What Good Enough Tastes Like

A story about holiday baking, performance anxiety, and the sweetness of imperfection.

The snow fell soft and quiet, a fine coating dusted the grass. Delicate flakes settled in a thin line along each extended tree branch. The birds stopped calling, the drone from the cars died away. Snow lulled the town into a still, heavy silence. It was almost a white Christmas.

I had wanted to be a baker when I was a child, specifically a cake and cookie decorator. My skills were far from it.

The flour in my kitchen matched the view from my windows. Covering almost every inch of the counter, and cascading onto the floor, my slippers tracked the white powder across the room. The cookies I had intended to bring to the party were becoming more hopeless by the minute.

A stand mixer hummed as it spun inside a bowl full of abandoned ingredients. Egg yolks were splattered in the corner, missing the bowl where I had tried to separate them from the whites. A slow stream of sprinkles was flowing over the edge of the counter as the shaker lay on its side. My cat, Wiggles, patted the unknown colorful substance into a pile, testing it with her tongue and then lapping it up. My coffee had long gone cold.

I worked the sugar cookie dough feverishly, first with a spoon, then with my hands. It crumbled and split, it would not take shape.

Turn it out and knead it into a dough, was the next direction. As I turned the bowl onto the parchment paper, the crumbly dough spread. I added some water to help it bond and it only just came together. Rough and resisting, but it held.

Roll it to 1/3 of an inch, the directions read.

Is anyone actually measuring this? I asked myself. I rolled, it was working. Like warm clay, the dough softened to my touch and allowed itself to be manipulated by the rolling pin.

I exhaled, deeply. The whole morning had been consumed by these cookies. I had discarded two versions of the dough before I settled on this one. The first one had the texture of cake batter when mixed; I had done something wrong but couldn’t figure out how to restore it. The second one had fallen victim to Wiggles. Her pawprints left an incriminating trail through the flattened dough, speckled with her fur, as I had briefly left the room to change out the laundry.

Baking, something I enjoyed wholeheartedly, took on a different feeling during the holidays. People to serve, to impress.

Too sweet, too hard, too soft, I could hear the critique already, and the party wasn’t for another few hours. Better to bake alone, for no one, than to have to share. But this was the only time of year I had a real excuse to bake like this.

The next stroke of the rolling pin ripped the dough down the middle.

“Shit!” I yelled out loud. Wiggles jumped in the air, scattering sprinkles. I whacked the counter with my pin.

Five long breaths later, I pieced the dough back together and began to roll again. The dough split. I folded it over, rolled, it split again. And again, and again. The edges flaked away. The dough was shredding and separating into pieces.

Too much flour, I thought.

I was sick of correcting, sick of this dough. Showing up with anything would have to mean good enough at this point.

I grabbed the baking sheets and slashed parchment to size. Tearing the dough into large shards, I tossed them haphazardly onto the parchment. I flung the baking sheets onto the oven rack with a clang.

Setting the timer, I moaned as I remembered the icing. I stopped the whirling stand mixer, tossing the bowl’s contents into the trash. A quick wipe with a paper towel and I was barely measuring as I tossed the icing ingredients into the bowl: powdered sugar, egg whites, vanilla, water.

I flicked the switch to medium and let it run as I sank into a wooden kitchen chair next to the sliding glass door and closed my eyes.

“Fuck these cookies,” I said to Wiggles as she pranced into my lap. The fur around her mouth was dyed red and green from the spilled sprinkles.

She purred against my belly as I listened to the snow outside. Its presence carried through the silence. It came in soft taps upon the deck and windows as I leaned my head against the cold glass. A light crunch indicated my neighbor had pulled into their driveway. The taps soothed me into a near sleep.

When the timer went off it sent my heart into a palpitation.

At least they aren’t burnt, I thought as I pulled both sheets from the oven. I turned the mixer off. The icing was glossy and white. It drizzled from the end of the whisk in a graceful ribbon.

I looked from the misshapen would-be cookies to the icing. There was no way to make these beautiful. I drummed my fingers on the counter as Wiggles started doing a figure eight through my legs.

I picked up a piece from the sheet and tried it. Light and flaky, I was surprised at the quality. I picked up another one and dipped it into the mixing bowl.

The icing coated the cookie in a smooth, thin layer. It broke in a crisp snap as I bit into it, and I smiled, devouring it all in one mouthful. It didn’t look it, but it tasted just like the cookies we had made as kids.

“Sugar cookie chips,” I nodded to Wiggles.

It was perfectly sweet.