What are you making babe? It smells really good!" -Z
"Well... I'm not really sure." - Karen
My mother is an AMAZING cook. Really. She can cook, bake, prepare, grill, season, or sauté anything perfectly with ease. She enjoys it and has been perfecting those skills since she was a teenager (or maybe earlier than that.)
I am not.
I can cook. I follow directions and usually come out with something edible, (and sometimes even tasty) but cooking is not my thing, like it is for my mother. One of my family's favorite stories is from when I was in 5th grade. One evening when she was going to be home late, Mom left me with instructions to finish up dinner. Long story short: Dinner was fine, but I tried to make cookies to surprise her and somehow ended up quadrupling (yes, quad... like 4 times) the batch. We ate those cookies for a long, long, time.
My husband knew this before he asked me to marry him and as we like to tease each other, there are #notakebacks in this marriage. Yesterday I was at the store picking up a few things and saw a box of fun-fetti cake (my very favorite kind) on sale. I tossed it in the cart intending to make a batch of cake-mix cookies sometime this week.
Last night after dinner Z had some paperwork he had to deal with so I decided to whip up the cake mix cookies for a quick dessert. There were directions on the back of the box for turning the mix into soft cookies and I followed them exactly!
I have no idea what happened! I followed the direction, I carefully measured out the additional ingredients. I made sure no egg shells fragments were lost in the bowl. I used my fancy-smancy kitchen aid stand mixer with the hook attachment that I've "cleaned" (read: "licked") for my mother for years. But something just wasn't right.
I couldn't get it to form dough-balls to place on my lightly greased, air-bake cookie sheets. It was super sticky and just smushed all over my hands. (I didn't actually mind that too much as it just meant I got to lick a full cookie's worth of batter/dough/sweet stuff from my hand. And yes mom! I washed my hands before touching the dough again.)
I thought of a solution... an ice cream scoop! Something else I've seen my mother do. She sometimes makes these huge monster cookies by scooping the batter out with an ice cream scoop. What could be better than a giant cake-mix cookie?
It seemed to go well. I was pleased with my ability to out-wit a sticky ball of dough. Then I opened the oven door. They hadn't flattened out like I was expecting. They had actually kind-of puffed up like little balloons.
This was, of course, when my husband walked into the kitchen. "What are you making babe? It smells really good!"
I pulled the oven door down and let him peek in as I giggled at myself. "Well, I'm not really sure. It started as a cake, but then I wanted it to be cookies... and now I'm just not positive what is happening in there."
We laughed and studied the little puff-balls for a bit. I decided they were made with the ingredients for cake and cookies so they couldn't be bad. Zac named them "cookie loaves," and went back to his work.
"Cookie loaves" fit pretty well. They were actually really pretty when I first took them out of the oven, but deflated a lot as they cooled. They did smell delicious so I decided to go ahead and serve them. I covered up the deflation with fresh cut strawberries and treated them a bit like a short-cake.
They actually are really good. It's the strangest thing. The outer shell is the consistency of a soft cookie, but the inside quarter inch is fluffy like a cake.
As we ate our cookie loaves and strawberries and watched an episode of Once Upon A Time... Laughing at my dessert creation, I asked Zac if he liked the adventure that is living with me. I don't remember exactly what he said because it ended with a one of those good kisses. (Girls, you know what I'm talking about, the kind that make you forget that anything else is going on in the world.) Then we finished our cookie loaves and watched Prince Charming swear that he will always find Snow White. :-)
"Well... I'm not really sure." - Karen
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
My mother is an AMAZING cook. Really. She can cook, bake, prepare, grill, season, or sauté anything perfectly with ease. She enjoys it and has been perfecting those skills since she was a teenager (or maybe earlier than that.)
I am not.
I can cook. I follow directions and usually come out with something edible, (and sometimes even tasty) but cooking is not my thing, like it is for my mother. One of my family's favorite stories is from when I was in 5th grade. One evening when she was going to be home late, Mom left me with instructions to finish up dinner. Long story short: Dinner was fine, but I tried to make cookies to surprise her and somehow ended up quadrupling (yes, quad... like 4 times) the batch. We ate those cookies for a long, long, time.
My husband knew this before he asked me to marry him and as we like to tease each other, there are #notakebacks in this marriage. Yesterday I was at the store picking up a few things and saw a box of fun-fetti cake (my very favorite kind) on sale. I tossed it in the cart intending to make a batch of cake-mix cookies sometime this week.
Last night after dinner Z had some paperwork he had to deal with so I decided to whip up the cake mix cookies for a quick dessert. There were directions on the back of the box for turning the mix into soft cookies and I followed them exactly!
I have no idea what happened! I followed the direction, I carefully measured out the additional ingredients. I made sure no egg shells fragments were lost in the bowl. I used my fancy-smancy kitchen aid stand mixer with the hook attachment that I've "cleaned" (read: "licked") for my mother for years. But something just wasn't right.
I couldn't get it to form dough-balls to place on my lightly greased, air-bake cookie sheets. It was super sticky and just smushed all over my hands. (I didn't actually mind that too much as it just meant I got to lick a full cookie's worth of batter/dough/sweet stuff from my hand. And yes mom! I washed my hands before touching the dough again.)
I thought of a solution... an ice cream scoop! Something else I've seen my mother do. She sometimes makes these huge monster cookies by scooping the batter out with an ice cream scoop. What could be better than a giant cake-mix cookie?
It seemed to go well. I was pleased with my ability to out-wit a sticky ball of dough. Then I opened the oven door. They hadn't flattened out like I was expecting. They had actually kind-of puffed up like little balloons.
This was, of course, when my husband walked into the kitchen. "What are you making babe? It smells really good!"
I pulled the oven door down and let him peek in as I giggled at myself. "Well, I'm not really sure. It started as a cake, but then I wanted it to be cookies... and now I'm just not positive what is happening in there."
We laughed and studied the little puff-balls for a bit. I decided they were made with the ingredients for cake and cookies so they couldn't be bad. Zac named them "cookie loaves," and went back to his work.
"Cookie loaves" fit pretty well. They were actually really pretty when I first took them out of the oven, but deflated a lot as they cooled. They did smell delicious so I decided to go ahead and serve them. I covered up the deflation with fresh cut strawberries and treated them a bit like a short-cake.
They actually are really good. It's the strangest thing. The outer shell is the consistency of a soft cookie, but the inside quarter inch is fluffy like a cake.
As we ate our cookie loaves and strawberries and watched an episode of Once Upon A Time... Laughing at my dessert creation, I asked Zac if he liked the adventure that is living with me. I don't remember exactly what he said because it ended with a one of those good kisses. (Girls, you know what I'm talking about, the kind that make you forget that anything else is going on in the world.) Then we finished our cookie loaves and watched Prince Charming swear that he will always find Snow White. :-)
Ha! Reminds me of some of Russ' comments: This is great, but can you do it again??? All's well that ends well--in kisses especially ;) From Alice Sharrock
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