Like a moron I said I’d make some cookies for a little fellowship time after a special service at church Thursday night. Why did I say that? Why did I also agree to make some phone calls for our capital campaign when I know I have bad telephone skills? Why? (I’m dealing with a lot of regret here.)
The phone calls are mostly over (two people to call back), but the cookie making was disastrous. I stand in total awe of people who bake on a regular basis. It seems to take them no time at all, where for me it is an arduous process that is usually doomed to fail. When I went to Illinois for that conference? Kim had whipped up a batch of cookies to take along. She is a teacher, a mother, and working on her doctorate for crying out loud, and she just whipped up cookies? I have to clear my calendar just to make toast.
Anyway, I didn’t want to spend all the time making chocolate chip cookies, the only one I can make with confidence, so I went for a three-ingredient “Brown Sugar Shortbread:
1 cup of butter (note the measurement)
1/2 cup of brown sugar
2 1/4 cups of flour.
Cream butter and sugar, add in flour slowly. Knead briefly, roll, cut, bake at 300 for 25 minutes.”
Lauren’s Speedy Version:
Grab a stick of butter from freezer. Nuke to thaw. Nuke it too much and melt a little of it. Dang.
Cream butter with sugar. Take a photo so you can make a post about these easy-peasy cookies.
Dump in all the flour. Start stirring. Wait! Didn’t the recipe say to add it a little at a time? Check the computer. Rats, it did. Scoop out some of the flour that looks unmixed.
Stir. Stir. Stir. That looks awfully dry. How is that much butter going to moisten that much flour?
Stir. Stir. Stir. Check the computer. One cup of butter. Check the butter wrapper.
DANG IT!!!
DANGDANGDANGIT!!!
How am I supposed to put another stick of butter in there? I scooped some other butter, mixed it with a little more sugar and threw it in the dough. I did not add the flour that I took out. There was much hemming and hawing during the process.
Roll roll roll.
Cut cut cut. (Super fun – almost made this ordeal worth it.)
Poke poke poke. (Also fun, but at this point I think I had spent three hours on these stupid things.)
Bake Bake Bake.
I made Lloyd taste one because I was afraid. He crunched into one and said, “Well, they’re hard. Also, they don’t have much flavor, but the flavor that they do have isn’t…..bad…….I guess. Why didn’t you just make chocolate chip cookies?”
They are in the trash.
I will be taking Trader Joe’s Meyer Lemon cookies in a cellophane sleeve.
“I have to clear my calendar just to make toast.” I just snorted coffee out of my nose–painful, but worth it…Thanks for making my day! 🙂
(Me too! I didn’t snort coffee, but I laughed out loud!)
Well dang.
And I can see how this would seem easier with only 3 ingredients, but the rolling out would have stopped me.
Do you think you’ll ever try making them again?
I actually think I may have made them before and dipped them in chocolate? I don’t know how they tasted either, since I don’t care for shortbread. Again, they were chosen for speed.
Mom, I’m sorry about the jello. I feel your pain!
Well…don’t feel bad.
I just made a SMALL package of Jello for carrot, pineapple salad and added two cups of boiling water and 1 cup of pineapple juice.
Guess what! It didn’t jell. That’ll teach me to trust my memory.
I also laughed out loud about toast comment – fortunately I already swallowed my drink of Dr. Pepper. Lemon cookies in cellophane sound delicious! Cookies don’t always have to be homemade.
You shouldn’t have used half the amount of butter. You should have used TWICE the amount! Mmm… butter…
I wonder what would have happened? Would the butter all run out of the cookies? Would it have made them soft? This calls for an experiment!
I think the butter packaging people should do us a favor and package their butter into halves instead of quarters. There are tons of recipes that call for 1 cup of butter, not just 1/2 cup. Who’s with me?
ME.