(no subject)
Dec. 13th, 2006 10:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickOkay. I baked the MSC and I mixed up the dough for the sand tarts. All of that was all right, except for this one thing.
Is there *anything* you don't have issues with?
No. I have issues with everything. Where I live, the world is an imperfect place is a neat summary of the problem, not a soothing mantra of acceptance.
So, this problem. When making roll-n-cut cookies, there's a certain amount of waste that occurs even if you're a pretty good cookie-cutter-outer. I hate that there is waste. It is annoying. It is wrong. It is inefficient. (It is possible to wad up the waste bits and re-roll them. Doing so more than one time leads to a noticable decline in cookie quality.) I understand that cookies might be cut in shapes that are pretty and different and not-just-boring-squares (like you'd do egg noodles for potpie) but there should still be a way that you could have not-wasteful cookie cutting while being decorative about it.
As a side note, I already considered that perhaps the ideal waste-free way to make round cookies would be to roll the dough into like a play-doh snake affair and cut it off in thin slices like coins. While this sounds like a good idea and it is virtually waste-free, it fails to account for the fact that the act of rolling out the cookies with the rolling pin makes the dough be in flat layers what contribute to the crispity nature of the finished product. One of the reasons that I have been unable to come to an arrangement WRT fridge-based cookies is that their texture is asstastic. They lack the gluten development and layered structure that exists in rolled-out cookies due to the mechanical process of rolling out the fucking dough. So, the dough has to be rolled out flat for reasons of cookie-acceptability AS WELL AS for reasons of cutting-out-cookie-shapes.
Why does nobody make cookie cutters that tessellate? Then, instead of the stupid-ass way what we currently employ to make lovely round cookies from rolled-out dough, we could have, like, hexagon cookies or Escher-fish cookies. That would be tidy. Things would come out even. There would be less waste and the waste that there would be would be on the raggedy and uneven edges, where it would not matter a whole lot. (Under the horribly-inefficient current system, the lovely and perfect middle of the dough winds up with a fair amount of it being scrapped.) WHY IS THERE NOT THIS PRODUCT THAT I WANT? *sigh* Why is the world so full of stupid?
Note to self: Get some of the flashing from the garage at 629, about a foot-long piece, about two inches wide. Also borrow the tin snips and the needlenose pliers. By the end of the weekend, you could have this problem solved to your satisfaction.
Is there *anything* you don't have issues with?
No. I have issues with everything. Where I live, the world is an imperfect place is a neat summary of the problem, not a soothing mantra of acceptance.
So, this problem. When making roll-n-cut cookies, there's a certain amount of waste that occurs even if you're a pretty good cookie-cutter-outer. I hate that there is waste. It is annoying. It is wrong. It is inefficient. (It is possible to wad up the waste bits and re-roll them. Doing so more than one time leads to a noticable decline in cookie quality.) I understand that cookies might be cut in shapes that are pretty and different and not-just-boring-squares (like you'd do egg noodles for potpie) but there should still be a way that you could have not-wasteful cookie cutting while being decorative about it.
As a side note, I already considered that perhaps the ideal waste-free way to make round cookies would be to roll the dough into like a play-doh snake affair and cut it off in thin slices like coins. While this sounds like a good idea and it is virtually waste-free, it fails to account for the fact that the act of rolling out the cookies with the rolling pin makes the dough be in flat layers what contribute to the crispity nature of the finished product. One of the reasons that I have been unable to come to an arrangement WRT fridge-based cookies is that their texture is asstastic. They lack the gluten development and layered structure that exists in rolled-out cookies due to the mechanical process of rolling out the fucking dough. So, the dough has to be rolled out flat for reasons of cookie-acceptability AS WELL AS for reasons of cutting-out-cookie-shapes.
Why does nobody make cookie cutters that tessellate? Then, instead of the stupid-ass way what we currently employ to make lovely round cookies from rolled-out dough, we could have, like, hexagon cookies or Escher-fish cookies. That would be tidy. Things would come out even. There would be less waste and the waste that there would be would be on the raggedy and uneven edges, where it would not matter a whole lot. (Under the horribly-inefficient current system, the lovely and perfect middle of the dough winds up with a fair amount of it being scrapped.) WHY IS THERE NOT THIS PRODUCT THAT I WANT? *sigh* Why is the world so full of stupid?
Note to self: Get some of the flashing from the garage at 629, about a foot-long piece, about two inches wide. Also borrow the tin snips and the needlenose pliers. By the end of the weekend, you could have this problem solved to your satisfaction.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-12-14 03:25 am (UTC)But the tesselating Escher fish cookie cutter is a very cool idea!
no subject
Date: 2006-12-14 12:54 pm (UTC)I *still* think there should be a variety of nice tessellating or nearly-tessellating shapes for cookie cutters.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-14 05:46 pm (UTC)i still don't understand the obsession with shapes for xmas cookies. what is wrong with amoeboid cookies? what is wrong with tentacles of dough?
no subject
Date: 2006-12-15 05:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-15 06:06 pm (UTC)gak. don't make me laugh when i'm sick...
*cough hack wheeze*
no subject
Date: 2006-12-15 07:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-15 10:50 pm (UTC)Squares, other quadrilateral parallellograms, and trapezoids are the tessellating shapes that I can cut out via knife with ease. They are insufficiently festive and therefore not suited to holiday cookie use. This is a judgment call but I have given a fair amount of thought to the question and I've decided that the festivity of cookie shape is inversely related to the difficulty of cutting the fucking things out. Four-sided straight-edged cookies that can be cut with all straight lines through the whole pattern, like your squares and such, are not particularly festive. You might as well be making egg noodles, for fuck's sake. Triangles are also not festive. (Round cookies and cookies with fluted edges are VERY festive... but then we're back to the wasted-dough problem that got us here in the first place.)
Interestingly, hexagons cannot be generated by cutting all straight lines through the whole pattern. There is bending for each hexagon, whereas for diamonds or squares, the lines are straight all the way. Due to the difficulty of cutting the damn things out (by hand), hexagons are sufficiently festive... and because they cover the entire dough surface without waste except for at the raggedy edges, they're ALSO efficient.
The desire for a cookie cutter over a knife is probably a qualitative difference rather than a material one, but it's still important for ease-of-use issues.
As for why it's imperative that all the cookies be the same, well, hell. Having uniform cookies is so totally the right way that I am afraid I cannot explain it to you if you don't already grasp it. You have, however, seen cookies I have made and I bet you remember the striking lack o' variation in them. The lack o' variation is not accidental. It's a-purpose.