I wanted to log into this blog and write a lovely, festive, make-your-mouth-water post about Christmas cookies. I really did.

I wanted to show you a beautiful plate of cookies like this (only, you know, ones that *I* baked):

image from jendcox on flickr

But the kitchen gods had other plans. And my attempt to make Christmas tree shaped spritz cookies was one disaster after another.

The cookie press — a plastic triggered dough gun — refused to stay in one piece. I twisted. I turned. I pushed. I cleaned. I stuffed. I restuffed. But every time I clicked that trigger and tried to push the dough onto the cookie sheet, the bottom popped off and the entire log of dough pushed its way out.

So I twisted and turned and pushed and prodded and cleaned and stuffed and restuffed again. And that bottom finally stuck. Unfortunately, so did the dough. In a bad way. As in, it stuck to the cookie press, not the cookie sheet. So I peeled off the dough and tried again. And again. And again. I tried pressing the dough onto the bare cookie sheet, onto tin foil, onto parchment paper. Onto the bare cookie sheet again.

Finally, the dough stuck (on the bare cookie sheet — for the record). But it stuck only after so much dough had been pushed through the press that the cookies looked like massive Jabba-the-Hut blobs, not cute little fur trees. I baked them anyway. Why not celebrate Christmas with a cheery Jabba-the-Hut blob cookie, I figured. Nothing wrong with straying from the traditional once and while. They’ll still taste the same. And my sister is a Star Wars fan. And the next batch will be better.

But there was no next batch. So frustrated was I at this point, that I decided it was best to put the cookie dough away and try again later. I didn’t cover it well enough, and when I pulled it out of the fridge the next day it was dry and crusty and completely hopeless. I had to soak the bowl in water just to remove all the dough, which my husband pointed out now looked more like Play-Dough than cookie dough.

And that’s the story of my first Christmas cookie FAIL. I think I’ll put this recipe away for another year.