Cookie Catastrophe

I’ve made Nestle Tollhouse cookies a million times. I make them all the time with my friends, I made them while I was taking Culinary 1 and 2, and sometimes I make them by myself just because. But, the most recent time I made cookies from scratch did not go well. The recipe is like secondhand nature to me, but it just did not go as planned. The first thing that went wrong was softening the butter. I’m not sure what the recipe actually calls for (it has escaped my mind), but I took out a whole stick of butter to soften for the cookies. We were only making half of what the recipe said, so I thought that was the right amount of butter. I thought one stick was enough because that’s what I remembered, but when I put the whole stick in the bowl, my friend said that we only needed half a stick, actually. So I put half of the stick back in the fridge and just softened the half stick. That was mistake number one. I should have checked the recipe and to this day, I still can’t remember if it should have been a whole or half of a stick because I never checked the recipe. The second thing that went wrong was when I took out the brown sugar it was one giant, hard, dry block. I know that happens to brown sugar if it is stored in the air, but this was a brand new box. I still have no idea why it was in a huge chunk. We weren’t going to let that stop us, though, so we started chopping and banging, doing anything to get enough brown sugar for the recipe. After probably around 30 minutes of using knives, forks, spoons, and every other utensil we could find to chop, we only had around 1/16 of a cup. That’s not nearly enough to make cookies, and we were only making half of what the recipe said. All of the other ingredients were already in the bowl, so instead of just ending the cookies, we added extra white sugar to finish the brown sugar requirement. That was mistake number two. When the cookies came out of the oven, they looked interesting to say the least. We let them cool for a while and then tried to pick one up. It crumbled in my hands. They were the consistency of biscuits. Still, I was craving cookies, so I took a bite. They were fine, but definitely didn’t taste like normal Nestle Tollhouse cookies. After two cookies each, my friend and I were so thirsty because the cookies were dry. And crazy as it sounds, we both got stomachaches after, so something was definitely wrong with our cookies. We should read the recipe and make sure we have all the right ingredients next time! Cari W.