A couple years ago, I made a batch of Hazelnut Chocolate Chip Cookies that were way tasty. Unique but not weird. I thought I could recreate my success this year while sidestepping four rabbits and a toddler. I had great plans to freeze the dough and give it as Christmas gifts.
Well, if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans. After collecting a year's worth of empty containers for gifting, and stopping by at least four stores to collect my ingredients (Why does no one sell Heath bits anymore?), I got a late start on the dough. These days, my brain is firing at about 75% on a good day so starting anything at all after dinner is ill-advised. I used an app to double the recipe, but still managed to muff up the ingredient ratios. Upon seeing my dough overflowing the mixer, I apparently emitted such a sound of distress that my husband came running down the stairs.
A few minutes later, I put my tester cookies on what I thought was parchment paper but was actually wax paper. I saw smoke coming off the sheet and realized my error. Husband returned to stand underneath the smoke detector with a towel in a preemptive effort to avoid waking baby. But it gets worse.
My dough seemed dry but I wasn't sure why and thought I better quit while I was ahead, so I chilled it overnight in the refrigerator. It wasn't until the next evening, when I was typing up the recipe, that I realized I'd not only left out half the butter, but skipped the granulated sugar altogether! As most bakers know, sometimes the order and combinations of ingredients does matter to the final product. It was too late to cream the butter and sugar, so I just tried to let the dough come to room temperature, added what butter I had at home (more on that later), then gradually added the sugar. This took several rounds in the mixer as the dough mass was at this point beginning to resemble a medium-sized dog and I had to chop it up to fit.
Dear reader, my 24-hours-after-the-fact fix did not really help. The dough tasted salty (probably the unmarked chunks of salted butter I cobbled together from the fridge), but I held out hope the baked product would be more palatable.
Yesterday I did some large-batch Christmas cookie baking with my aunt and mom. I brought a few frozen balls of my doughstrositiy, which was at this point confused with protein balls, and we baked them for at least the recommended 15 minutes. The texture was weirdly oily and salty. My aunt said they were salty but she liked them. My mom and I just thought they were salty period. I couldn't be convinced that these were salty in a good way. We aren't talking well balanced flakes of sea salt on a creamy caramel topping vibes. We are talking older lady on GBBO mixes up her salt and sugar and Paul Hollywood throws his disapproving look across the tent. I mean, technically they were edible. But not something I'd give as a gift. Or even something I'd keep to chip away at myself. Slowly consuming eight dozen catastrophe cookies in 2022 doesn't really seem like a good New Year's Resolution.
So, it's back to the drawing board for this year's homemade Christmas gifts. I may try to make another (undoubled) batch, or I may just punt for now. At least my start-to-finish baking disaster was only witnessed by our two short-term foster buns, a white male lop and a brown female lion-lop we have named either Han and Leia or Sugar and Spice. They are currently being housed in our downstairs bathroom off the kitchen, livin' that sweet next-to-the-toilet life. It is, apparently, an upgrade from the previous living conditions from which they were rescued. It's actually a pretty quiet and untrafficked area, and we've been able to keep our toddler from terrorizing them, though I can't speak to the effect of my yelps of doughy distress over the last week.
It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.
What are you all baking for the holidays this year?
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