Stand Mixer's Bowl's Abyss

Besides running over 8 miles today, I have done nothing but work on preparing for the bake sale on Tuesday. What do you do on Saturday to prepare for a bake sale on Tuesday? You make a lot of cookie dough. My refrigerator already is chilling a double batch of peanut butter and a batch of chocolate chip cookie dough.

To help me along, I have this wonderful KitchenAid stand mixer. We are truely a team. It mixes while I measure out the next ingredient. It is a true friend. It never fails. We go back years; coming up on 4 years to be exact. But alas, it has limits. It turns out that the mixing bowl capacity is not infinite. It just happens that the Betty Crocker's Gingerbread Cookie recipe, when doubled, is a bit too much for the mixer's bowl.

Now that you know this valuable fact, please do not try the doubling fit at home. Otherwise, you'll first find a butter/water/molasses mixture splattered all over your kitchen counter and walls. Later you will discover that counting 14 cups of flour, using a half a cup while watching West Wing is pretty much impossible. No, wait. You can count them, but the final count might not be 14. Finally, you will discover, while adding your 14th (maybe) cup of flour, that the mixer speed is terribly slow, and it is emitting an extraordinary amount of heat. It also takes an enormous effort of strength on your part to lift the head of the mixer out of the dough.

As you might guess, I will not be attempting to make a double batch of this recipe again for awhile. In the meantime, I am taking bets on how much of this dough will actually get baked before the bake sale.