Butter Late Than Never: DIY sugar daddy

Happy holidays to all my procrastinators out there! What better time of year than the holiday season to ignore all of your impending responsibilities, academic endeavors and will to live?

If  your stress level is as high as the W.E. B. Du Bois Library, or you are currently wondering if your degree is even worth this “studying” and “passing exams” and “doing well in school” nonsense, then I have the answer: A “sugar daddy.”

Yes, someone to support your extravagant lifestyle so you can ignore all of those assignments and exams. As a woman who has thought about finding her own sugar daddy at various moments in my life, I understand that the idea seems far-fetched, even unrealistic.

To cope with the stress of finals and perhaps live out your wildest fantasy (maybe I am alone in this dream), make your own sugar daddy!

Take a break from crying into your overpriced textbook and get into the holiday spirit.

This recipe has more benefits than one. If you spent your last $15 on Rubinoff and UV Blue instead of buying your sweet old nana new socks for Christmas, you can make her cookies instead. Heck, make her a gingerbread replica of herself.

Old people love homemade gifts and seeing themselves in flattering cookie form. Throw gingerbread nana in a red hot licorice bikini and call it a day. She will never have to know that you spent your entire life savings on cheap tequila this semester.

This recipe is also not only perfect for this time of year. Not because, duh, it’s the one time of year that is socially acceptable for you to be excited about a large imaginary bearded man slithering down your chimney in the dead of night and watching you sleep, but this recipe is extremely easy to follow.

Here’s what you need:

• A strong desire for a sugar daddy
• An insurmountable amount of final exams to procrastinate studying for
• Lack of sleep
• A peculiar hankering to make gingerbread replicas of all of your loved ones, closest friends and acquaintances
• Friends and family who will not assume you are a serial killer for making said replica cookies
• 1 ½ cup softened butter
• 2 cups white sugar
• 4 eggs
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract
• 5 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 tsps. baking powder
• 1 tsp. salt
• Cookie sheets
• A rolling pin
• Icing of desired colors
• Sprinkles
• Variously shaped cookie cutters
• Friends/family who will eat your cookies, no matter how badly they turn out.

Step 1: Pregame and preheat

Heat oven to 400 degrees.

Put on your fuzzy Christmas socks (one of the dozens of pairs that you have), blast the holiday music and turn on “A Year Without a Santa Clause,” which has been scientifically proven to be the best Christmas movie ever made.

Step 2: Mix everything in a bowl (except for the frosting and sprinkles)

No, really.

Step 3: Chill it

Okay, the real recipe calls for the dough to be refrigerated for at least one hour or overnight before you start cutting them but HELLO? When you’re desperate to procrastinate, you do NOT wait an hour or a ludicrous 12 hours to cut, bake and decorate your cookies.

That is some Martha Stewart bs that you don’t need in your life. Seasoned professionals, like myself (and my roommates) recommend putting your dough in the freezer for roughly 20 minutes. Sure, your cookies may not turn out to be the highest quality or come out as easily identifiable shapes BUT WHO CARES?

Once you take your dough out, you’ll probably realize, like we did, that it is not thick enough to cut into shapes. Add an irresponsible and reckless amount of flour to your dough. Throw caution to the wind. Add 2 cups, heck, add 6. These are your cookies, make them as thick and voluptuous as you want.

Step 4: Ha ha ha ha … finals have made me dead inside

Up to this point, you may have been well distracted from your crippling finals anxiety. You’ve been basking in holiday bliss, completely ignorant of your paper that’s due in two hours and right about now you’re probably thinking: how did I let myself make these cookies, let alone even take the time READ this incoherent piece of garbage?

That my friend is called desperation. Happy to have you here.

Using whatever surface you see fit, roll out some wax paper. Sprinkle some flour down and start rolling out the dough with your rolling pin. Then, use your cookie cutters to carve out whatever shapes tickle your fancy.

My suggestion would be to make various gingerbread men (one for your sugar daddy to be constructed and others for the loved ones in your life), some fun holiday shapes (trees, ornaments and stars), and of course, some wildly inappropriate cookies to give to your most twisted and immature of friends (those are the best kinds of friends).

Put all of the shapes you have created onto ungreased cookies sheets about 1-2 inches apart.

Step 5: Give em’ some oven lovin’

Bake your cookies for about 6-8 minutes. Though this seems like a remarkably short time, the stress of finals will, I am sure of it, begin to set in once again. If you have actually followed this recipe all the way through, I know you have the self-discipline to continue not thinking about them and to procrastinate even harder.

What has been the purpose of college if not to teach you how to properly ignore the imminence of the responsibilities of adulthood?

Step 6: Pimp out your sugar daddy (and all those other unidentifiable shapes)

Once the cookies have cooled, select the perfect gingerbread man and bring him to life.

A gingerbread man in his underwear? Sure.

A naked gingerbread man only wearing a tie? Even better!

Of course, your cookie sugar daddy may not financially support you for the rest of your adult life, despite the incredible frosting pants you gave him, but a girl can dream.

Step 7: Devour, distribute or destroy

Eat your cookies, share them with friends, give them to nana, or crush them in an even more therapeutic release of stress. Look at what you’ve accomplished! You don’t even need to pass that chemistry exam, you just made some incredibly ordinary looking cookies and that’s success enough!

Don’t even think about how pathetic your life is, or how you essentially just made yourself a financially stable cookie boyfriend. Ha ha ha … don’t even let that cross your mind!!

Whatever you do, know that exams will soon be over, and yes, despite the odds, your soul will re-enter your body (eventually).

Staple a gingerbread man to your exam when you pass it in, maybe then you’ll get an A.

This story is the fourth installment of “Butter Late Than Never,” a series where Rachel Ayotte explores cooking as a college student.

Email Rachel at [email protected] or follow her on Twitter @RachelEAyotte.