Self Doubt (through Sugar Cookies)

Do you remember last fall when I discussed the Sugar Cookie Challenge? It might have even been late last summer. Well, I’m here to tell you, it was going well… and then it wasn’t. I knew it was kind of a long shot to do 300 dozen cookies, but I was willing to give it a shot. I think I actually forgot to blog a few of the different batches. I’ll go back and make sure, and if I didn’t, I’ll add them. It may not be that important but it is so fun to look back at the years on this blog and see things. Things I had otherwise forgotten… like the post on wedding dress shopping.

So where does the title fall in? Easy… When you are going along, selling dozens of cookies and then all at once BAM! cookie sales stop. You begin to wonder what happened. Then when you very seldom have repeat customers, you begin to question things again.

Were the cookies not good? I did create my own recipe. Did they not meet or exceed people’s expectations? I’m not sure. Do I just suck? Maybe. So much self-doubt creeps in. It is enough to make a person question everything. I mentioned the other day that I used to be the total optimist just like Sue Heck (the character from The Middle), but after being put down and called naive your whole life, it starts to wear on you.

New Sugar Cookies

The week before Easter I decided I was going to make some sugar cookies. It really stemmed from this whole blog. Explain? I’m glad you asked! Well, I was looking back through Easter posts on the blog looking for recipes we had used in years past. I stumbled across a post where Tbug and I decorated sugar cookies way back when. It was actually a kit I bought from the good ol’ Walmart store. The cookies were hard. Who knows how long the icing had been in the package. But it was super easy and super fun!

I decided I needed to do something like that with Abug. But the Walmart store didn’t have those kits the day I went there. So that meant I needed to make my own sugar cookies to decorate.

Last year my grandma created her cookbook. In her book, she had 2 different sugar cookie recipes. I started wondering if my sugar cookie recipe (that I created mind you) was really any good so I decided to use one of grandma’s favorite recipes. One called for something I didn’t have, I’d have to go find the book to tell you what that ingredient was. It really doesn’t matter…

But I settled on this particular recipe (I’ll include it below). I wasn’t doing these for anyone other than the Abug to have Easter cookies to decorate. Plus it was research. That’s what I’ll tell myself anyway! I learned a couple things though.

1. This dough pulled together very dry and I had to work it together with my hands more than my other recipe.
2. It puffs up in the oven and when you pull them out of the oven they are rounded.
3. Then as they cool, they deflate and make a little dip in the dough. Might have something to do with the Baking powder and Baking Soda. Both leavening agents.
4. They seemed a lot sweeter than mine. Maybe that’s a good thing? Maybe that’s a bad thing? I guess it depends on the person.

We didn’t decorate these with my normal icing. We used some leftover Grape Jelly Buttercream Icing I had from the French Macarons I made. I knew there wasn’t going to be enough icing for all the cookies, but it gave us a chance to try the cookie without icing to compare. I didn’t color the icing. We left it the lavender color it was and just added spring colored sprinkles.

I asked hubby to compare the taste of these cookies to the taste of mine. He made the comment I hadn’t made mine in a while and he couldn’t remember what they tasted like. I’ll have to give him that.

The thing was, it was a lot of fun to decorate these cookies. Doing them with a 3-year-old and sprinkles I’m sure gave me a few more gray hairs. But it’s memories and we have this thing called a vacuum. Perfect!

Grandma’s Sugar Cookie