The Great Cookie Disaster of 2011

Apparently I truly did leave part of my brain in Florida.

My goal was to a) make cookies as a thank-you gift for our neighbor who watered our plants while we were gone and b) try a dessert recipe from my new cookbook: Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian.  (Side note: this cookbook really doesn't have a lot in the way of desserts, probably because most desserts are already veg.)

This is what resulted:

Oatmeal apple cookies that I thought were a bit weird...

 I thought, "Hmmm....Something doesn't seem quite right but..."  I generally still thought I made them correctly and that this was an "Ehh" recipe.  Until I tried making chocolate chip cookies and this happened:

Remnants of chocolate chip cookies

Here's how it played out.  I put a few cookies on the pan for a test round in the oven.  Brent and I sit down on the couch and a few minutes later smell cookies.  A good start.  Then...I smell burning.  This makes no sense as the cookies still had minutes left to bake.  I open the oven (sorry I have no picture of this...wasn't exactly the first thing I thought of when I opened the oven) and discovered my cookie sheet covered in a thin layer of cookie muck, which had run off the edge and burned on the bottom of the oven.  I scooped it into a bowl and Brent ate it over ice cream... at least it didn't go to waste like the apple oatmeal cookies.  I now realized my mistake.

Sorry Mark.  These are all on me. 

You see, I used the Earth Balance baking sticks of vegan butter.  I've used these before, but had apparently forgotten that while they almost resemble 1/2 sticks of butter, they are actually equal to 1 stick (or 1/2 cup).  They are a different shape and that threw me off.  So, I had doubled the butter by mistake.  Once I discovered this, I reexamined the oatmeal cookies.  They came out of the oven sort of resembling a cookie, but as they cooled, they really became mushy and didn't taste very good.

I did salvage the rest of the chocolate chip dough with some sketchy math, adding in more ingredients.  I doubled the butter so I needed to double the other ingredients, minus the cookies I had already made from the dough.  Eventually I succeeded in that the cookies at least looked like cookies.  They were a bit tough, but hey, I know at least one person on my couch who will eat them!

I also tried the oatmeal apple cookies again...more on that later!