taking baking lightly

the nice thing about baking with crank is that she generally makes me stick to the recipe on the side of the box. it's not necessarily intentional on her part - I generally worry that if I'm asking her to make something with me and it turns out gross, I've wasted our time and money on a culinary disaster. but sometimes it's more about making a mess and a memory than it is about making something to munch on.

I still laugh over the flourless cookie mess I made with my fifth-grade best friend katie, the details of which included borrowing two other main ingredients from various neighbors, and then discovering that her family was out of enough flour, too. after deciding that the peanut butter globs looked like pre-baked cookies, we shoved the pan in the oven... only to return to the kitchen ten minutes later to find that all of the globs had spread out and formed one big burning cookie.

her mom came home at that very moment, and was quite mad about the whole thing. we, of course, thought it was hilarious.

this past weekend, I found myself in a situation straight from my past: staring at a giant, shapeless pan full of cookie goo. I'd decided, in my self-pitying mode of baking gluten-free cookies - the dough of which is almost nothing like your day-to-day tollhouse recipe dough - that the addition of a little chocolate milk would make my crumbly dough feel more like the stuff I ate off the spoon for so many years. the dough was delicious, but as I spooned it onto my smooth gray pan, I wondered if I was repeating a childhood mistake.

it went into the oven anyway! hope - and a desire for warm, melty chocolate! - had over taken me.

five minutes later, seeing that mocking pan of goo was less hilarious. this time, however, I decided to salvage it by pouring it into the next best container, a bread pan, and baking it that way. my hope was that it would turn out as a kind of bar consistency... or something like that.

I returned to check on my little pan of wonder, the very pan in which my mom used to make me banana and zucchini bread, and after about forty minutes in my tilted oven, I had a somewhat crumbly yet deliciously dense cookie loaf. my experiment had worked!

my karmic lesson, I guess, is something along the line of where following directions will get me. following all of the directions will more than likely lead to predicatble results, the likes of which are safe, comforting, and usually not disappointing. but sometimes, taking a chance will produce tasty little surprises if they are willing to be tried. and really, chances like this one, even if unsuccessful, at least make for good stories later in life.

in case you'd like to try the cookie loaf for yourself:
--purchase 1 box whole foods gluten free chocolate chip cookie mix
--purchase/ensure that you have vanilla, eggs, and butter
--make to specified directions
--add about half a cup of chocolate milk
--eat a bit of the dough, if you're into that sort of thing
--dump in a lightly oiled loaf pan
--bake at specified temperature for 40 minutes
--enjoy!