I came to a startling conclusion recently, well two really. First, my oldest child will be flying the coop in a mere four years. *Sniff. Second, I don’t make enough cookies. Sure, I bake around the holidays, but I think cookies should be eaten year-round. Don’t you?
When these two thoughts collided in my brain I had to get my bad self into the kitchen, ASAP.
I decided to bake Snickerdoodles and Monster Cookies. I figured these were simple desserts I could make without too much trauma or drama. Silly baking me.
First, the good news.
The Snickerdoodles turned out fantastic. This delightful cinnamon and sugar concoction has been a family favorite for years. My mom once baked them for me while I was living overseas. She FedExed them to me only to have them arrive two weeks later. Yeah, they were a little hard by the time they landed in my mailbox. But, the damage was easily overcome with some hot chocolate and a perfected dipping technique.
I’m sure I have the old family recipe tucked away somewhere but, I was too lazy to look for it so I headed to Pinterest (of course.) The recipe I found was delicious. The cookies were chewy and soft and the recipe was simple to follow. Even my husband commented on how good they were. Now, that’s saying somethin’ because while he’ll eat just about anything, he’s a bit of a cookie snob.
Yummo! I highly recommend these.
Now, for the not-so-good news.
I was jonesin’ for some Monster Cookies. You know, the kind with M&M candies and chocolate chips and peanut butter. I mean how hard could it be? It never occurred to me that you could mess these up.
Guess what? You can. These turned out terrible. I mean really, truly horrible.
Again, I headed to Pinterest where I searched for a recipe. There were hundreds to choose from and I naively picked one. I’m not going to tell you which one I picked. But, I can tell you they were a complete disaster. I’m no Martha Stewart, but it seems to me that the liquid to dry ingredients ratio was way off. Those things never even settled in the oven. They just stayed all balled up.
Yup, those beautiful nuggets there are almost completely cooked. In my defense, I followed the recipe to the tee and still failed. I even smashed them down with a fork but they were so dry you needed a gallon of milk to get one down. Oy!
I had a little dough left over so I added some egg and milk to it to see if that would help but, you guessed it, it just made them cakey and extremely unsightly. Trust me, you are happy I’m not sharing a picture. They were not pretty.
So, back to the drawing board, I went. I found another recipe on Pinterest and this one was right on the money. I will definitely be making these ones again. The flavors were perfectly blended, the oatmeal and peanut butter came together like Kate and William, and they tasted like heaven. I deem them a rousing success.
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The recipe made so many I had to freeze almost half of them because they wouldn’t all fit in my adorable camper cookie jar!
When I had my deep thoughts about my teenager and baking I had no idea my adventures would be so varied. I mean really, you’d think basic cookies would be easy, but no, baking Jedi, the dark side exists even in cookie land. Now, I’m off to see what other baking adventures I can find.
Do you have a favorite Snickerdoodle or Monster Cookie recipe? Leave a link to the recipe in the comments. I might just give it a try.
Photo by Rai Vidanes on Unsplash
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