Eating Cookies and Talking to Women
From time to time, I get a hankering for fresh baked cookies.1 Nothing fancy. Just simple sugar cookies with a thin veneer of icing made from powdered sugar, Karo syrup, and a little bit of almond extract. The almond extract kinda gives it a hint of Amaretto flavoring, but in a way that wouldn’t upset the Babdists too much.
Every time that I have ever tried to bake sugar cookies they were a flop. Usually they failed to rise and ended up looking like a tray full of tater chips. But sometimes they rose too ambitiously, high and hollow, like a Louisiana politician. That’s why I depend on Lucinda.
Lucinda Jones is a local baker. That short, stubbly Holiness woman with hair eleventy feet long makes some of the finest cakes and cookies you’ll ever hang a lip over. But her sugar cookies are my favorite. I can’t get enough of them. For years, I have accused her of putting crack in the dough and turning half the county into pastry fiends.
But she is always quick to tell me that there is no shady business going on in her cake shop. “I’m just good at what I do,” she says. “Look at me. Never trust a baker who would look good in a two-piece bathing suit.”
Of course, a fella never knows how to respond to that. A gentleman shouldn’t just haul off and call her a liar, but agreement carries its own set of difficulties.