Here's Your Misshaped, Lumpy Heart

Two things about me: I don't get too excited about Valentine's Day, and I don't bake. I mean, I've done both before (getting excited about Valentine's Day, and baking), but never together, and either one on its own doesn't bring me all that much joy.

So imagine my surprise today, when I found myself baking cookies for Valentine's Day, with Ciara. She made the dough (thank god, because me and "measuring" are not friends), and then I rolled it out, and helped make heart shapes with the cookie cutters, and drizzled chocolate on the sugar cookies at the very end (Did I drizzle chocolate on some of the cookies in such a way as to suggest a broken heart with a crack down the middle? Why, yes. Yes I did. That's the honest truth about hearts). It was mostly lovely, until the very end, when we were both sweaty, tired, and we made four GIANT cookies just to be done with all the damn dough. Happy frickin' Valentine's Day.

But before that, as I finished rolling out and cutting the sugar-cookie dough, I would collect the scraps and smush them together again and again, making a smaller and smaller ball until it was too little for a cookie cutter. I showed Ciara the tiny remainder of scraps.

"Just make your own heart with it," Ciara said. So I did. I used my fat, flour-covered, non-baking fingers to mold my own little heart, and I put it on the cookie sheet with the rest. Then, I went about my business, trying to make chocolate-chip cookies shaped like hearts (it doesn't really work, FYI, they mostly look like butts).

At one point, Ciara turned to me. "Here's your heart," she said, and held out the sad, misshaped, burnt-to-a-crisp heart I'd made from scraps. I thought to myself, "Yeah, that seems about right." And I ate my heart in a single bite. It was tasty!

Here's the best news of all. When you bake cookies at Ciara's, it starts like this:

(no, the recipe doesn't call for whisky. but the bakers do.)