Oh, for the love of Pete!

This weekend has had some truly disastrous baking events. Monday evening is our Grandparents’ Tea at preschool, and though the children will make some brownies on Monday morning, I know that we will also ‘sample’ them right away and they will be gone. That’s ok, because I always make back-up food ahead of time.

I started Saturday evening and made some oatmeal/craisin cookies (stupidly not using this recipe) while watching the new episode of Doctor Who – with kittens biting my feet as I stood stirring in the living room. Unfortunately, when I got to the dry ingredients I realized I had only seven grains of baking soda. I tried subbing a smidgen of baking powder (which is made of baking soda and cream of tartar), but it made the cookies too poofy and my stupid oven won’t brown things right. First batch of cookies: ruined. (no photo)

After church on Sunday we made our regular trip to Wal-Mart where I bought more supplies. I thought I’d make cake mix cookies since they’re so easy (box of cake mix, egg, soft stick of butter, a dash of water if needed), but also bought tubes of pre-made dough as back-up. (I was not in the mood to make anything from scratch again, especially since we needed to be in Lincoln for choir and some Lincoln Lutheran stuff.) I made a batch of chocolate cake mix cookies and half a batch of lemon cake mix cookies and admired them cooling on the counter, delicately sprinkled with powdered sugar. I needed to reload my tea strainer/sugar sprinkler, and as I dipped it back into the ‘sugar’ container….. I realized I had used cornstarch.

I tried brushing it off – no good. I tried tasting one. Barf. Imagine eating a cookie coated with unscented baby powder. Grrrrrrr!!!!!

Thank goodness for the dough logs. They saved my bacon. (Also the crackers and pretzels I have since purchased.)