I am Ina Garten! I am Ina Garten!

In my last post, I assumed that Ina Garten status was a station totally beyond me in this life. Last Sunday, I was confirmed in that assessment. Attempting to make her famous "Jam Thumbprint Cookies" for gifts (just as Ina does), the project fell so totally flat that I was reduced to buying thirty scratch tickets from my local 7-11 in liew of lovely little plasticene bags tied up in colorful bows and filled with Jam Thumbprints, both raspberry AND apricot.

Somehow I put in too much flour or too little butter - and I am not a novice at baking. Baking is one thing I can do, which is why I thought this would be the proverbial snap. But the resulting mixture simply crumbled apart in my hands. And time was wasting. Scratch tickets in hand (or rather, festive bag), I left for the party, leaving the crumbles in plastic bags in the fridge.

Last night I thought, oh, what the hell. I've already wasted three sticks of butter. One more won't kill me. It will either be an entire pound in the garbage, or - success! One more softened stick of butter later, mixed into the crumbles, resulted in a lovely rollable dough that could be rounded into balls, rolled in egg wash and coconut, imprinted with my thumb and filled with the requisite jams. There are 28 of them, beautifully boxed in a salvaged tin, sitting on the counter right now. But they aren't going anywhere. I'm bringing them out for Christmas.

I AM Ina Garten! I AM Ina Garten!