Bit Brilliant and a Little Bit Not

Today was another wonderful, wonderful day.  It started with a strawberry rhubarb buckle that I mostly made up on the spot, and that turned out delicious.  I love when baking just works, and I love that I finally understand so much more about how to combine ingredients to get the desired effect.  This morning, I couldn’t have been more proud of my baking abilities.

Then, we spent some time at the playground driving “cars”filling pocketsand runningup and down ramps.Then, after naps and lunch and rejuvenation, I had a moment of sheer brilliance and made a water table out of a wagon and a tarp.They loved it (of course, none more than Mr. T, who was drenched within 30 seconds).I’m pretty proud of myself for that one: free fun without the need for another thing.  You can bet we’ll be playing in our new “water table” all summer long.

Then, because I was feeling pretty confident, I thought I’d let Nora help me bake some sugar cookies.  I figured we could mix them up before starting dinner, they could chill in the refrigerator until after dinner, and then we could roll them out, cut them and bake them before bath. Nora had a lot of fun being “helper.”  The first part of the plan seemed to go really well.  Though, we might have spilled some sugar while measuring it into the bowl…and Nora might have gotten creative about trying to eat the spilled sugar.

But they didn’t roll too well and I ended up just dropping them onto the pan.  Not enough time in the fridge, I assumed.  But a few moments in the oven told a different story:I think when I mentally halved the recipe, I didn’t halve the sugar.  Ooops.

Baking failures are pretty few and far between these days, but I do have them.  (And these aren’t really a failure, because they are edible…only maybe more as a candy than a cookie!)  What’s especially funny and ironic about this particular mess-up is that last night, Nora and I stopped by the kitchen of the Brotherhood and watched Chris whip out three from-scratch cookie doughs (lemon-rose water, sugar for blue berry thumbprint, and dark chocolate) in under 15 minutes and I might have, just maybe scoffed at his dough.  Too sandy, I said, not enough butter or sugar.  Which is what made me decide to make sugar cookies, something I rarely do.  And just like every other time I try to show my CHEF husband up, I make something laughable in comparison to his cooking.  Probably I should learn my lesson now?