The Brief Career of Four Tween Pastry Chefs

"Mom, we want to make cookies!" 

That's all it took...I WAS IN!

"YES!" I exclaimed, "You may use my entire kitchen and everything I own if you will produce for me a warm and delicious cookie while I sit here on my bottom watching the Olympics." 

(translation: NOT watching you!) It was a fantastic idea and I was IN with my entire being! 

Why were there four tween chefs and not three? Because the very charming and delightful neighbor boy was visiting our home (sarcasm font NOT engaged...this child is very delightful). Bonus:  this child knows how to make cookies, he loves to make cookies, and was very eager to share his skill with my boys. When I say this news was heaven for me, I am not at all exaggerating! My thought process: you mean I can actually sit here...doing nothing...and my children will produce yummy cookies for ME?

The picture in my head looked a little something like this...except in my head the cookies were all glow-y and I'm pretty sure there was angelic background music.

Photo by Wendy Rueter on Unsplash

Who wouldn't love that?

So I set them up for success. I pulled out every ingredient and tool this process would require, then I preheated the oven and gave them a little direction. "Cream the butter, eggs, sugars, and vanilla together and then add the dry ingredients. Oh...and also, those are half-sticks of butter. The recipe calls for two so I have given you four". And with that, I left them to their task with the knowledge that I had achieved success as a mother. I had given them the skills and tools in which to please me with the chocolatey-chippy-goodness of life. All I had to do was wait 20 minutes...

Insert giant "record scratch" sound here

When I say something went horrifically wrong, that would be the understatement of the universe. So many things went so super wrong. I was left standing in a completely destroyed kitchen, with a serious burn smell wafting through the air and an are-you-kidding-me-right-now? look on my face. But the burned product really wasn't the worst of it. After some serious sleuth-like investigating I discovered the baseline issues.

It seems that the Tollhouse Chocolate Chip bag (on which the recipe was printed) was torn at the corner. This destroyed some critical information regarding the amount of flour to use. It seems that the "2" part of the "2 1/4 cups flour" was missing. So our mixture had a scant 1/4 cup of flour. But when I found nine butter wrappers on the counter I realized just how much of a disaster this had become. NINE BUTTER WRAPPERS! So when I said "these are half cubes, you need to double that" nobody heard the "Here are the four cubes you need". And then I guess somebody either miscounted or threw in an extra cube for the butter-tsar...or something. 

So we had a mixture that consisted of nine half-sticks of butter and a quarter cup of flour in addition to the other ingredients. This created the most unfortunate sheet of greesy, burned sugar-butter-tar the world will ever see. I am saddened to report that I failed at getting a picture of the blackened butter mess…mostly because I was just in shock.

So not only did this mama not get her cookie fix, but I am now out of butter and my new cookie sheet is in the trash. Sigh… I'm a failure at momming!

Please send cookies. I’m not above begging. For real!