So I have to get ready for the matinee of Harvey at Ilion Little Theatre (did I mention I was in a play?)(for those of you just tuning in, yes, I have, several times). Steven is at work. I feel stressed. I guess what I’m saying is, Lame Post Week Continues.
I guess I never declared this Lame Post Week, but I think I did mention that my blog might become All Harvey All The Time or some such nonsense. Be that as it may, I did try to have a cooking, or rather a baking adventure prior to my theatre preparations for the day.
While perusing Women’s Day magazine this morning (June 2012 issue), I discovered what purported to be “the simplest cookies you ever made.” I looked at the magazine just now to make that quote and found my error: I thought it said the EASIEST cookies I ever made. It does claim the cookies are yummy, my favorite flavor. I thought I would surprise Steven and give them a try.
I did some grocery shopping after I dropped him off at work, so made sure I had a big jar of peanut butter. I do love peanut butter. I eat it almost every morning on a banana. Yum. Back home I did some laundry and dithered about washing the dishes before I began baking (decided to wait; after all I was only going to dirty more dishes).
After preheating the oven to 350 degrees and locating my hand mixer, I measured out a cup of peanut butter. Boy, is that stuff sticky. Then 3/4 cup packed light brown sugar. The brown sugar was so lumpy as to be difficult to pack. I trusted the mixer to break up the lumps and did the best I could. I was forced to do a little math, though, at which I am not reliable, because I have no 3/4 cup measure. I thought 1/2 plus 1/4 equals 3/4. Phew, that wasn’t so hard was it? I used the same calculation for the 3/4 tsp baking soda. And looked at the recipe three times to be sure it was teaspoon not tablespoon.
I didn’t have large eggs, so I used a medium and took a spoon to scrape all the white out of the shells. A friend once told me that a baker’s dozen was 13, because bakers scraped all the white out of the shell and it made a whole other egg. I didn’t know if that would make the correct amount of egg, but as usual, I hoped for the best.
Those are all the ingredients in the recipe, but the picture looked like the cookies had white chocolate chips. I added dark chocolate chips. Some people make a recipe the correct way before experimenting. Apparently I do not.
It was surprisingly easy to mix with the hand mixer. I was right about the lumps. It was less easy getting the peanut buttery stuff off the beaters, but I did my best. I used a regular spoon to drop onto the baking sheets, which I used cooking spray on because I did not have the parchment paper the recipe called for. The recipe said “level teaspoonfuls,” but whatever. The recipe also said “makes 5 dozen,” so I guess I made mine too big. No matter. They were in the oven and I waited 8 of the 8 to 10 minutes.
So much for my bright experiments: whether it was the medium egg or the chocolate chips, the cookies fell apart as I took them off the baking sheet. How annoying! Well, perhaps they would taste delicious after they cooled. Hmmm…. they didn’t taste bad, but they continued to fall apart. Also, they gunked up my mouth remarkably like eating straight peanut butter by the spoonful (um, not that I ever do that).
I had had a vision of bringing some to Steven when I pick him up from work, but I fear they wiould be too messy. Also, we’re about to do a play; we probably had better not gunk up our mouths too much. I had earlier had an idea of bringing cookies to share with the other actors. I remembered halfway through getting the peanut butter out of the jar that at least one cast member has a peanut allergy. I knew I should have gone with Nestle Tollhouse.
Mohawk Valley Girl 