An Ode to Procrastibaking

Hello again, friends.

If you’re a regular reader of this blog — hi, Mom — you might have noticed that a longer time elapsed than usual between my last post and this one. There is a reason for this. I had a freelance deadline this week, and though I made time in the past 10 days to read 300 pages of Obama’s memoir, watch several episodes of Drag Race, and play two dozen rounds of the gently used game of Mario Kart my boyfriend trekked through a blizzard to buy off a guy from Facebook Marketplace last week (ka-ching), it felt indecent to finish writing a blog post before I had finished the actual writing assignment promising me actual money.

But that doesn’t mean I didn’t bake!

The next chunk of 100 Cookies was devoted to sugar cookies, so early last week, I found some stray time I didn’t want to fill with work and endeavored to whip up a batch. Now, I’ll be honest: Plain sugar cookies kind of bore me. They’re fine, but they’re nothing special — and, with the amount of sugar I’m already consuming through this project, I don’t see much wisdom in guzzling down more for a cookie that I wouldn’t like. So I skipped Sugar Cookies, considered Brown Sugar Cookies before realizing they called for an amount of molasses that would’ve had me drop $5 on a jar I’d only ever use 1/25th of, and proceeded instead to Chocolate Sugar Cookies.

If things like “potlucks” and “parties” ever exist again, these cookies would be a great thing to bring to one. They have some novelty to them in a world of chocolate chip cookies and peanut butter blossoms, yet they come together far more easily than an ambitious novelty cookie like a Linzer. I was able to make these, prep to cooling rack, in about an hour before logging on to work in the morning, and they still came out cute and without any weird issues with spreading or under-/overbaking. Plus, thanks to being coated in sugar before baking, the finished product is sparkly! What’s not to like?

Oh, there was also a snowstorm.

These won’t be my new favorite cookie, but they were nice, and more importantly, they were a great way to waste time. Reading A Promised Land has so far left me with nothing but a sense that I may never finish this inexcusably giant book; the best prize I’ve gotten from Mario Kart is a bronze medal in a race that requires me to get a gold medal before I can unlock Rainbow Road. But procrasti-baking left me with enough dessert for a week! If you’re looking for an activity to put off a responsibility with — or just a way to fill some stupid little minutes during the inexorable march of time that is the pandemic — I would highly recommend baking something. Baking: A Hobby You Can Eat! (We’re workshopping the slogan.)

I submitted the freelance project Monday, so for the time being, I will return to baking just for fun or for procrastinating non-work things, like the stack of collapsed delivery boxes I need to eventually drag down four flights of stairs to the trash. ‘Til next time, stay tuned — and if you have tips for beating Star Cup, let me know.