Cooking Slump

I have a genetic disorder I inherited from the Queen Mother. You might call it bi-polar cooking ability affliction. In my youth, I would wake up at nine and find Mom had been cooking since six. There was black walnut coffee cake next to stacks of cookies and pancakes and popovers.

This madness would afflict Mom until at some point she would inevitably hit the wall and nothing she made turned out. The meringues would flop, puff pastry wouldn’t puff, everything was a disaster. Nothing was ever “Hmm, you’ve made better coffee cake, but this isn’t bad.” It was either “Mmmm wis ish du bess evah” (chew chew) or “Did you follow the recipe?”

So, two days ago I went to the grocery for the first time in months, because I needed to do some competitive cooking. New Guy at work brought in some Oatmeal Raisin Cookies, and while they were fine, I knew my Oatmeal Raisin Cookies could kick his cookies’ ass. I wasn’t going to bring them in, I just wanted to make them for Gary. And myself.

Well, I made them, and the first batch did not turn out right. We ate the first batch trying to diagnose the problem. Gary decided maybe they were just undercooked. So I, of course, burnt the second.

Instead of recognizing that I was in the Cooking Slump phase of the familial cooking disorder, I thought, “I can do this right.” This time I measured all the ingredients carefully. When I got to the shortening I looked at it carefully … and touched it to my tongue…and checked the expiration date. 10/01/06. “Thump” goes the shortening into the trash. Fine, I thought, instead of half shortening and half butter, I’ll use all butter. Melted, not creamed, because the shortening was supposed to be melted. Rookie mistake.

That batch looked like this:

Mmmm. Grease cookies. But did I stop there? No, my hubris was so great I thought “Oh, just cook the dough that’s left, but cook them faster! So they don’t have time to spread!” Yes! I know! And you think, “Moron, she’s going to burn the cookies!”

So, after I put the last batch of cookies in and took a little nap I swear to God, I leapt out of bed screaming “Cookies!” Cookies were not burnt. I had somehow turned off the oven after the previous batch. Cookies were just melted into a puddle on the bottom of the sheet. “I can save them!” I thought heroically, not considering a DNR for the cookies because I am God. So of course, I turned the oven on and calculated that with preheating and cooking they would require 15 minutes. Resulting in:

(That would have been a more impressive photo of a burnt skating rink of charred cookie batter, but Gary got into them last night and picked out the edible parts.)

The first step is admitting you have a problem, right? No cooking for me for a few weeks until the slump lifts.