Worst Cookies Ever

Today I got up the courage to bake cookies. I will admit that I was quite nervous; the ingredients I purchased are not what I am used to, and my oven contains only a top burner, not exactly a baker’s dream. But despite these challenges, I thought I was ready. I scoured the grocery stores and finally found brown sugar that looks and feels like brown sugar, icing sugar (albeit vanilla flavoured and in a small container for dusting on confectionaries), and baking soda. I started off with a recipe for chocolate chip cookies: nothing gets easier and it does not require too many substitutions for things that I cannot find here. I needed to vary only the fats. They do not have baking margarine here, so I used all butter instead of half butter and half margarine. No big deal, right? Except I have my doubts about the butter here. While it tastes wonderful, it is not creamy, hence is hard to work into a batter.

Nerveless, I was ready to give it a try. I whipped the sugars into the butter with all my might. The large, moist eggs went in well. So did the dry ingredients. Next, stir in the chocolate pieces (no chocolate chips in France). The batter tasted yummy…so far so good. I chilled the batter and had my baking stone up to oven temperature. These two key steps ‘always’ ensure nice, plump cookies. But as soon as I spooned the first bit of batter onto the pan, I knew things were not looking good. The butter seemed to melt and run immediately out of the batter. I threw the cookies into the oven before they melted too much. They did not do much better in the oven. Each piece of batter melted into the others, forming flat rounds. The edges started to brown significantly, so I removed the pan from the oven. The outsides were certainly cooked, but the tops were raw. And not the chewy, good cookie raw: a melted butter raw. But looks are only one thing. Taste is most important. Unfortunately, they do not taste much better than they look. Overly buttery, and my number one pet peeve of bad cookies: I could taste the baking soda. Yuck!

So what do I try next? Muffins, a cake, pizza dough. Something has to work, right?