Here is the story of the love knot cookies.
So, I found this recipe in Martha Stewart Weddings (apparently that should have been my first clue right there - I keep hearing that Martha Stewart recipes can't be trusted!) for love knot cookies. They're sort of a sugar cookie that's rolled and tied in a knot and, if you're Martha, partially dipped in (white) chocolate. I had been thinking that fortune cookies would be a cool favor for the wedding, to go along with the Asian Infusion Theme (TM by Laurie), but then I realized something very important: I don't really like fortune cookies much! Love knot cookies sounded cool, and not too much trouble, since I love making cookies. It's not a brand new skill, like the invitations or the flower arranging; it's a time tested talent! I decided that I needed to make a test batch, though, to decide whether the "knot" part of the love knot cookies would be too big of a pain in the ass to deal with.
The first batch. I first tried to make the cookies last week sometime. The only ingredients in Martha's recipe were flour, butter, sugar, salt, and vanilla. It was a very dry dough. As I was mixing the ingredients together, I noticed little wormies in the dough. Ugh. I threw out the dough.
The second batch. After I threw out the wormy dough, I got out my brand new bag of flour. I checked for worms. No worms. I mixed up the ingredients. I mixed and I mixed and I mixed, but the bowl was still half full of a powdery substance that could not possibly be rolled out into knots. I decided to knead the dough by hand. I picked up the ball of dough, and I mooshed the dry flour and other ingredients into the ball of dough. Some of it stuck. Some of it didn't. I kept mooshing. I mooshed and I mooshed and I mooshed, but the bowl was still a third full of powdery stuff. It had been about fifteen minutes since I starting mixing and mooshing. I threw out the dough.
The third batch. I decided that the recipe of dry ingredients could bite me. I looked online for a new recipe, and every other love knot cookie recipe that I found had eggs in it. Aha! I printed off one of the recipes (six eggs!) and took it with me to my mom's last weekend. On Sunday, we started making the dough. Mom pointed out the canisters on her counter, and took the lids off of the two that contained flour and sugar. I measured everything out and mixed it up. This time, there was plenty of liquid in the dough. In fact, this time there was too much liquid in the dough. The dough was about as liquid as very thin pancake batter. And, as a bonus, it had a couple of worms in it.
We added cornmeal and birdseed to the dough. Then we baked it and put it in the backyard for the birds to eat.
It's worth noting that we did realize what had happened with this third batch was not the recipe's fault. It turned out that when I thought I was adding flour, I was really adding powdered sugar (I don't keep powdered sugar in a canister on the counter!), and I had even thought to myself, while I was scooping it out, that its texture was funny - "ooh, her flour is different than what I use!" I thought. That didn't stop me from scooping three cups of it out and pouring it into the mixing bowl, though.
So, to sum up. Worms in flour or powdered sugar? Bad. Powdered sugar instead of flour? Bad. Love knot cookies? A pain in the ass.
I'm thinking about making sugar cookies instead.
