Portal Cookies!

So once again Thinkgeek suckered me into buying more stuff from them.  This time, Portal cookie cutters.  Now honestly these things are awesome if you are a HUGE Portal geek like I am, and also really enjoy making cookies, like I do.  Sadly though, I'm not a skilled enough cookie decorator to actually make beastly Portal cookies, but I did attempt them.  I also made a homemade almond glaze icing that didn't suck.  Overall they turned out ok.  Not amazing or anything like I had hoped, but with practice maybe one day I will make GLaDOS proud and she will actually feed me a nice compliment instead of constantly putting me down!  

The tin the cutters come in and the contents.

• DO NOT USE THE INCLUDED RECIPE..  It's not a top secret Aperture Labs recipe of Awesome.  It is a horrible, sticky, piece of crap recipe that I would honestly feel bad for giving my dog.  It's probably a good thing the Cake is a Lie, because their bakers obviously use terrible recipes.  

I ended up throwing the dough into the incinerator and using my normal recipe.  It's not necessarily meant for cut outs (let alone complex cutouts) but it did the job better than the included recipe did.  The cut outs seem pretty simple, but honestly they are a pain in the butt.  They are easily distorted and the Companion Cube requires a special assembly which no instructions are given.  I learned a lot from my mistakes I made this time.  Hopefully next time I have a better experience. 

My poorly decorated, but tasty, cookies before cooking and after decorating.

A few ideas for next time:

• Roll a thinner sheet of dough strictly for the companion cube layers and bake them separate from the cube.  Assemble the layers to the cube with icing.  It will spare the odd shape from assembling them before you bake them. 
• Find a GOOD cutout recipe that isn't going to expand too much, but doesn't taste like cardboard.
• Allow a lot of time for decorations (I ran out of time and rushed on them).  These cookies awesomeness will depend on how well you decorate them. 
• Find someone to help make the cookies (Actually to do the dishes and cleanup!)  Gah the kitchen was a wreck...  A HUGE thanks to my mom for doing round 3 of the dishes!  This included the 5 different bowls of messy glaze and icing.
• Get a better boyfriend who will help decorate cookies instead of playing Peggle.. I know it's super addicting and all, but come on.. There's work to be done! ;)

Overall Review:  It's a little overpriced at $19.99.. You get 5 overall shapes and a horrible recipe inside of a tin..  The tin is very cool though!  For being a pretty decent baker/ cookie maker, I struggled with these.  They aren't simple.  To actually come out with cool cookies that are going to look like something from portal, you should be a very patient, very skilled cookie decorator.  (Obviously I'm not) I don't regret buying these.  With practice and the help of others, I think Portal cookies will be a "huge success".