Week 37 - Laura - What I did last Tuesday afternoon

If there’s one thing last Tuesday afternoon taught me it’s that I’ll love my son no matter what.*

If only because I made him myself.**

I made butter shortbread cookies for the first time ever last Tuesday afternoon. (Just bear with me…)

It wasn’t my choice. They cropped up on the schedule of a baking course I was doing. It would have been churlish to refuse.

If you’d asked me my opinion on shortbread cookies last Monday afternoon, or even last Tuesday morning, I’d have argued that they’re a weak link in the cookie army.

At least one round tin of Danish Butter Cookies showed up in my house every Christmas when I was a child, and I couldn’t believe that anyone actually liked them.

I remember thinking that they didn’t really deserve to be called cookies. Chocolate chip cookies set the cookie standard, and Danish butter ones just didn’t belong in the same category. Or, indeed, the world.

Fast forward a couple of decades and a few more years for luck, and last Tuesday afternoon I found myself mixing butter, caster sugar and icing sugar together - step one in making the really rather characterless cookies. “I can always give them away,” I thought, as I added in flour, ground rice and roasted ground almonds.***

After an hour of letting the paste chill in the fridge, I cut out the bland biscuits. I baked them for about 20 minutes, and, after only a glance, let them cool.

Then I tasted my work, and OH MY GOD - amazing! How have I never appreciated the delicate taste of a butter shortbread cookie before? How could I have written off this beautiful biscuit? They are the business!

Now see even at this stage, if pressed, I’d equate Mario with something like a milk chocolate goldgrain - one of the best and most upstanding in the biscuit world.**** It’s a mighty starting point, but last Tuesday afternoon has taught me that even if, God forbid, he takes a wrong path in life and turns into a delinquent of the butter shortbread cookie variety, I’ll adore him still.*****

*Although I’m pretty sure he’s going to be super-loveable for a million reasons.

**with help from Sean

***I promise not to give you away Mario!

****I’m sure nobody is going to press me to liken my unborn child to a biscuit, but it’s best to be prepared.
*****Comparing my child with a biscuit is perhaps a new low for me. Maybe I'm more tired than I thought. I might go take a nap now...