When Not to Bake Cookies

This weekend was a busy one! We'll be having a house-warming party next week, and wanted to have some homemade goodies to serve. What better way to do that than the bake cookies?

After all, how much of a mess can baking cookies make?

Probably not much if it was just me making them, but when the rest of the family chips in? Let's just say cleaning services hang up when I call them.

For instance, we have a mixer that likes to kick into high gear the second you start it, so it throws everything in the bowl up and out, like a mini volcano. Personally I don't use the thing for cookie dough, but Mr. Spatula decided he wanted to break up some brown sugar by using the mixer.

Sugar chunks everywhere.

Still determined (a quality I find charming most of the time), he did it again. and again. Now the floor is covered with brown sugar. Then the cats walk through it, spreading the joy all over the house.

I just knew I shouldn't have mopped that morning.

Having a brand-new kitchen gives you a sense of dread whenever you feel that shiny-new cleanliness is going to be marred by two children and their father. Especially when he breaks out the chocolate chips and a scuffle ensues, where oats go flying merrily by overenthusiastic mixing, peanut butter gets melted in the microwave, and more chips wind up in mouths than in the dough (though I admit, I took part in that particular scuffle).

Then the baking begins.

The batch we mix makes twenty dozen because we never do anything small, and every part of the counter and table is covered in cooling racks, a giant bowl of dough, and several cookie sheets. After six hours of sheer bliss, I was too tired to clean what was once a nice kitchen.

A kitchen that I'm still cleaning, by the way.

Here are a few hints and handy tips for those that decide to so something like this in their house:

1. Don't mop the floors. Clean floors attract brown sugar and anything sticky.

2. Don't clean counters or any surfaces of crumbs and specks. The new crumbs and specks will be lost without the old ones to tell them where they should go.

3. Don't do the dishes. Having all the dirty cookie sheets fall from the sink to the floor at the same time while the cats are trying to sneak cookies off the racks makes for a video worthy of winning prizes (then you can buy a new, private kitchen.) Don't forget to set up the camera ahead of time.

4. You need a damp kitchen towel in a rat-tail configuration to snap at fingers (and paws) that try to snatch cookies off the sheets and/or cooling racks.

5. Plan on doing nothing else for the rest of the day. 

6. Plan on cleaning nothing else the rest of the week.

Or...
 
Don't make cookies. Go buy cookies and watch a movie with the family. Or make them when no one but you is home. Open your bedroom door enough so that the cats think they are sneaking into your room for  a secret nap. Trust me, this works. And it will be the only way you will ever have hope of a clean kitchen again!