Saturday is the final championship dinner for the band. It is also our final state championship dinner as our youngest is a senior this year. The band always asks families to bring in the items for the dinner. I signed up to bring a gluten-free dessert and a side dish.
I decided to make chocolate chip cookies for the dessert. The side dish is going to be a tortellini pasta salad. They have to be in the band room on Saturday. Since the cookies will last longer, this evening was set aside for them, and after a stop at the grocery tomorrow, the pasta salad will be ready.
This evening though, I made a rookie mistake on the cookies.
When I bake, or cook, I try to have my mis en place ready to go. Always helps things go a little faster and more smoothly. After doing a little Internet search for a chocolate chip cookie recipe (I do that to see if anything catches my eye), I decided to just use the recipe on the back of the chocolate chip bag.
I gathered all of the ingredients, measured them out, and put it all together. The wait was for the butter to soften. A little trick I had read about, that works well, is the cut the butter into slabs so it softens faster.
The oven went on, the pans came out, parchment paper pulled from the drawer, and the cookie dough made. After scooping the dough onto the sheet pans, in the oven they went for 12-minutes.
When I took them out, they were flat as a pancake. Even after leaving them to cool on the pan for seven minutes, they were still very soft too.
I wondered what had happened. My first thought was I had used too large of a scoop. The remaining dough went into the fridge so we could have dinner.
For the second round, I used a smaller scoop and put them a little further apart. Imagine my chagrin as I watched this batch melt before my very eyes. I mean, what is going on?!
I pull the recipe out to see if I had missed an ingredient. Nope, everything had gone in the mix. Then I read the ingredient list once again, and I catch it. I know what I did wrong.
For this batch of non-gluten, I made the biggest of rookie mistakes! I misread the recipe and hadn’t caught it! The recipe called for 3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) of butter. Out of tiredness or out of something, I read that as 3 sticks of butter (1 1/2 cups) of butter.
No wonder they were melting away!
In doing a taste test though, they taste amazing (duh right, all that butter!)! The flavor is there, and the chips are there, they are just a little flat.
I’m not sure if I might remake them, or just leave them. It’s an audience of teens, so will they even notice the flatness. My guess is they will only care about the taste, and the fact they are so big.
So, maybe a fail, but not a big one. Plus a lesson learned, use not only my literacy skills, but also my math skills.
I’m going to be extra careful with the tortellini salad. Can’t have two fails in a row, can I?
Personal Reflections of a Middle-Aged Man 