Don’t Underestimate Cookies

Cookies seem easy to make. You throw some flour and butter together, toss in bits of chocolate, and put it all in a burning oven. Simple, right? Wrong. Making cookies, or at least good ones, takes serious skill. Of course, being a novice baker with an overconfident mindset comes at a price. A fairly high price at that.

Whistling from forceful winds mixed with the patter of a light rainfall that covered the town. A light buzz of voices traveled from the television in the living room while a pot of water boiled on the stove top, awaiting the tea bag that will soon transform the kitchen into a citrus cinnamon smelling wonderland. I was in my element. All I needed were some freshly baked cookies that were gooey and warm with melted chocolate. I was sure I’d be able to create a beautiful batch of cookies by finding a recipe off the internet. Determined and ready with bowls and ingredients, I got started. Reading instructions while cracking eggs and measuring sugar, there wasn’t a single part of me that thought I would mess up somewhere along the way. Soon after I’d just finished plopping dough onto a pan, I realized that I forgot to preheat the oven. So off I went turning the knob and realizing that I’d probably have to wait a couple more minutes until I had cookies to stuff myself with.

Though I’m usually a reasonable thinker, I’m not a fan of being patient for treats. It wasn’t long before I came to the idiotic conclusion that I should raise the oven temperature to get the oven warmer and get my cookies baking faster. With that in mind, I turned the setting on the oven to the highest temperature and shoved my raw cookie dough inside. At the time, I didn’t realize that when the temperature of an oven increases, whatever is being baked will quickly cook on the outside but not on the inside. My naive self waited for ten whole minutes as the cookies inside the oven crusted and spread. Once I’d finally gotten my hands on a freshly baked cookie, I tore into it and paused mid-bite. It was cold and tough on the inside. Not ideal for a supposedly soft chocolate chip baked good. Eating half-baked cookies was not my goal, so I put them all back in the oven for five more minutes. In those five minutes multiple events occurred. My cookies spread too much in the pan, they burned, and the kitchen began to smell putrid from the now charred dough.

I worked fast to open all the windows and turn off the oven. My parents walked by just as the stench began to dissipate. My cookies weren’t cookies anymore. They grew into what looked like rubber soles of a running sneaker. All dark with organic shapes protruding out from the edges. My ego took a hit that day, and I never got any sugary goods. The rest of my rainy afternoon was spent scraping burnt chocolate from the sides of a metal pan while wallowing in the sorrows of what should have been a day with chocolate chip cookies.

- Nora Yang