The cookie madness has been continuing. I should get my hands on ube today to make the last cookies.

I was expecting the blue jello to make the poinsettias closer to the blue papers, but they’re nearly a direct match for the mint green. Neat!! Now I know to make blue icing for the stars.

Prepping (most of) the cookie dough today. My ube powder is still in the mail but the blue raspberry color already looks cute as hell

I hope you get some relief!!

Well they absolutely weren't baked through, despite looking normal on the outside, so I sent them in for another (longer) round. There are still a few soggy bottoms but most are done. They're FINE? The flavor is good, the texture is meh, which I think that was my poor measurements.

Now my dough is stickier than the play-doh consistency I'm used to, but it rolls fine and the sugar sticks. Actually I just pulled them out of the oven and they look incredibly normal. So, give me about 15 minutes and we'll see if they're any good.

Anyway, it wasn't fine. The dough was dry and crumbly, obviously, but I was not deterred. I wanted to add some instant espresso to the mix anyway to try and deepen the flavor (remember, normally this uses devil's food) so I mixed a vibes-based amount with water in a cup and tossed it in. Science!

Eagle-eyed followers will notice I'm also trying out Bob's egg replacer, because why not fuck up all the variables at the same time. They'll also notice that a King Arthur box mix is 7oz larger than a Betty Crocker box mix, a fact I noted, almost did something about, and then went "eh it'll be fine"

This year I also really do need the cookies to be GF, so after scouring the internet and finding only resellers jacking up the price, I decided to try an experiment. My grocery has King Arthur GF cake mixes, just not devil's food. Okay! We can work with that!

SO, the chocolate crinkle cookies are a Betty Crocker recipe that combines a cake mix and a pudding mix, plus a couple extras, to make an easy rolled cookie. EXCEPT! The recipe calls for the gluten-free devil's food cake mix which has been historically impossible to find. This year is no exception.

Dan told me!!! Jeff I feel so certain in my bones the way he wouldn't have known the answer either 😂

It’s coming together ❄️

Fancy Friday variant!!!

I know my audience 💜

That means this year I can time track maybe more accurately and see if my estimates are correct or not. That's fun to me! I like it!

This is an aggressive timetable but I want Dec 8 to be my pack & ship day, so here we are. I could back treats out to start Wednesday if I'm feeling nervous.