the bowers in pursuit: i am no martha...

I feel like part of the purpose of this blog is to admit that life is never perfect. So many times you observe someones life and admire what a perfect house, family, overall life they have, but you never know! This post is to confess my blunder yesterday.

I love taking care of my family and home, but I am definitely NO Martha Stewart. I decided that Gavin and I were long over due to do some cooking so I decided we should make some shamrock cookies for St. Patrick's Day... Happy St. Patrick's Day to everyone by the way! I do not like sugar cookies, but I make them for my husband who does, and now for my son who likes to use the cookie cutter. I actually have a great recipe that I do like from Martha. It has lemon juice and lemon zest in it that makes the cookies yummy by my taste buds.

Old Fashioned Sugar Cookies

3 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. coarse salt
1 3/4 cups granulated sugar 1/4 cup packed light brown sugar
1 Tbs. finely grated lemon zest
1Tbs. fresh lemon juice
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
2 large eggs
Sanding sugar, for sprinkling

1. Preheat oven to 350. Sift together flour, baking soda, and salt; set aside. Put sugars and zest in the bowl of an electric mixture. Mix on medium speed 30 seconds. Add butter; mix until pale and fluffy, about 1 minute. Mix in eggs, 1 at a time, and then the lemon juice. Reduce speed to low; gradually mix in flour mixutre.
2.Using a 2-in. ice cream scoop (I used a spoon) drop dough onto parchment lined baking sheets, spacing 3 in. apart. Flatten cookies slightly; sprinkle with sanding sugar. Lightly brush with a wet pastry brush; sprinkle with more sanding sugar.
3. Bake cookies until golden, about 15 minutes.

Seeing Gavin lick the dough from the beaters definitely brings back memories of my sister and me enjoying the same thing!

I actually only followed these directions up through step one because Gavin and I then rolled out the dough to make cutout cookies. I know I have used this recipe in the past to make Christmas cutout sugar cookies, but yesterday was different!

It may have been that it was a bit warm in my house. The high for our area was almost 80. The problem was that the dough was SO sticky! If I got it rolled out at all, all the cut shamrocks just stuck to the board.

I even tried to put the dough in the freezer, but when I pulled it out it immediately got warm again and sticky. Ugh! So... instead of freaking out or doing something extradoridinary with a lot of effort the way Martha would I told Gavin we were switching to plan B. Instead of shamrocks we made St. Patti's Day balls, or Irish Balls depending on your sense of humour!! Gavin did a great job adding green sugar!