I’ll be heading over to the Writers Group from Hell holiday party later this afternoon, to which even former members like me are invited, and since it’s a potluck, that meant I spent the last two days baking.

After flipping through my cookbooks in search of something new—wouldn’t want to bore my friends, after all—I settled on one recipe each from Paul Fehribach’s The Big Jones Cookbook and Bryan Voltaggio’s Home.

I’d already made two previous Fehribach dishes—Chicken with Dumplings and a Jelly Roll Cake—and one from Voltaggio—Blueberry Cake with Peanut Streusel. This time I decided to attempt Cheese Straws by the former and Lemon Cookies by the latter.

On Friday, I started with the Cheese Straws, because Fehribach indicated they’d improve with age, so serving them 48 hours later would be no problem.

I began with 10 ounces of sharp cheddar cheese and two ounces of blue cheese along with 1-3/4 cups of flour, so these cheese straws were sure to be … cheesy!

One thing they didn’t turn out be, however … was straws.

I followed the directions precisely, rolling out the dough to a thickness of 1/4″ and then using a pizza-cutting wheel to slice strips 1/4″ inch wide (I measured!), after which I twisted each 5″-long straw into a spiral as best I could. I suspect, though I can’t be 100% sure due to the absence of any photos in the book, that I did not twist the dough into as tight a spiral as Fehribach would have liked. These were meant to be straws, after all.

But the consistency of the dough was such that I couldn’t manage more than a few gentle twists without the strip breaking, so rather than being long and thin, mine ended up, as you can see, more stick than straw.

While this means I have likely failed to properly reproduce what the cookbook calls “an icon of Southern hospitality,” don’t worry … they still taste wonderful!

Saturday morning, I turned to Voltaggio’s Lemon Cookies, which I’ve had before, not only at his restaurants, but also as a treat at one of his book signings. I hoped the fact I’d seen how they’re meant to turn out would help me better reproduce them.

Since the recipe in Home claimed it would only make 18 cookies, and I was baking for a group of writers who I knew would be hungry, I doubled up, which meant beginning with a lot of unsalted butter.

The dough came together quickly, but before the cookies could be formed, it needed to be refrigerated “for at least 4 hours, or preferably overnight.” I didn’t feel I could wait overnight, because I didn’t know whether I’d have enough time today to bake and glaze and have the glaze harden before heading to the party, so I only waited until after dinner, giving them eight hours of refrigeration before starting to bake.

And there my troubles began.

According to the recipe, I was meant to form each cookie by using “a 3/4-ounce ice cream scoop to portion the dough into balls.” But the dough was so hard, any such scoop would have surely bent or broken, and I was unable to use even a strong spoon to separate out cookie-sized chunks. I even had difficulty removing the ball of dough from the bowl!

So what I did instead, after finally freeing the dough, was weigh the entire ball, divide that by 36, slicing 27-gram chunks the way one would fudge, and then rolling each between my palms to form balls. Not quite what the recipe suggested, but it seemed to do the trick.

Then into the oven went the first dozen cookies, where they were supposed to bake for eight minutes at 300 degrees, only … when I checked them, they looked the same as they went in, still soft and doughy, and not at all “set and slightly golden brown around the edges.” I gave them another eight minutes, and they seemed no further along. So I up turned the temperature to 325 and gave them another eight minutes, and it was only then that the cookies approximated the color and texture required.

Even at the higher temperature, it still took the next two batches 20 minutes before they reached the proper state of doneness. I’m not sure whether this and the earlier hardness of the dough were due to some error I’d made when combining the ingredients or something to do with the temperature of the oven, but no matter—a taste test proved them to be delicious regardless.

After waiting half an hour for the cookies to cool, I dipped them in a lemon glaze and sprinkled them with zest, and they were ready for the party.

And now that my baking is complete, I have one final reminder for the friends I’ll be seeing this afternoon—

Spoil Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and there’ll be no cheese straws or lemon cookies for you!