A Tale of Woe and Some New Winter Cookies

So I'm sitting here at 1am eating raw cookie dough.

(For your very own stress-relieving bowl of the best chocolate cookie dough, see my recipe here!)

I decided, very sensibly, to use the pyrolitic cleaning function of my oven overnight, and turn it on just before I went to bed so that it's not out of use during the day. I took the racks out and started fiddling with the dials, but couldn't work out how to get the cleaning cycle on.

But then I couldn't find the manual in the drawer where I keep all the instructions and always return them without fail. I have no idea how that happened. I tried to download the manual but to do that I had to find the model number, which my oven does not have, anywhere.

So to find the model number I had to find the manufacturer's 'plate', which meant downloading their diagram of how to find the number plate. As it turns out, my oven does have a plate, it's on the one edge of the door I didn't look at while I was lying on the floor wondering if I really should just go to bed.

So I had the number, I downloaded the manual, and I got the oven turned on (turns out I'd been trying to roast a ham), and then as the kitchen filled with smoke I remembered that it always smokes when it cleans and that will set the smoke alarms off and everyone else is in bed asleep.

I then tried to open the kitchen windows (they're big and high and I have to get up on a footstool to do this) but they've jammed shut because of all the rain we've had lately. So I had to open the backdoor, and then of course realised I can't go to bed because someone will come in and steal my cookie cutters, and there's no point stopping it now it's started smoking. 

So after an hour I'm eating raw cookie dough because I'm peckish, listening to the burglars creeping up the stairs which turn out to be the cats messing about every time which becomes somehow disappointing, and wanting to go to sleep.

AND I scraped off a cookie for the very first time today, I tried to do a spider web like on these spider cookies I made last autumn, but it turns out I don't know how to do that anymore. Then I thought I'd see if I'd like it anymore when it was dry but that makes it much more difficult to scrape off, and makes no difference to how much I like it. I had to use a sharp knife to scrape and chip away at it, and then the microplane to file down the last corners remaining. I could perhaps have just cut and baked a new cookie, but then I wouldn't have had enough left for a 1am snack.

Anyway, I haven't forgotten I've promised you a cookie recipe (you can find my vanilla bean sugar cookie recipe here), but I also wanted to let you know two videos are now in the works, on Elsa and Anna, with a couple of new tricks for creating faces, so make sure you subscribe and don't miss out!

[Update: View the Elsa video here, and the Anna video here and read my post on a new way to create noses here!]