Cookie Party Kickoff!

 Hi all,

It's that time of the year again!  Ok, well, it's also time for putting up lights and lighting candles and singing holiday songs at the top of your lungs, but I meant that it's that time of the year when I take a week off from work and bake thousands of cookies.  I've been a bit MIA this year on this blog, but it's for very good reasons: In 2021, we bought a house, I started a new job, and we moved out of NYC, got a sweet, fluffy puppy, and survived 6+ months of home renovations and puppyhood (overlapping challenges).  But here we are, settled into the new house, snuggling that sweet puppy (whose name is Maple Bacon Hedrick), and in full swing with cookie baking.

Well, almost full swing.  As it turns out, this week is going to be one that requires, in addition to 75+ lbs of flour, a whole lot of patience and determination.  As I went to put the very first batch into the oven on Sunday, the oven door FELL OFF.  I wasn't about to waste that batch of lovingly- and painstakingly-piped cookies, so I ended up holding the oven door against the oven like Captain America's shield (that thing was surprisingly heavy!) while five successive batches took their turns spending 8.5 minutes inside.  263 cookies later, I finally put it down, massaged my aching shoulders, and went to bed.  My only regret is that Luke didn't snap a photo of this complete absurdity.

At this point, any rational human would have called it quits and sent out an email to their invitees stating that the Cookie Party was canceled this year and to keep an eye out for Take Two in a few months.  Not me!  I rearranged the baking schedule to do as much as I could without my oven, then packed up the car in the morning - puppy, flour, and all - and headed over to my parents' house to make some progress.  After a day filled with cookie dough and chaos (Maple gets very excited to see his Uncle Rex, my parents' black lab), there are now three types of cookies completed (over 500 in total) and two doughs ready to bake tomorrow, plus an appointment with an oven repairman tomorrow afternoon.  Wish me luck!

As an introduction for those of you who are new to the Cookie Party or to this blog, I will be blogging my progress this week, along with baking tips and stories about the cookies themselves or about the people who have played a role in this tradition.  Stay tuned for some sweet memories and delicious details later this week.

Love and cookies,

Sam