cookie catastrophe

I blame the butter.

Baking cookies. Fun, right? Easy, right? I mean, this cooking thing is pretty hard, but I have been baking cookies for years. what a great way to relax! What a lovely way to spend the evening!

Peanut butter cookies. How delicious! How delightful!

I blame the butter.

You know these new kinds of butter boxes, where the sticks are shorter and wider, the boxes longer and thinner? Isn't it crazy?

When you're looking at those short little sticks of butter, doesn't it just look like so much less than it is? Like, the 1/2 cup stick looks like 1/4 cup?

Like, you really really feel inclined to add TWO?

I seriously did not figure it out until I was putting them on the pan, thinking, "these aren't holding any shape at all." Despite the fact that it tasted so much like butter, and so little like peanut, that I had already increased the amount of peanut butter -- despite the fact that it was totally the wrong color all along -- despite all of that, I never did figure out that I had added TWICE as much butter. Until that first, sad cookie went plop on the pan.

So I did the logical thing. I wailed and cried. And then I doubled everything else. But gosh, what a nightmare. Whoever invented the special order of cookie-mixing -- beat butter, beat in sugar, mix in dry stuff -- was a GENIUS. It is so much harder other ways! I know, I've tried! And what I have learned is that if you forget the butter, you have to knead it in at the end, and it is difficult and greasy. And if you double the butter, you have to knead more of everything else in at the end, and it is difficult and, believe it or not, greasy.

Huh. Who'd have thunk?

I think that, despite my very best efforts, these cookies might still turn out edible. But I sure wish I would start, you know, paying attention to things. Little things like recipes, and the markings on sticks of butter, and common sense.

Stuff like that.