I can't cook

I can't cook. When we were growing up we could sit on a stool in the kitchen and watch, but the kitchen was my mom's territory. No one could make messes in that room but Mom. Tom always asks for his rebate from my Mom about this time of the year. My biggest flaws, not good at cooking and not good at cleaning, become glaringly apparent during the holiday seasons.

One of my coworkers wants to do a cookie exchange. I have one recipe I do, pecan tarts. I have to make 5 dozen for the exchange. The first batch is delicious but not the most attractive. The sugar and butter filling covers the cookie so no pretty rim is visible. The first three dozen are unattractive balls of sweetness. deliciously edible but not pretty.

I decided to try and hurry the process. I get out cookie sheets and make balls of the cream cheese and butter with flour crust. I think that maybe they will be like sugar cookies and be able to hold enough shape. I use the tip of a wine cork to make the centers and pour in the sugar sauce. The oven is set at 375. The cookies go in to the oven. Shortly there after I turn around to see flames in the bottom of my oven.

The sugar filling in the cookies has poured out onto the elements and started a fire. Sadly this has happened enough before that I don't panic. I treat the kitchen fire like an every day occurrence. It doesn't even get my heart racing anymore. I turn off the oven and pull out the sheets of gooey cookies, laying the trays on the counter. Now I realize why they have to be cooked in those tiny muffin pans. Its a good thing to know for the future.

I go into the pantry and grab the box that contains the baking soda. I taste it to confirm that it is baking powder. I wouldn't want to accidentally use the powdered sugar. I then open the oven door and scatter the white powder. The fire instantly disappears.

I am luck to have two ovens. I make up another batch of cookies and finish the project using the upper oven. Once I am done cooking, I turn on the cleaning cycle on the lower oven to cook up all that mess. It will turn all that hard messy caked on sugar to ashes in a few hours, an easy clean up.

I sigh over the fact that even making Christmas cookies can turn into such a production.
I was even able to turn the stove fan on quickly enough that I didn't set off the fire alarms for once despite the black smoke billowing from the oven when I opened the door. The key is to be quick and then shut the door and keep it shut. Any smoke that would escape goes out the top, straight into the fan vents.

The boys come home from school. Riley says it smells like pizza. I tell him I was cooking in the ovens. They comment over the fact that if you don't look at the cookies while you eat them, they are delicious. I have over a dozen rejects on a plate in the kitchen, The ones that broke while being removed from the cupcake tin or were just too unattractive to serve. The boys devour them all. Within minutes every spare cookie is gone, over a dozen. I am hopeful my coworkers will respond the same way. The whole idea of the cookie exchange is to get homemade cookies. These cookies were made with love. No one goes knowingly into disaster without a little love involved. I could do without always setting fires to my kitchen. Even my boys don't get over excited when I botch the cooking.