To get myself into some kind of Christmas spirit, I decided it would be a good idea to make some Christmas cookies. While the idea was sound, there were a few obstacles...
First of all, I didn't have any cookie cutters. Because – surprise! - I didn't take any with me. A few weeks before Katti had written in her fantastic blog Tea, Cake and Sandwiches (http://teacakeandsandwiches.blogspot.com, if anyone wants to check it out) about the Ninjabread Men she had made with these incredible cookie cutters shaped like ninjas. And I have to admit I was quite jealous, because as some of you know I myself am no stranger to cookie cutters with, let's just call them less traditional shapes. So anyway, I decided I wanted Christmas cookies, and I went looking for cutters. At the first shop that seemed likely to have some, I asked one of the saleswomen and she looked at me, a little embarrassed, and said “yes, we do, but only these...”, pointing at – the Ninjas! And guess what - I bought them. Again: surprise!
So that was the easy part over. The actual making of the ninjas involved a lot of work and quite a bit of improvisation, but then again, creating a ninja out of nothing is never an easy task and will almost always require hard work...
My first problem was the simple task of measuring stuff. It sounds easy, until you have to hunt around for something to measure stuff with for half an hour, and then convert everything into ounces, because the energy drinks my flatmate drinks are measured in ounces, which is fine, until you get to the butter... There was a lot of guessing going on.
Another thing you might need when making cookies is a rolling pin or something shaped approximately like a rolling pin. Now if we had had someone living in the flat who occasionally drinks wine at that time, it really wouldn't have been hard to find a bottle that's reasonably large and completely round, but we didn't, so it was. I ended up wrapping my deodorant bottle in greaseproof paper and using that, which was a pain in the behind because it's quite small and therefore takes ages to get the dough rolled thin enough. But it is possible to do it, believe me!
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| my version of a rolling pin |
Then there is the oven. It looks like a normal oven, very unthreatening and in fact just like what you would expect an oven to look like. But it's not. It's weird and unusual, and sometimes it tries to kill you and eat you. The first thing you should know about that beast of a kitchen appliance is that it really likes its oven trays...
You can not get them out or in without a good deal of yanking and shoving, usually moving the whole oven a few meters while you are fighting the thing. Then there is the thing with the heat. I am used to ovens heating whatever you are trying to make from the top AND the bottom. This one doesn't. You can either have heat from the top OR the bottom, but not both at the same time. It took me a while to figure that out, which is why the first batch of ninjas were wearing night time camouflage on their backsides... But we ate them anyway, and they were quite nice.
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| Traditional ninjas. Notice the spare parts... |
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| These are slightly less traditional in their clothing style... |
