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| I'm sure I must have misunderstood Martha Stewart's directions. These cookies are going to the birds. |
A quarter of a century ago (sounds longer than 25 years), I was a habitual and damn good cookie baker. It was a good entertainment for a young child, while teaching measuring skills too -- that was my mother's take on baking when my sister and I were little. The child in question has grown up with excellent measuring skills, but I'm not sure he's still familiar with the ones needed for successful cookie baking. Seems I'm not either.
Last Sunday I decided to crack open a new bag of flour and make peanut butter cookies. Rather than climb up on the kitchen step stool to bring down my trusty, but now under-used, Betty Crocker cookbook, I looked up an online Martha Stewart recipe. Looked familiar, with the usual ingredients (peanut butter, butter, egg, brown sugar but not too much of it, flour, baking soda). I added a bit of vanilla because it seemed wrong not to include it.
As I whipped through the baking routine, I thought with great satisfaction that I must have improved my efficiency in the last two decades, as I cleaned dishes during the time the cookies were in the oven, and prepared a third sheet as well, ending up with exactly the number (48) of cookies Martha said I'd get. I was feeling that my long professional career, filled with multitasking and coordinated tasks, was paying off in the kitchen. I wondered for a only a second or so whether 18-22 minutes wasn't a little long for a batch of cookies.
My self congratulatory interlude ended abruptly when I realized that the cookies were all over baked. Some were even a little burned on the bottom. I scraped off the dry crumbs on the bottom of most of the cookies and immediately put half of them in one of my bird feeders. Over the week, Bob and I have each had a couple of cookie pieces each day, but the rest, smelling a little charred, will go to the birds, who attacked the first batch with great enthusiasm. I can't believe that Martha was wrong but didn't have enough energy to recheck the baking time.
Betty Crocker is coming down to counter level.
