So my sister Jessica got married in October. Yea! I was a bridesmaid which was nice. If it had only been that simple then I would have no story to write but being “the chef” in the family means no matter what I’m expected to put on my chef hat and dazzle everyone. That was the longest and most interesting five days of my life.
Tim and I arrived at five in the morning after a 11 hour drive. We had worked up to the last min so we were very tired. After a quick introduction to my my family we hit the sack. After breakfast we began the task of baking and decorating cookies. We had four pound blocks of sugar cookie dough that we mixed and froze back in Alabama and packed in a cooler in dry ice during transport. Tim and I didn’t do much strategics that day. We were just cleaning, rolling out dough, pressing out cookies, baking, cooling, and stacking cookies. About three hundred of them. My sister said she had not realized what a huge undertaking it was until she came home and I had cooling cookies on every surface in the kitchen including a coffee table I brought in and wrapped in plastic wrap for extra space. There were cookies everywhere.
You know why it bugs me when people tell me they bake at home like I’m supposed to feel like we have something in common? Because we have very little in common.When you are at home and you bake cookies how many do you bake? 20? 40 at the most? Pastry chefs deal in volume. While I can appreciate the home cook for their wisdom in flavors and consistency, there is a very big difference in baking a dozen cookies for your family and three hundred cookies for and order. Jessica’s order was standard for me. I work at a grocery store though. There are chef out there that fill much larger orders. Anyway, I digress.
Later that night my whole family came over and got to enjoy our thirty or so fallen soldiers. The cookies had a narrow top so they kept breaking off. While not suitable for icing my family did not seem to mind.
Day two
Now that the cookies were baked We began the painstaking task of decorating them. First a border had to be piped, then they were flooded. Confused? Let me explain. Tim and I made Royal Icing out of powdered sugar and egg whites. This icing is ideal for decorating cookies because it sets hard. A thicker coat is applied around the edges as a barrier, a sugary dam if you will. We then added water to it to thin it out so we could “flood” the cookie. Luckily we had special helpers, my nieces Jannellis and Jasmeen used wooden skewers to spread the icing after we piped a blob each cookie. I demonstrated on one and then they were off and running.
“Just pretend it’s a coloring bookand stay inside the lines.”
I was proud, they were good little chefs. They washes their hands often and stayed inside the lines. That was our only task of the day since the thin icing takes 12 to 24 hours to dry.
Day Three
The end was in sight. All we had to do now was add detail work and package them and we were done! The detail work is always my favorite part of making sugar cookies. As my brother in law looked on he said “Man you must need a lot of patience to do this.” “Not really. It’s fun to me.” I said. Tim piped brown borders as I did scroll work in a lighter shade of brown. As I did the last one I asked Tim to take a picture. Thank God I was done.
The Cakes
That’s a story for another time.
Good Times
At the reception I ate, drank, danced and was merry. It was nice to have all my work behind me so I could focus on spending time with my family. Towards the end of the night my niece Jasmeen was sitting on my lap when my sister in law Jeanina came over and asked her why she wasn’t dancing to her favorite song. Good Life by Kanye West. We had been dancing all night and decided to take a breather.
“Is this really your favorite song? We should dance then.”
We got up and started dancing and when the chorus played she threw her hands in the air as the song said and I followed her lead. I started thinking about what it meant to live the good life. To me it’s when you love your job so much you work for free. When you have friends so nice they travel with you to also work for free.
Tim turned to me at one point during the trip. “Everyone in your family loves each other so much. My family isn’t like that”
“Hmm. Really? That’s a shame.”
It’s weird I think everyone is chasing what they think the good life is instead of consciously making their own life a good life or seeing what they have in front of them. Every time I start to forget I look at the picture we took that day we were working and it’s all good again. I’m not sure I have a moral for this story. I just wanted to tell you about how my nieces Miss Jasmeen and Miss Janellis reminded me of how good I have it.
