Chocolate Chip Cookie: Fail.

The kids started back to school today. Xander will be going into 2nd grade and Grace and Greta started kindergarten! Which is definitely a big deal and I'll blog about that later. After I dropped them off and Marie and I had colored, played games, read stories, and had snacks, I started feeling a little sentimental about all this free time I had today. (Only 1 kid=free time.) I had the brilliant idea to make cookies for the big kids with Marie. Wouldn't that make them feel all loved and special when they came home from the first day of school? I would be just like June Cleaver!

But I had to hurry because I needed to get the cookies finished before Marie's nap which needed to happen pretty soon. We made those cookies super fast! Marie was so excited! We watched the cookies as they cooked and I could tell right away something was wrong. They were really flat. The chocolate chips were like mountains compared to the cookies in the pan. And the cookies were spreading way too much and running into each other. I knew it was bad. I had noticed the cookie dough didn't seem as thick as usual but has attributed it to me melting the butter instead of using naturally softened butter. But these cookies were way too bad for that. I went back over everything in my head and finally figured it out.



This is what happens when you leave a cup of flour out of chocolate chip cookies. It is the remains of about 3 dozen cookies scraped off of 3 pans. It has been a long time since I have had a classic Melanie recipe fail. I had been in such a hurry that I had made bigger than usual cookies and crammed as many as I could onto three pans into the oven at once. These are all the cookies scraped off onto one pan after they cooled. They actually tasted sort of yummy if you get past the looks. Less flour + more butter and sugar= more yummy. In a greasy sort of way. But I managed to salvage a little of the dough I hadn't used by mixing some guestimated flour in and making it in half a brownie pan. I didn't have enough left for a whole pan and the cookie pans were all used up and way too covered in baked on mess to use. They turned out ok and tasted good but weren't quite as impressive as mounds of freshly baked cookies waiting for the kids when they got home. I guess I am no June Cleaver or Betty Crocker. Maybe more of a Lucy or a Jill Taylor. The kids were very nice and told me they appreciated the effort.

These are the good ones: