Good in Theory

Well, I tried at least.

I'm bad when it comes to giving gifts. Iam, if nothing else, two things: a) cheap (being a broke student does that to you) and b) totally uninspired without actually going to the mall for hours on end (which I never have... don't know about you!) and browsing until something catches my eye. I'm also a really bad romantic, which means that on Valentine's Day I'm pretty much screwed unfortunate. I can bake though, and I have at least a general idea of the kind of things Andrew likes... and how poorly could a batch of homemade anything go over, even without a card or anything else gifty-wise (I told you I suck at the whole romance thing)?

I knew Andrew would be showing up at my doorstep yesterday not only with sushi (that man is an absolute god, people... you have no idea how much love I have for sushi) but more than likely with some sweet, romantic gesture like he has every V-Day we spent together (not to mention random surprises year round!). Being pretty much locked to my computer for the past week in order to finish a presentation assignment that's due Thursday (and yet I'm still not done), I hadn't really put too much thought into the social part of the weekend until yesterday morning when I realized that I had nothing for this sappy holiday. Nada, nil, zippo. But, as luck would have it, I spent some time in my Pilates class casting my mind around for inspiration (mental calmness be damned!) and thought about the good old standby of cookies. Show me a man who doesn't like cookies? And dark chocolate cookies with red bits of candy in them... candy corn to be precise... well, that conjured up pretty images of polka-dotted discs just waiting to be set upon by a particular sugar-loving fiend.

This is what I got:

A verifiable Valentine's Day cookie massacre of sorts played out on the cookie sheet. Um, yeah - apparently candy corn (the mostly sugar things they are) melts in a hot oven, and doesn't really re-form all that much. When you take into account that there was 4 1/4 oz of the stuff in the dough (plus 2 tbsp of mini chocolate chips because I couldn't stop myself), bad things happen. Namely, sheets of sticky liquid sugar goo all over the cookie sheets (which thank God I lined with SilPat - that product is gold, people! Not to mention yet another gift from Andrew) in a creepily blood-red shade, and huge craters all throughout otherwise perfectly-baked cookies. Let's just say I was not thrilled with my incompetence!

However, when Andrew came by and saw them, he dove right in to the just-cooled ones on the racks and declared them incredibly tasty. I had chosen to fold the pliable sugary sheets back onto the tops of the baked cookies like a little package just because it was easier than trying to cut around all the rounds, so in the end they didn't look bad - just not good.

But hey, if looks were all that mattered, there would be precious few Valentine's Day celebrants out there!