Warning! This post has nothing to do with books or reading.
So let me start out by saying it is cookie season. I am not a baker so baking cookies is a challenge for me.
I bake cookies once a year during the holidays. I try to find the easiest recipes I can find. I almost always bake drop cookies. Just to be clear drop cookies are the ones that you mix up in a bowl and drop them by the spoonful onto the cookie sheet. There is no rolling or shaping involved. Basically the cookies form their shape as they bake.
Even though this sounds easy it does take a little bit of skill. There are several factors that can ruin your cookies. I have discovered them all. I follow a recipe. I cream the butter and then add the dry ingredients but some times the butter and dry ingredients just don't seem to want to cooperate with each other and I have in the past pulled out the cookie sheet only to find that the cookies have melded together to make one thin crispy cookie. It tasted fine but it was not the look or the cookie I was going for.
This year I seem to be doing ok. I prepared the dough in advance and placed it all in the refrigerator. Once all the various types of dough were made I started the baking process.
Which brings up my next challenge. Do I under cook them or let them get brown and crispy on the bottom. Each of my family members like them a different way. So I decided to do a little bit of both. Thankfully I seem to be learning the precise time to take them out of the oven so that they are slightly under cooked and therefore they are soft but not gooey. On the flip side the ones I left in the oven to get brown were not so crispy that they were almost burnt.
All in all I think it was a successful baking adventure. I baked four kinds and yes I made a batch of chocolate chip cookies so don't judge me. They are still one of the favorite cookies in my house. You can always count on the toll house recipe. So I have 12 dozen cookies that I will be bringing to friends and office mates.
My work is done until next cookie season.
