How To Craft Your Own Wine Bottle Cookie When The Mail System Fails You...

Do I win for bloglands longest title evah? I would hope so! Well, I am not even sure there is a competition going on, but if there is (and there should be) I want to win it! I am just competitive like that. It's sort of a condition I have, over-competitive-ness. I do believe I have toned it down a bit since-oh like high school. My HS pals would likely vouch that I was a little tightly wound when it came to being competitive in high school sports, namely volleyball & basketball. It was like I HAD to win, I was possessed! It ruled my every thought on game day, and when we didn't win, it was devastating! I cannot tell you how many times I nearly lost my voice screaming and cheering for my teammates! Man, those were the days, I miss those days! I blame part of my competitive nature on the fact that I played on pretty good teams, (ahem, 1998 Nevada State Volleyball Champs-wow I'm getting old), so that bred my competitive nature. You know nature vs. nurture sorta thing, like maybe I was born at a baseline a bit competitive but then because of my team sport environment, I developed an "overly competitive condition." I'm pretty sure that term will make it on WebMD soon enough! Wow, why did I start talking about this? Oh yes, in defense of winning the longest title award, duh!
Okay, so why such a long post title you ask? Because I wanted to emphasize that although the planning and carrying out of these cookies too a long time, the end product was worth it.
So I got this order for wine bottle cookies (obviously) and I had about a week and a half to turn out 50 of them in time for a 40th birthday party being held on the East Coast. No biggie for the most part except when you don't have the cookie cutter...sooo, I order one thinking if I get it on the sooner end of things, I should have no problemo getting these guys done. Unfortunately, I was on the longer end of the shipping spectrum. It took me a week to get my cutter, yikes, and since I have to leave 3 days before they are due for shipping time, I had to get creative with cutting to finish these cookies. So here is how it all went down.
I used 2 cutters:
2x3" rectangle & 1x1.5" rectangle
Here are my series of cuts...

 smooth all of the seams so that the cookie bakes nicely together

 there you have it, ready to be baked & decorated...

Okay, so although preparing these cookies to be baked and decorated took significantly longer than normal, it was so worth it. I loved the size, look, and the true to real life proportions I achieved by cutting each one individually. But what I liked even more was that when I did receive my wine bottle cutter in the mail, I was SO happy I didn't wait for it! It was TINY! You know, I don't know what kind of ruler people use but the advertised 5.5" cutter was more like 5.5 cm. Yet another reason we should all just be on the metric system, so much easier! So anyway, a little panic, a little creativity & a little extra time to create something I was pretty darn happy with! Happy baking, happier eating!