We're Makin' Cookies

We have in our midst a Cookie Goddess. Others have vied for the title, and failed miserably.

Pam put on quite the show last night. I swear, anyone that can make cookies without the following things deserves to be put up on a pedestal and worshipped:

• Measuring cups (and we all know how important proportions are in baking)


• Electric mixer (poor Brian’s right arm is going to be mighty strong)


• Cookie sheet


• Recipe


• A properly functioning oven

“Kent, do you have anything I can measure with?”
“No, I could cut a milk carton in half and that would give us 2 cups. Oh wait, it stinks”
“Anything will do. Just give me a cup or something.”
“Here, try this mug.”
After putting flour in. “That looks like a cup, right?”
“Sure, why not?”

Baking is this finicky art full of chemical reactions that can go wrong if something as simple as the oven temperature isn’t right. Pam, showing an absolute blatant disregard for convention, goes and eyeballs everything. Then right before she was about to mix it all together, she realized she forgot baking soda (that’s generally a helpful ingredient in cookies). Brian and I were in charge of the actual baking, employing a gas oven that neither of us had used.

Lighting a gas oven is kind of like playing Russian Roulette: there’s always going to be that one time where something goes wrong and you end up without a single hair on your body. Brian and I were playing that little game last night. Not having worked much with gas ovens, I’ve never really mastered the art of lighting them. Brian was a bit more seasoned and offered his suggestion:

“Get me some toilet paper. We’ll light it and then drop it down the hole.”
“Ok, man.”
Brian lit the toilet paper, I turned the gas on, but it didn’t work.

Then we tried a more “in your face” approach. I think we both had our heads in the oven with the gas on a couple of times.

“I can smell and hear the gas. Why isn’t the friggin’ thing lighting?”
“I don’t know, Kent. That’s a weird oven you got. Let’s try lighting it from the bottom with the lighter.”

Finally it worked and we had ourselves a nice heated oven. But we soon learned that the gas never actually turns off, so there is a constant heat source from below. And as we’ve probably all learned, cookies aren’t exactly friendly towards such a phenomenon.

For a cookie sheet, we brought out the drip pan from the oven and covered it with some tin foil. Pam did the honour of scooping the dough onto our makeshift sheet, while I squished the little blobs with a fork. Then, into the oven the rack went (this required Brian and I using sketchy rags as “heat-proof” gloves).

The finished product was something of legends. A crisp, yet soft butter cookie with dark chocolate chunks. Sweet, but not too sweet. Just right.