The Cookie Party Adventures!

Cookie I decorated for Byron!

Saturday, I decided to have a cookie party! Byron has been out of town for two weeks now. I do pretty well at not being lonely during the week… but the weekends are another story! I did not want to be alone this weekend and there was nothing already planned… so I decided to make a plan. I invited some of my girlfriends over to have a “cookie party”.

The plan was to make roll out sugar cookies from scratch, drink hot chocolate/apple cider and then watch a Christmas movie(s).  But of course that is not exactly how things went. The party was scheduled to start at 3. The first person got there at 3:10 the last person got there at 4:15. When the first person got there I had just started making snacks (chips, queso, guacamole and salsa), she helped me to finish them as the next two people arrived. We decided to wait on the last person to get there before we started making the cookies.

Typically when I know I have people coming over I will put the dogs outside and let everyone get inside… and then I will let the dogs in one at a time. I do this for a couple reasons. 1.) The dogs calm down quicker when they meet everyone at once. 2.) I can introduce them one at a time so there is “less” competition for attention and it is a “little” less overwhelming for the guest. 3.) Also, it keeps the dogs from trying to get out.

Well after the first 3 friends got there I went ahead and let the dogs in (they were whining because they wanted to say hi). So they said their hellos and then went to lie down. Well most of them… Aggie the Great Dane went to the kitchen to see what trouble she could get in. We are sitting around talking and waiting on the last person to arrive when she calls me and is unable to find my house. So I decide to go outside and wave her down. I successfully flagged her down and we are getting ready to walk inside the house. Right before we walk in I warn her about my dogs (she had never been over before and I wanted her to know they are big and will be excited to see her). I open the door for us to walk in and she just stands there (I think she is overwhelmed). I tell her we need to hurry up and get in before the dogs get out… too late! Chance and Drake are out and now sprinting down the street! CRAP!! So I run inside real quick and ask the friend parked behind me to move her car so I can get out (I have learned that the best way to get the dogs is to pull my car close to them, open the door and let them hop in). She backs her car out of the driveway and tells me to get in... and that she will drive… I hesitate for a second but then I get in.

We drive down the street and see Chance first. So,we stop and open the door for him to get in. I notice he is a little wet, so he think that he must have got in the lake a little. We open the door to let him in and he just runs around the car. While we are trying to get Chance loaded… Drake runs up soaked and dirty. He had obviously been swimming in the lake. I looked at my friend and tell her that he is soaking wet. She tells me it will be ok… that we can go ahead and load my wet dogs into her new corolla! Good friend! Bad Dogs!! We finally get them loaded and drive them back to my house.

I open the door to let them out to go back to the house (neither one of them had a collar on… they were in the wash and I had not grabbed a leash when I left). I am trying to walk them to the door and when we are almost there they dart and run down the opposite side of the street. Grrrrr!!! Now they are really bad dogs!! This time I go on foot to get them since they aren’t too far (and I don’t want my bad, dirty dogs to get in my friends new car again). I ask my other friends if they will grab the collars and leashes. They do and begin to hurry down the road to catch up with us.  Now the posse is out to bring in the runaways. Drake has once again gone straight to the lake and Chance is just running around sniffing everything. We finally get Chance to come close enough to leash him and Drake runs back and we are able to get him leashed as well, whoosh! So we walk my sopping wet dogs back to the house where they get to spend the next 2 hours in my back yard to dry out! Bad dogs!!!

So my one friend kept apologizing for letting them out. I told her it was ok. No one was hurt and none of the dogs were hit by a car… so all was well that ended well! Once we got my bad puppies back in the house we could finally begin our “cookie party”.

We had two different recipes to try. One of the recipes was the Betty Crocker Sugar Cookie Mix. The other recipe we tried to make from scratch: BrownedButter & Nutmeg-Spiced Sugar Cookies . We split up in two teams… each team to tackle one recipe. The Betty Crocker team got there dough made first and began to cut out the cookies... but the dough kept sticking… so they decided to put it in the fridge for a little bit. Team 2 (the team I was on) got the dough made and then realized we were supposed to refrigerate it for an hour (oops… I guess I forgot to read that far along in the recipe). So while the cookies are in the fridge we decide we are going to try to make cake balls and Oreo balls. One of the girls brought over all the stuff for the recipe… but not a recipe… so we decided to wing it! J

First we made the cake for the cake balls. The cake was in the oven for like 5 minutes when it was remembered that the oil was never put in the cake mix... whoops again. So, we took the cake out... added the oil and put it back in. While the cake cooked we begin crushing the Oreos for the Oreo balls. We got that done no problem. We add the cream cheese, formed the Oreo’s into balls and put in the fridge/freezer (I don’t remember which one… obviously I didn’t do this step of the process). When the cake was done we took it out of the oven. It didn’t look pretty… it actually looked a little deformed; but it tasted good (which was much more important for cake balls). So we crumbled the cake, and then I decided to put the icing in the microwave to “soften” it. Well, I put it in a little too long and “melted” it. Then we “poured” the whole thing into the crumbled cake and mix. I don’t believe it was quite the texture it was meant to be; but it was still able to be formed into balls and put in the fridge/freezer.

While the “dessert balls” are in the fridge/freezer we begin to cut out the Betty Crocker sugar cookies. They cut out much better now! So we put thefirst batch in… first batch out… Perfect!!  Then second batch in… Pizza arrives… forget cookies….remember cookies… burnt cookies out! Opps! L Next we roll out the Browned Butter & Nutmeg-Spiced Sugar Cookies. They roll out nicely… cookies get put in the oven… girls get distracted/forgot to set timer…cookies come out… cookies are burned. Second batch in oven… out of oven… not bad but not really good either.

Once the good/ bad cookies are out of the oven and cooling we continue on the “dessert balls”. The chocolate gets melted for us to dip the dessert balls in. The first set of melted Chocolate was perfect… the second set… not so much. The chocolate was put back in the microwave to melt again and it did not really cooperate. Somebody read that we are could add shortening to help with the consistency. Since I had some on hand we added it to the chocolate. It helped but was not perfect.

It is now probably like 9 – 9:30ish and we were finally ready to make the Royal icing and put it in the piping bags to decorate our cookies. While the bags were being filled I went to put on our Movie winner…Elf! With the movie playing we finally sat down at the able to begin decorating cookies. For the most part I would say this part was a success.

With all the blunders, mess up’s and excitement… we all had a great time and would like to make it a yearly tradition to keep on even when we have kids!!

I have a couple of questions today!

·         When your pet gets out how do you get them back in?

 

·         What is your favorite sugar cookie recipe?

·         Any secrets to keeping chocolate melted?

·         Any traditions you have started with your friends/ family?