Cookies

Last August before my sister headed back to college, we decided to have a girl's night. I was going to help her finish packing, then we were going to make cookies and watch a movie.

We got her car all loaded up and set to work making some super delicious chocolate chip cookies. Yum!

Now, the most successful cooks...and anyone with a brain...check their ingredient supply before they get started. We may have been a little overly confident (that's a key word in this story) with our cookie making skills though, because we completely blew that off.

Heidi got all the supplies and ingredients and we started measuring and mixing. Everything was going smoothly until we realized we didn't have any brown sugar. (I'd say it went downhill from there, but it pretty much immediately started going downhill, right off the bat.)

We Googled how to substitute for brown sugar, and thankfully we had what we needed to do it! I started measuring the molasses (which is an insanely slow and pain-staking process) and had only done one tablespoon when Heidi knocked my hand away and confidently picked up the molasses bottle.

Heidi: I've got this.
Me: Are you sure? It might be better if we just measure it...
Heidi: No, no. I've done this plenty of times before. Just start measuring the sugar or something.

And before I could stop her, she turned the bottle over and without hesitating, started squeezing molasses into the bowl.

Confidently. Oh, so confidently.

Me: Whoa, whoa, whoa! Don't you think that's enough?? Heidi, you should maybe stop now!
Heidi: Don't worry. I'm really good at guessing amounts. (She's always so confident!)
Me: Okay, if you're sure...
Heidi: *Looks at me dead in the eye with this weird, confident look in her eye, which freaked me out and shut me up*
Me: Yep, you've got this.

She finally decided there was enough molasses in the bowl. We added everything else and stirred it all up. She tasted some of it and the look on her face didn't give me much hope.

Me: How is it?
Heidi: Hmmm...I think there's something wrong with the recipe...
Me: What? Let me taste it...
Heidi: Well?
Me: Definitely too much molasses. That's disgusting.
Heidi: Oh crap. What should we do??
(At this point, she didn't really care what I thought. She just started throwing more flour, sugar, etc. into the bowl, willy nilly. What started as a single batch turned into a triple batch.)

We stirred it some more...and...
Heidi: Nope. Still gross.

That's when I decided to help out. I knew we needed to have something to help lessen the taste of molasses...but what?

Oatmeal! So I threw some of that in there...and it was STILL gross.
Peanut butter, maybe? Why not? (At this point we were super desperate and ready to be done with these cookies.)

Finally, with the combination of peanut butter and oatmeal, the molasses wasn't as noticeable. To be clear, they were still not good. AT ALL. But they were tolerable.

We baked them, watched our movie in bits and pieces, and tried to force down the occasional cookie.

What started off as a single batch of chocolate chip cookies was now a triple batch of molasses/oatmeal/peanut butter/chocolate chip cookies.
That were gross. (I mean, awful. No one even pretended to like them. They weren't even fake nice about it.)
That my dad didn't even like. (Which says a WHOLE lot about how they tasted.)
That stayed in the freezer for a long, long time. (I think Rachel's the only one who liked them.)
That didn't end up going to college with Heidi. (I can't really blame her!)

What did I learn from this? Basically...to NOT let Heidi deviate from the recipe or have control of substituting ingredients.
And to not make cookies.
Just ever.