Back in 1681 –which happens to be the year the dodo went the way of, well, itself– our pal Jackie Dryden wrote “Absalom and Achitophel”, a tremendous piece of satire containing the sage advice “Beware the fury of a patient man.”
That little bit of wisdom –aside from being in list of mottoes I want if we ever redo the Plumcake family crest, right below Miss Noxeema Jackson’s “No no no, this is FRINGE!” but right above “Psycho Killer qu’est-ce que c’est“– is particularly apt in my case.
See, it’s hard to get me really worked up. My heart may be warm but my sang is totally froid. If I ever get to the point where I’m Telling You Thing About Yourself it’s almost always after months, sometimes years, of letting things go.
However.
Once I’ve finally had enough, that’s it. I go from zero to Alexis in 2.6 seconds and there’s no turning back until I’ve had my head. This would explain why on Monday, I yelled at some cookies until I cried.
Things have been stressful at Château Gâteau as of late and this stress has manifested itself in weird ways. First there was the waking up with my ceramic owl umbrella stand in my bed, then there was the sleep cleaning I did on Sunday night and then The Cookie incident.
See I always forget that I don’t like cookies.
I like biscotti if I make them, gingersnaps, lemon snaps, the occasional amaretti and of course most all Stella d’Oros although they’re infuriatingly harder to get in Austin than cocaine –no one has ever sidled up to me and surreptitiously asked if I wanted a lightly sweet Italian breakfast cookie– but in general cookies, particularly store-bought ones– are Highly Objectionable.
I’m a hopeful-type gal though, so when I saw the Knott’s Berry Farm Boysenberry jam shortbreads I took a chance. They were AWFUL. They sucked with a magnitude I didn’t believe possible. They very nearly outsucked the entire state of Oklahoma, those disgusting things were crumbly and way too sweet and the jam wasn’t jam, it was High Fructose Boysenberry-Colored Product.
Well, I just lost it. I yelled at the cookies.
Or rather I didn’t yell, but I Told It Things and how they should be ashamed of themselves and how if anyone wants to have anything nice they have to do it themselves, which is a pain in the neck because I work what is essentially an 80 hour week and I JUST DON’T HAVE TIME to bake decent, God-fearing, appropriately-jammed cookies, especially since my oven is wonkity and WHY CAN’T ANYONE DO ANYTHING RIGHT THESE DAYS AND WHY DOES EVERYTHING HAVE TO BE SO HARD????
You get the picture.
Cookies, in my opinion, should be crispy or occasionally crispy and chewy. They should not be mushy or grainy with sugar or half-cooked.
Ideally there should be jam involved and not raw jam either, but nice chewy baked jam, the way the Lord and my grandma intended it. Jammie Dodgers before they screwed with the recipe and made the cookie all soft and crumbly, were the ideal jam-affiliated store-bought cookie.
Oat cookies should be crispy and thin and devoid of unnecessary paraphernalia except the occasional bit of currant and maybe if we’re going hog wild, some toffee or coconut. Chocolate may be incorporated in pre-approved Hobnob fashion ONLY. No chunks or chips unless they are in fact chocolate chip cookies, which may be chewy as long as there is a sufficient crisp-factor around the edges.
Cream fillings are an abomination although chocolate filling can be okay IF AND ONLY IF they are thin and thus covered under the HobNob Milano Act.
White chocolate chips are only acceptable in otherwise undefiled crisp dark chocolate cookies and macadamias are crap nuts which should be seen as acts of aggression on behalf of the Hawaiians for taking Magnum P.I. off the air and should not be tolerated.
Sprinkles and the frosting or icing of any non-traditional European cookie are straight out.
I’ve got other rules, really a cookie manifesto, but for some reason the government and I aren’t seeing eye to eye on listing the Keebler Elves as enemy combatants so I’m not supposed to publish it.
Today Miss Plumcake Wants to know:
What’s your favorite cookie? Do you prefer crispy cookies or do you hate freedom and happiness and thus prefer gooey ones? What rule would you add to my Cookie Manifesto?
1- Give blood.
.
