I gave Kaitlyn a choice of things to do this afternoon after her judo lesson: go downtown and get her bangs cut while I get my hair done or bake cookies and then let Mommy trim the bangs. She chose cookies and me with a pair of scissors yelling at her.
Kaitlyn loves baking cookies. I love baking cookies in a kitchen with enough counter space to use ones mixing bowl and cookie sheet at the same time. I love baking cookies in a kitchen that has enough outlets that you dont have to drag out an extension cord to plug in your mixer. And I also love baking cookies in a kitchen big enough for a stand mixer; hand mixers are for the birds! (Or people with much stronger arms than mine.)
Kaitlyns favorite part of baking cookies, aside from eating the dough, is decorating them. Decorating them usually consists of pouring thick layers of sprinkles on the cookies followed by me vacuuming the kitchen to get the pink and purple layer of sugar off the floor. Because I must not know how to use sprinkles and they never seem to want to stay on the cookies. Of course, that could be because of the sheer volume of colored sugar Kaitlyn uses.
Today I decided to try my hand at decorating the cookies with frosting. Ive never managed to make it work. Maybe because Ive never really followed a recipe. Today I actually found one intended for the very cookie recipe I was using. Easy: 3oz pasteurized eggs, vanilla and powdered sugar. I whipped it all up and, what do you know, it worked great. I may even have to invest in a decent pastry bag. But we did ok using little spoons meant for stirring espresso. Kaitlyns looked better than mine. And the sprinkles we used stayed (mostly) on the frosting. It was overall a huge success and an even bigger mess.
As I was cleaning it all up, I looked again at the recipe. Pasteurized eggs. Why would the recipe be so specific? Oh…. because you arent cooking the eggs. Just beating them silly. How would you know youre using pasteurized eggs? Well, let me think. The eggs we get here often still have feather pieces stuck to them. And I dont even want to think about what the other stuff is thats on them. (Someone once asked me if I wash my eggs before I break them open. Wash them? No. But now I worry maybe I should be.) Im usually annoying Bill because I spend a lot of time trying to pick the little brown specs of whatever-that-is from the egg after Ive cracked it open. Today I tossed the first egg I broke open because it had so many specks of whatever floating in it, I deemed it unsalvageable and just threw it out.
So its a fairly good guess that our eggs are not pasteurized. And until now, Ive never given it any thought. I mentioned it to Bill (as he was eating his saved portion of raw cookie dough, also sporting raw eggs). He pulled out the egg carton and we started reading. Laid by chickens kept in cages. Good till 20/12. Not a peep about pasteurization. Didnt the French come up with it? Youd think theyd use it. But apparently not. Well, weve eaten enough cookie dough in the past 3+ years that if we were going to have some problem from the raw unpasteurized eggs, wed have surely had it by now. Bon appetit!