Great excitement in the Irreverent household today! Bekah and I finally got around to trying out the cookie press we bought at the Pampered Chef party a month ago.


(Note to self: Do NOT take enthusiastic and social teen to party at which one might be tempted to spend outrageous amounts of money on luxury goods. Enthusiastic and social teens are so damned appealing that it is very hard to say "NO. No, we will NOT be purchasing the cookie press at $41.50, and we will even more so NOT be purchasing the $40.00 deep dish pie plate, even if it IS in a very pretty cranberry and even if you DO love pies and even if you WILL make pies yourself -- AND clean up the kitchen, mum, really!!!" It is very difficult to say NO to all that sweet and sincere enthusiasm without looking like a total wet-blanket drip of a mother in front of a room full of completely besotted adults. "Isn't she cute? My 14-year-old is never so sweet and enthusiastic.")

So we haul the cookie press out from under the counter. We mix up the recipe included with the kit. We ooo and aaaah over all the different shapes.

We learn a bunch of stuff, too. We learn that you need to set the press flush against the cookie sheet. Flush. And press the handle once, and only once. We learned that it is wise to scrape the exterior surface of the disk after every couple of cookies. We learned that if you tip the barrel up, you will get air bubbles in the batter. We learned that when you change disks, you need to tap the barrel to get the dough to settle against the disk again.

We learned so very, very many things!

Then we set the three dozen cookies into the pre-heated oven. And within three minutes, we have learned another, VERY important cookie-press lesson. When you are preparing cookie-press dough, you may not (NOT!) substitute margerine for butter:


Ahem.