Making cookies

I have a confession to make: I really am not very good at making cookies. Now, don't get me wrong, my cookies taste very good. I take cookies to most pot-luck dinners that I go to and get rave reviews. What I mean to say is that my cookies aren't beautiful like those made by my friends Shirley and Christine. Their cookies are works of art. Shirley has done demonstrations of cookie decorating for the national convention of the Cookie Cutter Collector's Club. If you have been to one of the CCCC conventions in the last decade, you have seen her cookies. Christine brought some airbrushed beauties to the Spring meeting of the Rocky Mountain Cut-ups last year. I almost didn't want to eat them. In fact there are many cookie artists in the Cookie Cutter Collector's Clubs. There is one collector that sells extra cutters on eBay who uses wonderful decorated cookies as a selling point for the cutters.
You would think that as a very active cookie cutter collector, I would be better at making cookies. The other day, I got home from work and decided to make some cookies for the Super Bowl pot-luck for those of us who were working on Sunday. So I found a football shaped cookie cutter (I have at least 3 or 4 in my collection) This one had the impression of the laces so I had to roll the sugar cookies out thicker than I usually do so that the impression would show. When I baked them they raised up from the baking powder and baked together so some of my footballs had sharp corners! I really didn't have time to decorate them with icing and I didn't have the right color of dusting sugar or sprinkles so I had slightly off shape plain sugar cookie footballs. I then decided to try to make some little spritz footballs. I mixed up a batch of my ginger spritz cookies and put the dough into the cookie press with the oval die. At first the dough was a little too soft so I added some flour to make it firmer (no, cooling the dough doesn't work with this recipe). Then the dough was a little too stiff. I've had this cookie press for over a decade and when I tried to press the dough out, the plastic screw part on the handle section cracked! I was heartbroken. I love that cookie press. It is a Wilton "Bite-Size" cookie press. I can make a batch of Spritz (butter) cookies using that press in one hour, start to finish, and I often do. Spritz cookies come out cute, no decorating needed. Sometime I use colored sugar or sprinkles to decorate them but they are pretty anyway, especially when I color the dough. The ring holding the die to the end of the press had cracked a few years ago and Kathy's husband fixed it by using a hose clamp. The "Bite Size" press is no longer available but I was lucky to find another one on eBay a while back so I do have a back-up. The oval die didn't work as well as some of the other shapes but the cookies looked like little footballs. Everyone thought the cookies were cute and tasted wonderful. It is just, for me, sometimes I wish I had the talent and patience to make the beautiful cookies that some of my friends make!