HERNIATED WOODLAND CREATURES BEWARE!: GINGERBREAD MUSHROOM COOKIES W/ DARK CHOCOLATE ROYAL ICING RECIPE

Each one of these babies is over a handspan and weighs about 5 pounds, which was the size of my second child after he plumped up.

Gingerbread Mushroom Cookies with Dark Chocolate Royal Icing.


I'll be honest with you: these cookies took a long time, and they were a big learning curve. Royal icing is basically akin to paint--and, as Shrek has pointed out, it's all about layers. And the space between the layers, which translates into patience, and drying time.

Now, one of the most insulting things you could say to a woman (any woman, but a creative woman) is, “Oh Gawd, I just don’t have time for that—SIGH...I wish I had that kind of time on my hands.”

I don’t have more time than anybody else—though perhaps I have less common sense and managerial ability, in addition to less sleep, intimacy with another human being, and certainly far less muscle tone—but I do not actually have more time.

In college, there was the most annoying girl—is "nemesetic" a word?, it should be. An awesome, talented painter, she had excellent taste and design sense. She wore pearls and sweater sets to the studio, unblemished, while I could not walk the thirty steps to my car without a cartoon mudflap splashing me. She actually was not dumb and even occasionally quite funny in an absent-minded way (oh, and she was a concert pianist)—and it didn’t help that everyone, including the love of my then-short life was completely and vocally smitten with her.

When she wasn’t giving a concert or attending her own opening exhibit, she was baking, volunteering at a hospice or reading to the blind.
I’m not so shabby—but sheesh, I can’t compete with that.

And while I subsisted on a diet of black coffee, cigarettes, tequila and non-fat yogurt, she drank English tea and actually ATE the scones that she made. With butter.

You know, she had a completely generic first and last name (please--couldn't I at least get points for "Stacia" and "Bagranoff!?!?") made more maddening by the fact that everyone had elevated her beyond mere confusion-with-mortals by referring to this girl simply as Her and She.

As in: "I saw Her at the Kroger/She was buying half and half."

In every respect, she was better than me (or so I believed, as we do with nemeses of our own creation) like some airbrushed, platinum–edition of my self: a far better painter, thinner, more angular but less forceful, better hair, handwriting and speaking voice, musical where I am not.
If she had been witty, I would have killed myself.

Oh, how I loathed her, and would often roll my eyes and quip, upon mention of HER name, “Yes, yes, I get it—and little woodland creatures like squirrels and birds follow her everywhere she goes” --referencing Sleeping Beauty, of course.

I’m not sure how this fits in with my theories on time and baking—except, as everything does, it relates to perspective and forgiveness. The mushrooms (and the stray comment "Wow, those sure look like they took a lot of time") brought it all back. Maybe these should be called Stephen Hawking cookies.
It leads me to consider how much we want to be, the nature of what we aspire to be—and for whom. This vision of perfection for other people.

I made these cookies just for me (and for my kids, and maybe for you), just because I could.
It’s taken me 17 years to figure out that She didn’t have a secret ingredient—a conclusion hurried along by watching Jack Black in Kung Fu Panda (I would leave anyone at any time for Jack Black and I don’t care who knows it). We are more than, and somehow defy, the sum of our parts. The secret might be enjoyment of our parts.
Well, sure, it really helps to have good parts.

I eat a 5-pound dark and spicy, partially sweet , very complicated and layered mushroom cookie of the past with nothing like sadness—in fact, with a keen, crunching interest, with wistfulness. I actually savor it…and then I look down in the palm of my hand and there is nothing there but a few tell-tale crumbs and some molasses-sticky perfume.

Dark Chocolate Royal Icing Recipe (ready? Don’t blink):

1 recipe royal icing : (3 tablespoons Meringue Powder, 1 lb. confectioners' sugar, 6 tablespoons warm water, almond extract)
Hershey’s Special Dark Cocoa Powder to color and taste
(also fantastic for tinting coconut, which makes great hair. I accidentally made Obama cookies—don’t ask, that's another post—but I'm telling you they tasted like CHANGE!)

You will have cocoa powder and confectioner’s sugar in your sinuses for quite some time and your kitchen floor will be a wreck. Put on a neti pot of tea and try not to take it too seriously. No one can see your sinuses, unless you give them permission.