Cookie Fail

Last year I crossed off bucket list item #36 , be part of a cookie exchange for the holidays. I accomplished it by starting my own group exchange with a combination of family and friends, and it was a big hit! So this year I'm doing it again by popular demand - and with even more participants. The exchange is Wednesday, so I've been grocery shopping twice and spent this evening trying out my recipes.

It was huge disaster.

It started out easy enough, I (thought) I had all my ingredients, my recipes, my tools...


Recipe #1: Apricot Creams.

First I did the classic baking powder/baking soda mix up. Had to scoop it out and start over, while hubby ran to the store for the other. D'oh.

Then I didn't do a very good job making my "rounded teaspoon" sized balls - the recipe that was supposed to make 6 dozen cookies only made about 3.

And then 1/2 of those burned, four minutes before they were even supposed to be done, as I hadn't realized the racks were moved so low in the oven (Thanksgiving). Double d'oh.



That was all the first recipe. The 2nd recipe - soft lemonade cookies went slightly better. I kept the soda/powder straight, and fixed the racks in the oven, but still made the drop cookies too big so they're not that pretty. But they do taste pretty good.



I think I'll take a tip from my mother and try to find some small ice cream scoops tomorrow, and use them to make more perfect and consistent batter drops. Something like this from Target would be good:


So for tonight I've thrown in the towel - I'm still eating the ugly cookies, but I want to be sure I make the prettiest most perfect ones for my exchange, so hopefully tomorrow will go better.