Like a lot of folks, over the years, I’ve been given a few
nicknames. Different nicknames in
different towns where I’ve lived. I’ve never been a Jessie. Usually they were some derivation of: J,
Jess, Miss Jackson if you’re nasty, or even Martha Macgyver. That last one is a doozy. It was given to me by a good friend - a gal that
I spent a lot of really early mornings (read 5 am) with a few years back. These therapy sessions typically involved
running, spinning, or weight lifting. On
one of these runs, she came up with the nickname. Not sure if we were suffering from delirium
or on some type of runners high, but we thought it was hilarious. Martha Macgyver.
If you are under the age of thirty, you probably have no
idea who Macgyver is, who Martha refers to, or much less why you’d combine
those too names as a term of endearment.
For those younger readers, Martha refers to the iconic Martha
Stewart…pre-prison, natch. The Martha
Stewart of gardening; entertainment; home decorating; cooking; the you-name-it-she-can-do-it-or-has-done-it
gal. Macgyver(played by the 80s hunk
Richard Dean Anderson) was a television show about a secret agent who could
solve complex problems and get out of terrifying situations with a ball point
pen, some duct tape, and a swiss army knife.
As a side note, I didn’t know until writing this post that Henry
Winkler, aka the Fonz, was one of the executive producers of Macgyver. You are probably wondering where this is going. I guess the nickname arose because this one particular friend thought I could make a grapevine wreath for any holiday out of some twigs, a ball point pen, some duct tape, and some leftover ribbon, then walk into the kitchen whip up something gourmet sounding out of the leftovers in the fridge. I’m not quite sure if this so-called talent arrived out of resourcefulness, thriftiness, or as an attempt to proscrastinate from doing things like cleaning house or laundry.
Ok, back to where is this going and how does it involve Big
Love Bus or Martha Macgyver. It does
involve cookies and duct tape. I
thought I would share the recipe for the Big Love Bus Cookies. No, there is no duct tape IN the
cookies. Sorry to disappoint. I was in the midst of planning
the 10th birthday party for our oldest daughter. Up to that point I had racked my brain for
the easiest, most portable birthday treat for the birthday party onboard the
bus. I wanted something with minimal
mess, portability, and something that still had the cuteness factor. Cake seemed to involve too many
accessories. We would have had to take a
knife, a serving piece, plates, forks, napkins, and the obligatory ice
cream. Transporting all that on the bus
seemed to be a pain. Cupcakes are, well,
in my opinion, getting to be overdone. I
wanted something different and frankly easier.
Despite my great love of baking and all things sweet, I’ve never been
able to master the perfect sugar cookie.
Why would I try to do it for a party?
Like Macgyver, I love a good challenge.
I wondered if there was such a thing as a bus shaped cookie cutter. Enter Amazon Prime. Of course there is a bus shaped cookie
cutter. There were actually several to
choose from, but I went with this one.
Now, I needed a recipe. I happened to have a friend that had wowed me with her cookies in the
past, whipping up adorable onsies decorated in white and blue for a baby
shower, fancy cookies at Christmas, and celebratory cookies at July
Fourth. I wasn’t sure she would share
her recipe but she said it was no big deal. I was still skeptical. The recipe
looked really simple. When I made the
dough and let it chill for at least twenty-four hours like the recipe suggested
I REALLY wasn’t sure about it. I took
the dough out of the fridge and it was hard as a rock. Uh oh. Sugar cookie fail…again. I sent a
quick text to my friend, who ASSURED me that they would be just fine. I let the dough warm a bit, rolled out a
batch, and stuck the first cookies in the oven. She was right! They looked perfect (and I was just about to run to the
store and buy the premade sugar cookie dough filled with chemicals and
preservatives).Several hours later, I
had a nice batch of about fifty, unbroken, perfectly baked bus shaped
cookies! On to the icing.
I had never iced a sugar cookie with royal icing. To this point, my sugar cookies had been such
a failure that I hadn’t even ever made it to the icing step! I don’t even own a
piping kit. I mixed up the icing, simple
enough, and proceeded to try to make just the right neon green color to match
the Big Love Bus logo. I thought I’d
paint the bus green, slap some black tires on it, and call it a day. Mixing the green was pretty easy…a dab of
this color, a dab of that color, stir and thin to the right consistency.The black on the other hand, was a different
animal. Let’s just say that mixing all
the colors together kind of resulted in a grayish purple. After a bit, I finally got a deep, dark
purple that I thought would pass for black…in the dark…to an audience of
ten-year-olds.
I used my Martha Macgyver skills to load the icing into a
Ziploc bag, snipped off the end, and got started with my homemade piping
kit. Who needs Wilton decorating
classes? I’ll be honest, it was not as
easy as it looked. I ended up with icing
all over my hands, the countertop, and the toaster (I know, right?). I did, however, manage to use a combination
of the homemade piping bag, a toothpick, and a butter knife, to spread the
icing out on the cookies. It looked
pretty good.I let the icing dry and
then got the purplely blackish wheels on there. Again, a mess, but I got it done.
By that point, it was probably eleven at night. I was exhausted and, frankly, over it. I let the cookies set overnight to dry. At some point during the night I had the
great idea that the love bus cookies needed some “love.” As a result, I mixed up some pink and
plastered a big fat heart on each one the next morning. At this point I was getting excited! Martha Macgyver might actually pull this one
off in the nick of time.
I still had no idea how I was going to get the cookies on
the bus until I happened to be in Paper Source one day and noticed these great
plastic bags with a sticky closure. They
looked fancy (read expensive). Surprisingly, they were pretty cheap for a bag of 100. I snatched them up, hoping that the bus cookies
would fit inside. When I got home, I
gingerly placed the cookies in the bags and was really pleased with the
results. I put the cookies on a large
melamine tray and thought I’d use it to display the cookies on the counter in
the bus but I was worried about the tray slipping and sliding because it wasn’t
very heavy, even when loaded with fifty cookies. This is where the duct tape comes in! And you didn’t think I’d tie it all together
in a neat little package, did ya? I
waded up a bit of duct tape on each corner of the bottom of the tray and voila!
Martha Macgyver.
The cookies were a HIT.
All the kids loved them and I’m told they even tasted good (I don’t eat
gluten any more so I didn’t even try them!). I will say, I now know and appreciate why bakeries charge upwards of
$3.00/cookie for these jewels. The
recipe might not be difficult, but the process is certainly time consuming! We won’t be including bus shaped cookies in
any party packages (at least from my kitchen) but I do have at least one local baker could make them in a pinch should the desire arise. Just another way we are trying to #spreadthelove. .JPG)
No Fail Sugar Cookies
* This recipe makes up to 8 dozen 3" cookies so feel free to half the recipe. The cookies freeze great, though, if you want to make lots.
6 cups flour
3 tsp. baking powder
2 cups sugar
2 cups butter (4 sticks)
2 eggs
2 tsp. vanilla
1 tsp. salt
Cream butter and sugar until fluffy. Add eggs and flavoring. Mix dry ingredients in a separate bowl and add to butter mixture. Mix well. Chill for two hours or overnight. Roll to desired thickness and cut with your favorite cookie cutters. Bake on ungreased baking sheet at 350 degrees for 8-10 minutes or until cookies just begin to turn tan around the edges. Remove from oven and allow cookies to cool on baking sheet for several minutes before transferring to cooling rack. Cookies can then be stored in an airtight container and frozen until you are ready to decorate.
(These cookies hold their shape great while in the oven - better than other sugar cookie recipes I have tried.)
