The Baking Comedy

Years ago, before my daughter married and left me, we enjoyed baking together. We baked many good things, but also had our share of fails. I like to imagine the Lord calling our grandmas, great-grandmas, and maybe even our great-great grandmas to peer over the balcony of heaven for a night of baking comedy.

Shae and I wanted a dessert and decided on chocolate chip cookies, chocolate chunk to be exact, since we had some chocolate squares about to become out-dated. As I chopped the chocolate and the nuts, my daughter took care of the rest of the recipe. The grandmas must have been proud when they saw Shae mixing by hand instead of using the electric mixer. For some reason she enjoyed the challenge.

There didn’t seem to be as much dough as usual. I received the blame since I was dropping giant-sized cookie dough mounds on my sheet while Shae made small tea-party sized dough lumps.

We put the first two cookie sheets in the oven and something strange began to happen. The dough was melting before our eyes. When the timer told us to take the cookies out of the oven, what a surprise we had. Shae had warned me that my huge cookie mounds would run together, but this was more than we expected. The cookie sheet was one large cookie glob. The twelve had become one.

“Something is wrong,” I brilliantly announced.

I was quick to inform Shae it couldn’t be my fault. All I did was chop the chocolate and nuts.

We gave the recipe a second look.

“I may have forgotten one of the cups of flour,” Shae said quietly.

Taking another look at the cookie sheet filled with one large, greasy cookie, we began to laugh. After we composed ourselves, Shae added more flour to the remaining unbaked dough.

What a difference one cup of flour can make.

Shae and I thought it was hilarious, but we may have been an embarrassment to the wonderful bakers who have gone before us.

The correctly baked cookies were eaten first, and then we ate pieces of what we decided to call “gourmet chocolate chunkies”. Pretty yummy, though not very attractive. We had made a memory, and may have invented a new dessert.

I am doubtful we would have made the grandmas proud, but maybe we would have made them laugh.