Many of you may have read slept through my recent posting titled Wannabe Kitchenista. Apparently I haven’t yet given up the yearning to master all things kitchen since yesterday morning found me in the kitchen at the way-too-early-on-a-Sunday-morning time of 8:47 a.m, setting up shop to bake seven dozen (yikes!) oatmeal cookies for a cookie exchange the same day. I had at least four hours to accomplish this task, so piece of cake cookie, right?
I had the foresight to mix the batter the night before (industrious, aren’t I?), so all I had left to do was prepare teaspoon-size balls and start baking. Our stove runs cooler than the temperature I had to set, so after carefully bringing Batch #1 to completion, I determined that I would need exactly 12 minutes of baking time to get soft and chewy cookies.
Everything went fine for Batch #1-5. [Yay, me!] Just two more to go. And Nancy, the host of this soiree, said one batch was actually for me to take home, so I figured if I screwed up Batch #7, it was no great loss, right? I put Batch #6 into the oven and decided 12 minutes was plenty of time for me to check my e-mail really quickly.
Mistake #1. A minute of e-mail time turns into several minutes of blogging and then I remember the cookies. In my little cooking-challenged brain, I thought, “The timer will have gone off; the cookies might cook awhile longer in the residual heat, but the oven isn’t still actually on, right?”
Misguided Notion #1. It dawns on me at this point that the timer doesn’t actually turn the stove off; it’s simply an indicator to take your creation out of the oven. Duh. Yes, I’m sure that deep down I knew this fact. Fortunately, no smoke detector had gone off and the kitchen wasn’t overcome by noxious fumes yet, either (although I did see a tad bit of heat rising from the top of the oven).
I opened the door and saw the blackest cookies I have ever seen. Rock hard and black as coal. Culinary weapons, they were, like throwing stars straight out of a Bond flick. So, what was I, a guest at the “7 dozen, please” cookie exchange party, to do? I had to make another two batches from scratch. Lesson learned, I stayed put for the next 24 minutes, monitoring them diligently.
I toted my 84 cookies to the exchange, made some new friends, and let my host’s husband have my batch of oatmeal cookies. I don’t want to see oatmeal cookies ever again. What did I learn from this little experience?
Baking + e-mailing = throwing stars.
© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.
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Darn…Cindy, I thought you were going to show me how to make some ‘no-bake’ oatmeal cookies! I was waiting for you to say that after you’d refrigerated the dough they were firm enough to eat, as is! Drat. I’m no Kitchenista either & am always looking for an easy-way out;-) PS Hours can literally fly by in the ‘online world’…in what seems like just a few minutes. It gets scary sometimes!
Jan—if you ever find a recipe for no-bake cookies, PLEASE forward it to me. You remember the days when we were little and we could ACTUALLY EAT RAW COOKIE DOUGH? I looked at that dough longingly on Sunday. Ah, those were the days. On the evening news a day before, they had a newsbit on not eating cookie dough and why it was bad for you. I always thought it as because of the addition of the raw egg. Apparently it’s due to the flour, or so they speculate. Flour is an agricultural product that isn’t as regulated as other items. Who knew? Good thing we’re both great at gardening, huh? 😉
As a youngster I cleaned the cookie mixing bowl one finger-load at a time (the social finger of the right hand). I mean, like, you know, when I was finished loading and licking the sweet dough and the wayward chocolate bits from my finger, the bowl could be returned unwashed to the cabinet shelf.
I estimate that in my early preteen years I consumed enough raw cookie dough that had the cookies been baked and allowed to accumulate, they would have kept several Girl Scouts busy delivering cookies for several days, and it in no way affected me, affected me, affected me . . .
Nice photos and a great narrative. By the way, are you sure the black cookies were not enhanced with Mary Jane? I remember (vaguely) that such enhancement darkened them – some might consider them tainted, of course.
Hey, daughter Number 2, I’m joking, I’m joking!